> easily 150K in my opinion, and probably over 200K. from the monument to
> 15th to pennsylvania ave back to 14th and returning back to the mall.
> that's well over half a mile with 50-60 people wide across the streets.
> and the back of the line was still filling in as the front dispersed in
> various directions across the mall. the crowd was very tightly packed as
> well.
>
> i've been part of demonstrations and rallies going back to the 70s and
> this was among the more impressive both in terms of sheer numbers and the
> diversity of the participants. since the iraq & afghan invasions began
> there i have not seen a mass demonstration that was quite as
> demographically representative as this one - young, old, women, men, all
> ethnicities - any way you want to slice and dice it.
----------------------------
Very well done, American friends, very well done. It was an impressive demo
on TV, and I noticed the AP quotes the Washington police chief as saying the
organizers easily "hit their target" of 100k. The point, I think, is not
that less than 1% of the US population took part, but how many more watching
at home were confirmed in their belief the war is wrong and is opposed by by
a broad range of people very much like themselves. The effect of
demonstrations like these, as in Vietnam, is to quicken the current running
against the war.
Here in the Canadian capital, we had only 200-300 out - much smaller than than the prewar protests - but it seems to have been the same story all over, including in the UK. That's different than Vietnam, where there were massive worldwide demonstrations during the course of that war calling for US withdrawal in solidarity with the American antiwar movement. I wonder why the difference? My wife just remarked that it's it's probably due to the decline of the European mass socialist and communist parties, which sounds like as good an answer as any to me. In fact, come to think of it, that provides the justification for far left groups like ANSWER - probably the only justification for them in times like these - ie., as catalysts for opposition to imperialist wars. The suggestion that they drive away much larger groups who would organize bigger demos on their own doesn't sound plausible to me. I think what happens instead is that their initiative draws in the more hesitant and less well organized liberal and left groups who then give the movement a much broader and more representative character.
MG