It was such a great day for a rally in Manhattan today. Clear, blue skies – on the cool side, low 60s – and an underlying energy that said: Enough!
I had been unaware of the event until Steven D posted a story on the front page last Tuesday and immediately decided to participate. Posted an entry last night suggesting to other tribbers to meet up before assembly at Pete’s Tavern (I occasionally go there for Saturday brunch in any case), but did not get much response on a Friday night.
In any case, I was already assured of company. Suggested to my daughter – to some tribbers known as swimmer – that she might want to march and she enthusiastically said yes. While having brunch, BT’s very own Arthur Gilroy came up and introduced himself. He joined our table and we had a good chat. No doubt, a radical – and one with immense knowledge of NY history and culture. We then proceeded two blocks crosstown to the assembly area and parted ways.
We joined the crowd at 18th/Broadway and waited maybe 1/2 hr before the crowd moved. It was actually such a great experience; the crowd had young and old; war veterans all over; students and punks, old hippies and young ones – impossible for us in the middle of it to estimate the size of the crowd, but a report in NY Daily News state that organizers estimate the crowd to 300,000.
The demonstrators stretched for about 10 city blocks as they headed down Broadway. A police spokesman declined to give an estimate of the size of the crowd, although organizers claimed there were 300,000 people. There were no arrests.
The reference to 10 blocks is pure nonsense. As we turned off Broadway towards Foley Square at the end, I could see the crowd stretching all the way back to where Broadway makes a bend at 10th Street.
Here are some images that swimmer and I took:
During assembly at 18th St.
So true.
Blood on his hands…
Won’t get fooled again! (Never was.)
For Damnit Janet; swimmer (c) and Code Pink ladies (we met many)
It was quite a day – lots of slogans. My daughter was quite upset that her younger brother did not come along. Wish you could all have been there!
“What does democracy look like?”
“THIS is what democracy looks like!”
“What does democracy feel like?”
“THIS is what democracy feels like!”
“What does democracy look like?”
“THIS is what democracy looks like!”
“What does hypocrisy look like?”
“BUSH is what hypocrisy looks like!”
There sure was energy!
I loved that democracy chant. we were behind them for a few blocks too.
Thanks for being there for all of us…way cool that AG came…personally, I’d love to meet the man.
One of my favorite entries from the Brushstroke Peace Poster Project
Melissa Dallof clik image to enlarge
Peace
It was great, dada.
Also meeting, AG and I wish we had some more time. Believe he is going to the meet-up that boran2 is planning for the 17/18 June weekend.
I am sorry I could not meet up with the Bootribbers–logistics of meeting places and time-schedules turned out to be much more complicated than I had imagined, so I had to bid Pete’s Tavern a sad goodbye.
But the march was simply amazing! What set the mood for us happened prior to the march. As my friends and I were walking from Penn Station to 22nd and B’way, we say some guys outside Macy’s hoisting a huge sign (for some bank) using two cranes. The ‘cherry-picker?’ (is that what it is called? –the cab-like thing on top of the crane?) had a huge sign IMPEACH on it. We did a double take, stretched our necks and saw the guy standing in the cherry-picker give a thumbs -up sign to us. Whereupon we yelled and woo-hooed and did thumbs-up all around and went to the march remarkably invigorated!
Found a group customizing signs for the marchers, so I got one which said, “Another pissed off woman for peace.” The sign attracted lots of good vibes and grins (especially since I continually forgot to wear a sour, pissed-off expression, and instead joined in full-throated in all the slogans against Bushco.)
The end of the march was so marvelous. At Foley Square, there was one triangle of the lawn where people were singing protest songs and I heard this guy–David Rovics–sing some of the best protest songs I have ever heard. Two of them, especially, stick in my head–“Halliburton Boardroom Massacre” and “Oppositional Defiance Disorder.” Of course i don’t listen much to western music (my loss) so i am not really a good source here.
But it was the energy and the sense of purpose and determination displayed by all the marchers that made this day so very memorable.
You guys are great!!!! Can feel that New York love all the way out here on the West Coast of Oregon!
I love the photo of Swimmer with CodePink. CodePink sammich 🙂
Glad you were able to get out there.
You guys are always undercounted… but you mean so much to us all. XOXOXOXO thank you for going out and standing up.
A peace march in NYC! So sorry I couldn’t be there – but appreciate everyone that went to represent us! Glad that ask & swimmer could share the experience and that it was filled with good vibes too – great pics. Peace (Love and Happiness – as we used to say).
Fabulous!
Thanks for standing up for me! My heart was with you.
Thanks for the pictures ask. It looks like it was a wonderful experience.
Thanks, ask! Great photos!
Good to meet ask and his very smart daughter. After we hung for a while, I went and joined the small group of Musician’s Union people for the start of the march. Couldn’t stay for the whole thing, because I had to get ready for an early job tonight an hour north of NYC.
So…after aboit a half hour of marching, I stepped out of the slow moving march crowd and took a power walk to the front. (Started from somewhere near the back.)
From the back to the front…maybe 15 blocks of people. 15 to 20 at the most. Did an informal count…got about 500 people per block.
You do the math.
At the MOST…10,000 to 15.000 people.
Then headed across fancy-schmancy Soho to catch a subway north. Saw more people headed over.
But not 290,000 people!!!
No way.
The organizers are full of shit.
So will be the reports from the MSM.
Take it from a relatively uninvolved observer.
AND…there was no threat.
No danger.
The cops were nice and relaxed.
No automatic weapons and riot gear.
No National Guard.
No DEMAND.
My sig:
Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.-Frederick Douglass
Yup.
Nice people.
10,000 of them.
Not enough to move things.
Not even 20,000.
So it goes.
500,000!!!
