About 100,000 people -- more by some estimates -- filled the east side of Manhattan on a bitterly cold Saturday afternoon to let Bush know that the country is not united behind him in his drive to war. The crowd milled along mostly peacefully, except for a few scattered incidents, one involving horses. "Take your horses out of here, you c***suckers!" roared one bearded protesters after a phalanx of mounted police officers crossed 2nd Ave. going east. The mood was upbeat and even playful, despite the weather and the grim mission that brought so many out today.
Although the city denied the organizers the right to march on the United Nations, the police had closed off all the streets, forcing us to walk up Lexington, 3rd and 2nd avenues before hitting 69th St. and finally turning east where we could walk down 1st Ave. This resulting in three smaller marches uptown as protesters mainly ignored police warnings to stay on the sidewalk and instead spilled out onto the streets. Many grumbled that the cops were preventing people from getting to the rally, hoping to disrupt it. If that was the case, they failed, as instead of single long procession and rally on 1st Ave., they got the smaller marches previously mentioned, tangling the entire East Side.
[UPDATE: George over at Warblogging.com has a nice entry on the protest, and he is more effusive than I. As I said, I'm not reporting much on this as I was a participant rather than acting as a journalist. He saw a lot more police action than I did...]
I took pictures while I was there, but since I was there as a participant instead of an objective journalist, I won't say much about this protest, instead pointing you to coverage by the Times and the Washington Post.
After the rally, the tension in the air that I'd been feeling -- a sense of waiting for something to happen -- seemed to have eased somewhat. The act of marching, of gathering in huge numbers against the powers in Washington and in other capitals, was an effective method of beating back the anxiety brought on by Orange Alerts and impending war. And no, the protests probably won't halt the war, but they made us feel like we were doing something. They gave us a feeling of fighting back -- against war, against Bush, against fear. It's a much better feeling than buying plastic sheeting and duct tape and waiting for the boom.
You were in fact doing “something”. You were giving aid and comfort to Saddam Insane. No, no, don’t tell me, I already know: You’re all PATRIOTS. Of course. Iraqi patriots, but still patriots.
Engage your brain before you step up to the plate.
I thought your country (bastion of morality, etc) had things like freedom of speech written into the constitution.
Life isn’t black and white like in a TV show. I know your president encourages such myopia (‘You’re either with us or with the terrorists’) but he’s as big a devil as Saddam.
Oppose War. Indict Saddam. That’s what this bloke in Baghdad has blogged.
Check it out: http://dear_raed.blogspot.com
Hi, Tom—
While I disagree with you, I do appreciate you reading and commenting. I hope you stick around and add your voice to any debates…
thanks for writing,
Chris: I got to the party late, and by that time the crowd had to be diverted up to 72nd street before sending them down 1st ave—and then we only got as far as 63rd street. The crowd was backed up that far. Quite a show of dissent.
Tom, I suggest you read Chris’s weblog a bit. If you are opposed to Saddam Hussein and care about the Iraqi people, you’ll find ample evidence here that the Bush’s war policy is only concerned with the former; for the latter, it will be oppression as usual, or perhaps worse in the case of the Kurds. See his post "U.S. hangs Kurds out to dry — again; allows occupation of Iraqi Kurdistan by Turkey."
The official policy of the US is "territorial integrity" of Iraq post-Saddam. I suspect is that means the new government will simply be a Ba’ath party without Saddam and his family. Meanwhile, the Kurds currently enjoy some soverignity in northern Iraq, and this is endangered by the war. Do the math.
Curtiss-
Sorry you got the party late. Was a huge turnout, especially considering the weather. I”ve never taken part in any kind of rally before. All in all, as impressive as it was, I think i’m personally more comfortable reporting rather than taking part. In the case of Iraq, you can let the facts speak for themselves without having to construct a damning case.
I’ve noticed that as soon as anyone disagrees with the Left that some intellectual midget immediately begins to cry that they are being stifled. Does that mean that because you attacked me that you were attempting to limit my rights to Free Speech? Either you were, or you lack even a hint of intellectual honesty.
The Left makes its living off of hating America and always has, so don’t start in with your sorry song and dance about how descent is patriotic. There is, in fact, a hideous case of myopia in play, here, but it belongs exclusively to the Left, which has a knee-jerk, negative reaction to anything done by the United States.
In fact it was people like all of you who, immediately after 9/11, began screaming that America “deserved what it got” and took up your stance as Arab apologists, preaching your depraved moral equivalence regarding “root causes”, blaming the victim rather than the criminal.
You continue your inane chants of “indict Saddam” not because you hate war, but because you hate America. Saddam, in case you haven’t noticed, has “suffered” a dozen plus years of your silly “indictments”. Have they removed him from power? Have they brought Democratic principles of government to the Iraqi people?
No, they’ve done nothing but allowed Saddam time to distribute his NBC weaponry to Terrorists. When those weapons are finally used against America and Israel we will have all of you to thank for the thousands of deaths resulting from that massacre. But that’s what you want. You don’t give a damn about how many Iraqis die in any war. If you really cared about those people you’d be demanding that Saddam use the money he makes from selling oil to buy food and medical supplies rather than to purchase weapons and build palaces. If you really cared about the Iraqi people you would be supporting the immediate ouster of Saddam by any means, rather than praying for and cheering every set back to doing so.
As with Usama bin Laden, your sudden concern for Iraqi citizens is feigned. Just as they are nothing but a convenient rhetorical tool for Usama, so they are for the Left.
You people, with your blind and rabid hatred for America, sicken me.
So it’s anti-American to question the government’s policies? I suppose, then, that it is “patriotic” to go along with whatever our fearless leader tells us to think.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Oh, and I never knew “descent” was unpatriotic. Descent into what? Or maybe you meant dissent.
I better get back to my “rabid hatred for America”.
Carry on.
Jeez Dave, what do you mean, “get back to” it?
Actually, the un-American part is politicizing our foreign policy, but then again, that’s what the left in America has done with all of our institutions. This is the essence of Robert Bork’s book of twenty years ago, “Tempting of America” I think.
The American left packed the State Department with Soviet agents in WWII, then spent twenty years shouting McCarthyism. Then they aided and abetted our North Vietnamese enemies while our army was in the field, then they hated Nixon because he understood the use of power and brought that war to an end. Then you aided the Sandinista tyrants, while deriding Reagan as a dunce and warmonger. It goes on, but the hour is late. Leave it at this. You’re the same revolting shitstains we’ve always had in this country. It’ll be a generation before America again elects one of yours, President.
I’m scared, I want the war to stop! By stopping the war I somehow believe that no more terrorist attacks will occur here in the US. Well guess what uneducated and uninformed dip shits that believe this. We have brought the war to their door step, terrorists from all over the world are flocking there instead of here to settle beef with the US. They could give half a shit if we pulled out in ten minutes, the attacks would continue and follow us into our own cities once again. Thanks to the moronic ideologies of Bill (Hillary) Clinton we no longer had the resources in the intelligence community to research these rumors of attacks! WTF you think that if we are nice to the world they will be nice to us, wake up jackasses, or better yet, drop dead so the rest of us who live in reality can survive without the fear of having a spineless asshole in the White House.
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