Electric Josh

Monday, October 28, 2002

Second-hand correspondence from (great aunt) Louise from the antiwar march in Washington this weekend:

Just a quick report on my participation in the protest march yesterday. [...] If anyone heard the morning news on PBS this morning and heard some woman say there were "over 10,000" protesters, believe me, she was wrong.  The organizers say one hundred thousand, and even our estimable police chief says it was a very huge crowd.   I wandered down to the staging place (near the Vietnam Memorial [...]) and there were hordes of people of every kind, many banners, lots of funny costumes and handmade and also professional signs, lots of rhetoric pouring out of the loudspeakers.  Lots of signs in honor or Paul Wellstone--things like "thank you, Mr. Wellstone."  I thoujght that was very nice.  Finally it was close to one thirty, when the march was supposed to begin, but of course, once some of those guys get near a microphone they can't be torn away, so it was much much later before the march actually started.  I was on Constitution Ave., where it was to begin and there were already lots of people ready to march. Plus many mounted police, lots of police on motorbikes and also bicycles, and a few in cars. As far as I know, n o arrests or other trouble.  Plus a group of about 25 black men who were in black uniforms and seemed to be the Drill Team of the ILGWU, or something close. They did interesting little routines. Anyway, I kind of wandered along and finally found myself going up 17th street. There the police shunted the crowd onto the Ellipse, because the main march still hadn't started.  It was near three, maybe, before they actually came along.  Miles of them!  I hung around for a long time and finally went home, but they were still coming up the street when I left.  It was fun, and moving and funny all at the same time. [...]

Sounds pretty different and much bigger than what little I've heard on the radio on the subject would suggest. More interesting account, anyway. Nice to see a protest with a sense of focus, and one that involves more than a bunch of trust fund hippies taking time off from following Phish around. #