A Marching We Will Go...

My wife and I participated in the rally and march in Washington on January 27th. The event was organized by United for Peace and Justice a "coalition of more than 1300 local and national groups."

We rode on one of three busses organized by Peace North and the Northland Coalition for Peace. Roughly half of the 49 on our bus were college students.

The rally part was pretty straightforward - most people assembled in some fashion on the Mall facing the speakers platform. To quote from the organizers:

"January 27th began with an energizing rally on the National Mall and, with the Capitol building as the backdrop, the message of the day was crystal clear. It is time for Congress to use its Constitutional powers and to act on the mandate of the November elections -- it is time for Congress to stand up to Bush and end this war. But the rally was just the beginning.

And then, hundreds of thousands of people marched around the Capitol. If you have never been to Washington, it might be hard to imagine what this looks like, but this is a very large area. As far as we know, this is the first time -- ever -- that any protest has surrounded the Capitol. On top of that, the U.S. Capitol Police, over the weeks leading up to the march, had refused to grant our permit request to do just that, telling us we had to take another route. But when we brought 500,000 people and several members of Congress -- they had to change their minds. In the end, with no incidents, we marched around the Capitol! By the time the front of the march got back to the starting point, the last of the marchers were just leaving the rally site -- we had completed the circle.

I can tell you that what you just read is pretty much true - we were there.

The great debate seems to be about how many people were there. It used to be that we would have seen helicopter coverage of the event by all of the network news teams - but we didn't. There was only one helicopter in the air over us all day - and one must assume that it was a government helicopter. Based on pictures that I've seen of MLK's "I had a dream" speech, we were not as many but we surely numbered in the hundreds of thousands. When the march actually started it took us over an hour to move 50 feet and we were near the front with the Veterans for Peace group which wanted to lead the march! There is no question that the march part was like a herd of cats - great fun with street theatre, Code Pink, and the Raging Grannies!

The best rally coverage that I've seen or heard was on DemocracyNow! But the very simplest story that captured the essence of why most of us were there was published on Common Dreams. If you want to get a sense of what it was like I recommend that you watch some of the more than 2000 slides posted on this site.

You might be wondering, like I was, why I am having to cite "alternative media" for all the coverage of an event in Washington of this magnitude? When public television failed to have any coverage on Monday January 31, I e-mailed the ombudsman for PBS :

"It is pathetic that the News Hour did not cover the March on Washington on January 27th. Public television has a responsibility to cover these events and inform the public about them. Perhaps you should do a piece on "erroneous reporting" about yourselves. Shame on you!"

According to Linda Winslow, Executive Producer,The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:

"There is no weekend news broadcast produced for PBS by the NewsHour (or anyone else that I know of). If there were, I am sure the march on Saturday would have been reported on the day that it was news."

There is no shame at public television - but not to worry - Fox Network to the rescue, Bill O'Reilly had kind words for all of us. And the Family Resource Council attacked reasonable Christian groups that participated for associating with anarchists and demanded that Nancy Pelosi begin an investigation and prosecution.

Back on the bus, for the return trip to Wisconsin, several students asked me what a sign held by the small group (less than 50) of anti-protest demonstrators meant: "Don't take the brown acid!" To me it meant that they were trying to dismiss us as Woodstockians - hippies and ne'er do wells - something that can't be done if you look at the evidence by any reasonable measure.

The late Molly Ivins would have been proud of us - hundreds of thousands of people stood up against the surge! Would we do it again? Yes, and we'd bring some pots and pans to bang on!