Peace Rally and March

I woke up on Saturday morning (on the train) when I heard Cecil's voice saying: "sounds like a Rovian plot". That immediately got my attention, since one never knows what Rove might do. Turns out, Rebecca called him and told him about the power being out at the Amtrak stations in NY and Boston and Philadelphia. We were riding on Amtrak at the time, but we had no problems. I did not sleep well on the train, but Cecil and David said it was okay.

We got to Union Station about 10 AM and I decided to carry my bag and my backpack to the protest area. I intended to leave it with NC Peace and Justice, since they were going to have a tent there, while I marched. Cecil and I could not find the tent, and when I finally got a hold of Andrew on my new cell phone, he said they had ditched that plan to have a tent.

So, I had brought WNC Peace Coalition banner, my "I Want Peace" flag and all my stuff I needed for the weekend with me, and I felt I could not just leave them and go walk in the march. I set up shop in a tent with Code Pink and Progressive Democrats of America.

There were a lot of people there. I heard some of the speeches from ANSWER stage, and I walked around a bit looking at all the tables of groups working for peace and justice and political change. It did seem the rally was more of an anti-Bush rally than an anti-war rally.

Here are some signs I saw:

Make levees, not war

War is terrorism

Bush lied, thousands died

Cheney: evil, crazy or just plain mean?

Pink Slip Bush: Fire the Liar

War is not the Answer

The only politicians who came to this event were Representatives Woolsey, Conyers, McKinney. No Senators were there. Cindy Sheehan spoke, as did Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton. People came from all over the USA, and I met several from other countries. I would think there were about 300,000 people there.

The parade route was rather long, and the parade started at 1 PM, and was still not finished when I left at 5:30 PM. I didn't walk it though, due to my excess baggage (which I should have put into a locker at Union Station). I really liked all the drumming in the parade.

Later that night, someone told me that her group went past the small group of pro-war demonstrators and they said nothing to them. They made the sign "shame, shame" with their fingers though, and the pro-war group went nuts.

Here's some chants from Code Pink:

Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown and Root, Go to Iraq and loot, loot, loot.

Or…We're hear to say: Get out of Iraq. And to Halliburton: No more contracts.

Or…How many contacts? Way too many And for Halliburton, not another penny.

We chased Dick Cheney around the streets shouting: You can run but you can't hide, We can see your greedy side.

It was great being with so many people who are also trying to stop this evil war.

We watched the news that night, and not much was said about the 200-300,000 who showed up to march and protest. Our corporate media is useless.