10/26 Protests: Who Wuz There?

wrong country, but there in spirit.

i've only heard about the protests from word of mouth and independent internet news orgs...hmmm weird. i wonder how much coverage it actually got in mainstream US news. i know a few people from my old haunt in NC who took the long drive to get there and from all accounts it was an amazing experience, renews one's faith in the grassroots movement in the US.

i don't know, million mom march?

hmm? what? 10/26 protests? i dont what youre on about

I was wondering that two, they had small marches (about 200) of complete flakes in Toronto.

They wrote a press release that they were going to occupy an abandoned builing for the homeless but vacated after 15 minutes.

are you talking about the ones last winter?

it got news coverage here, and the dc one looked huge with susan sarandon, rev. jackson talking and apparently was a peaceful day with no hassles ( police presence big ).
your pres. didnt see it of course.
he was elsewhere stirring up support for a war.

only 2000 people in seattle. i saw one woman outside the park on sat with a sign that said "NO WAR". i thought it was kind of noble if a bit sad.

(that said, almost every non-corporately owned bizness in downtown oly has a "NO WAR" sign in the window, from antique shops to furniture stores to coffee houses to computer supply shops.)

The protests being refered to were the major nationwide protests in America to "stop the war before it starts" last weekend. "the war" of course being in reference to the seemingly imminent war on Iraq.

I was there, in D.C. Apparently it was the biggest demo since the Vietnam war. We had a diverse collection of people on the bus, many of whom had never gone to a large demo before. That was my favorite part of the experience. It was so big that I couldn't hear the speakers very well from where I was at. I enjoyed the actual march better. I was near the front, and as we finished up, some people were just getting started on the march, making a circle around the White House.

We had 1000-2000 people in Auckland, a good turnout.
A message was delivered to Helen Clark, our Prime Minister urging her to condemn any military action against Iraq, UN-sanctioned or not.

dr vick wz at the uk one, which was also unexpectedly huge (so much so that it was more a stand than a march, she said)

the speakers aspect of it actually always niggles me a bit: yes i suppose better to invite speakers who are tried-and-tested *as speakers* (ie just having any random person from the rank-and-file hardly guarantees competent speechifying, but tried-and-tested sort of translates as "the usual suspects": and the news coverage is consequenetly thin, seeing as "tam dalyell is against the war in iraq" is surely the opposite of news). it seems kind of stuck-on these days, a hangover almost from the pre-literate era, when big mass marches — possibly – got some fkn terrific content-and-flow, and this was *in itself* a special treat, a draw (i mean, who the hell today goes for the speeches? you march in order to be one of the marchers, surely?)

Two friends stayed over last night who were at the D.C. march. They said that the crowd was definitely the star of the show. My sis sent these pics; I'm not sure who took them but I like them.

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3237g/images/busdrvrs.jpg

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3237g/images/seiu.jpg