THEN we’ll see.
However…there must have been 500,000 latter-day yuppies spending $40 apiece for miniscule portion of brunch/lunch sitting at the 1000s of hi-tech eateries I walked past as I made my way tro the A train. And shopping for overpriced shoes. Etc. I exaggerate. But not by much. Not when you consider the other 200 cities where the same scene prevails. Bread and circuses. The Romans understood.
Sad. really…
Soho was at one time Little Italy.
Underneath…the same people still own large parts of it.
Walked past a couple of old-timer Italian gentlemen…I call ’em “watchers”, because no matter how fancy the storefronts get, they are still out on the stoops and on the street making sure that nothing bad goes down without a phone call to the boys around the corner in the unmarked social club full of Sinatra-stocked jukeboxes. Just as I got to them some brittle looking failed pseudo-high fashion model walked by with her high strung little doggie on a leash. The dog barked and lunged for some pigeons…he was safe, because of the leash. Otherwise a couple of NY pigeons would’ve had HIM for brunch. The watchers responded with a disapproving “AYYYYYY!!!” and as I passed them I made the universal motion of screwing the neck off of a chicken with the proper corresponding “KKKKCCCCCHHHH” sound.
They broke up.
NY lives!!!
But the march?
Nice.
TOO nice.
Too bad.
I was there, on the streets and in the undeground newspaper offices…I wrote for “Rat”…when we changed the course of the Vietnam War.
It was DANGEROUS then.
No danger now.
No demand.
Maybe next time.
If we have TIME for next time.
We shall see.
(Let us pray.)
Later…
AG
Ahem.
Could you be more specific?
“Ahem” is what I got from the whole goddamned march.
Not quite enough.
AG
In other words,
Wake The Fuck Up
I am attempting to stop saying this quite so directly.
But…
Yup.
AG
I thought of the march three years ago, with its hostile, violent, and intimidating NYPD. Yesterday the cops were with us.
This is partially true.
Or…you COULD say that they realized taht nothing is going to happen.
The very DEFINITION of cops being “with” you.
Let me ask you something.
Had I gotten out of the line…and believe me, I had the inclination but I knew damned well I would get no support whatsoever from the other marchers…gone up to a group of cops and said “Hey. YOU!!! How the HELL can you stand there like that while a string of pictures of dead Americans goes by THAT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE YOU DO!!!??? People killed in this war? Working people, just the fuck like YOU!!!”
Had I done that with any anger and passion and implicit threat whatsoever…what do you think would have happened?
Color me G-O-N-E- gone!!!
BET on it.
I would have been disappeared so fast my shadow would still be on the sidewalk. And the mass of marchers would have kept right on lockstepping like a herd of lemmings that lost one of its members to a passing hawk.
Sorry, man.
They weren’t “with” us.
They were just glad that we posed no appreciable threat.
You want to see some change in their appearance?
40 people marching with shotguns and rifles…even lifesize CUTOUTS of them… would do the trick.
Bet on THAT, too.
AG
P.S. Right at the bottom of this page as I posted the above comment I spotted an ad for Dish network.
Right here on “left-wing” Bootrib.
“Get Dish installed in up to four rooms for FREE!!”
What for?
So you can receive disinfo 24/7 in every room in your goddamned house?
Wake up.
AG
I’m feeling a diary coming here AG.
I wasn’t there but I highly doubt the cops were “with” anyone except Bloomberg and his higher ups in DC. For what it’s worth. Had I been there when you stepped out of line (stupid, confused lemming) there would have been at least two shadows on the sidewalk.
Then we both would have been disappeared.
No use fighting a doomed fight.
AG
Thanks for the pictures.
300,000 and no word of it in the major media?
Now y’see, Steven…this is how the left loses.
It is SO credulous…whether it’s about how something as trivial as Gannon/Guckert is going to bring down a mutli-trillion dollar criminal enterprise like BushCo and its affiliates or whether some self-interested organizers inflate the attendance at a peace rally 10 or 15 times…so credulous that those who are REALLY in a position to disinform know that they they can tell the left just about anything and pacify it with false hopes until the NEXT piece of disinfo hits the big screen.
Creating false realities by the bushelful.
Did you read my post above?
My 10-15,000 esimate?
There aren’t THAT many posts here.
Are you that big in a rush to take the bait?
Or…did you read the post and disbelieve it?
If it is the latter…may I ask why?
Do you think that I have some ulterior motive for dissing the attendance?
If so, pray tell…why?
I want MORE people.
MORE commitment.
Not less.
Or…are you, as is most of the left, simply in an ongoing state of serious denial?
SOMETHING’S wrong with your perceptions, for SURE.
Think on it and get back to me.
I’ll be here.
Later…
AG
Hi Arthur,
great meeting you in the flesh yesterday.
I disagree with your crowd estimate. Obviously, it is difficult to gauge when at the ground level. Towards the end of the route, Broadway is at a little bit of an elevation and I had a good view all the way back towards 10th Street. I compared with music festival audiences I have been part of that counted 50-60,000. I am convinced that I saw twice that number, and that would not count those still above 10th Street and those already done.
Definitely in the 6-figures, I would say.
Hi ask…
Could be…I would certainly be happier if that were the case.
But as I said, I walked the length of the parade at easly 3 to 4 times its speed with the idea of measuring it right from the get-go,and when I got to the front, I stopped and counted the number of people that fit into one block. I could be off a couple of hundred per block but no more, and there were CERTAINLY not more than 20 blocks in the march when I split off.
Maybe it grew in the ensuing hour or so.
Whatever…
Was it another nail in the coffin of BushCo?
Maybe.
A small one.
I was glad to be able to contribute. I would LOVE to find a way to put some big nails in there.
Later…
AG