When hundreds of thousands of Americans streamed into DC on Saturday to voice our dissent from the outrageous war and occupation of Iraq, we knew that we were legion. Already, at rest stops and restaurants along the way, we'd encountered busload after busload of similar pilgrims making the journey to DC to tell the man in the White House and the mostly men in Congress that this arrogant cowboy war has got to end. A restaurant waiter asked me what was going on--he said they were running out of food because so many people had stopped! A woman in one of the lines told me proudly about 17 buses coming from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Another noted that seven buses were coming from a very small town in the middle of the Heartland--they'd come through our town of Champaign-Urbana, in fact, enroute to DC!
We, too, were proud. We'd started out expecting 35 or maybe 50 people to be able to go. We ended up with two buses loaded with 98 people making the hard 13 hour trip down throughout the night Friday night, standing for hours at the rally and in line to march before the White House Saturday afternoon, and then loading up at 8pm for the hard and tiring ride back to Illinois. But we were proud. We represented scores more whose hearts were with us but who could not make the trip. We sang folk songs and talked and felt the bonds of camaraderie that bring people from different walks of life together to give voice to America's distaste for a needless, preemptive war that denigrates all that is good about our country and wastes the billions of dollars that could be invested in the poor here and around the world.
When we got to DC, we could look around and see the numbers of us sitting, standing and talking. We carried signs, saying "Bush lied; soldiers died", "Impeach Bush", "Support our troops--bring them home now". "Make peace, not war", and on and on. We saw mimers dressed as Bush, Cheney, Rove and the rest of the war-hungry White House gang, going in chains and prison robe to their proper reward for violating international law.
When we got to DC, we could see buses at one Metro stop after another. We could see the line of marchers, starting out at the appropriate time, with the front line coming back when the end of the line still hadn't started. We could see streams of marchers packed solid for blocks ahead of us and blocks behind us. I mean solid--shoulder to shoulder, back to front, with very little room to move. So many banners and signed held aloft that it looked like a veritable army of peace. We could see, at the cross streets that looked across to the return route of the march, more marchers already hours ahead of us and marching solid, shoulder to shoulder back down to Constitution Avenue. We knew the strength of voices chanting "What does the face of democracy look like? This is what democracy looks like!" and "Iraq No, Bush Must Go." We knew how far ahead of many others we were when our contingent finally began to move forward, long after the march started. We knew how long it took us to get to the White House and we saw the dour looks of the DC police with their hands on their gun holsters and their baseball-sized nightsticks ready to shoot or hit us if they thought we were a problem. We knew that the march was still just getting underway at 2 when it had been expected to be over, back when the organizers thought that 100,000 people might come.
How many marchers were there? Much more than the 100,000 that the organizers had originally anticipated. Much more than the "estimate of 100,000" being provided on CNN and other networks, with only the most fleeting photographic glimpse from above of the streaming throng of angry Americans demanding a voice. At least triple that number, 300,000, as even one of the news programs finally said tonight. But probably even more--as many as 600,000 or more. This was the voice of America speaking truth to power, and it was many hundreds of thousands strong.
There were helicopters throughout the day, taking aerial scans of the huge crowds. There must be one that shows the snake of people, a full DC street wide (40-50 people across) packed tightly like sardines moving across the entire parade route without gaps! Why isn't that picture being shown on the news? Is it because they are afraid that more Americans back home will see the level of dissent, and understand that this regime has failed?
But don't they know that each person who was there will return to their homes and share their stories, as I am doing, of the huge numbers of people that marched on Washington? That we will all look to see our faces--the faces of American democracy--reflected in the television news? That we all thought CNN and ABC and CBS and NBC and PBS would show picture after picture of the huge throng, noting the candor with which people spoke, the ardor with which they voiced their patriotism, their concern for the needless death of more Americans and Iraqis to preserve the Bush-Feife-Wolfowitz-Cheney cowboy dream of an American band of armed bases all across the Middle East oil region? The media has tried to make us invisible, as it succeeded in making the underprivileged of New Orleans invisible over so many years. But we will not let them, because we have pictures and we have stories to tell, and we will show and tell them to our friends and families and countrymen who stayed behind.
If you listened only to CNN or the Lehrer News Hour or ABC or CBS newscasts, you might think nothing momentous happened over the weekend. On CNN, you hear a very brief (15 or 30 second) description of an anti-war protest, with quick flashes of pictures showing the streams of demonstrators and a narrative voice mentioning 100,000 people protesting the war. No indication that the 100,000 estimate was the organizers' pre-event number (quoted also by the DC police who no longer make their own estimates of crowds).
On the front pages of the Sunday New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Post, you'd find nothing at all about the enormous turnout and its message. In small clippings in back on Monday, you'd see a description of the piddling, 400-person pro-war demonstration on Sunday, but nothing in depth about the gigantic anti-war demonstration. On Monday night, Gwen Ifill interviewed three persons about both protests, as though they were equally meritorious of information. A military mom spoke eloquently about the senselessness of losing more lives in a war that was wrong from the outset. A Vietnam vet and proponent of the Iraqi war accused "those people" who protest the war of "causing" the insurgents to do more harm and putting troops in jeopardy. A history professor quietly corrected the pro-war speaker's statement that the anti-war demonstrators do not represent a majority of the American people, noting that dependable non-partisan surveys clearly show a majority of more than 60% opposing the continuance of the Iraq war. As in many previous interviews, Gwen Ifill interrupted the liberal (anti-war) speaker but did not interrupt the conservative (pro-war) speaker. Little of substance was revealed--not once did the News Hour include snippets from speeches such as Ramsey Clark's call for Bush's impeachment for violation of international and US laws nor snippets from children who brought their families to the march because they wanted to take part in democracy now through civic activism against the war. No pictures were shown of the huge numbers of anti-war protestors, with the News Hour repeating the pre-event estimate of 100,000, though at least the News Hour did indicate that the pro-war crowd to which it gave equal status in its discussion was a measly 400 or fewer.
What is this all about? No less than the disenfranchisement of the American people by the corporate media that makes money out of war!
I know, for I was there. America knows, because we who were there are back home again and telling everyone how it really is.