September 25, 2005

Pleasantly surprised with a chaotically successful March on Washington
by Liza Sabater

This has been an unbelievably lo-tech weekend. For one, I forgot my camera. Yup. No pics from this blogdiva.

Saturday promised rain if not in buckets at least in annoying dribbles and Jobs is still not even demi-god enough to be able to create a water-resistant portable computer. Believe it or not, I managed to liveblog the march on Washington with two long forgotten implements : A pen and a paper notebook. Notice the added noun-cum-adjective that marks a technological distinction.

There are many reasons to be mad about this march but many more to be glad, if not deliriously happy.

Yes, a lot of women were bitching, me included, about the lack of human waste-disposal units. Yes, there were no water points or hot dog stands to buy from. Yes, they made us wait for almost an hour as more and more people amassed on Constitution. It got worse when someone was cretin enough to believe he'd be able to part the ocean of people a la Moses so that the leaders of the march, Cindy Sheehan and Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and others could walk up all the way to the front of the crowd.

We were like WHAT! are you insane.

Then it hit me. They were not expecting this many people. There were crowd wranglers and port-o-potties. It's just they did not expect HALF A MILLION PEOPLE to come down on a rainy day and march on Washington.

Seriously. They just had no clue. Once we started walking people just went "GO" and they would not stop walking. Then at one point, when we were half up the avenue and close to the White House, these just walk by us :

Image courtesy of Barbara O'Brien from Mahablog

You see, they never made it to the top of the crowd and to me, that is a good thing. Cindy Sheehan is an amazing catalyst and Jesse Jackson ... well, enough said. But they are not the leaders of this movement. They were not the top of the hierarchy in that crowd. They were the center. They were the heart.

The people were the leaders. The people were the ones who gave this march a reason to be.

And I am not talking about the workers either. I am talking about the fathers and mothers. The suckling babies and angst ridden teenagers. They were the 86 year-old man in a wheel chair and the fifty-something lady singing spirituals. They were the cute lesbians in the fatigue shorts and the metrosexually challenged frat boys.

They were white people, mostly white people may I add. But they were black and Latinos and Native Americans and Latin Americans and Native Latin Americans and Africans, Europeans and Asians.

There were people of all kinds and all ages. Rox, Barbara, Rena, Maryscott and others agreed, this was the minivan crowd.

When Rox asked, who's come to get laid people looked at her in disbelief and a cute, young, studly yet alas, gay guy raised his hand and said, me! It's not that the crowd didn't look sexy, it's just that a lot of people looked like their were already getting some.

The day and the march felt different. I am after all an old woman. This was not like the marches of yore. But it was satifying for the hope it wrought. I stopped marching at about 2:30pm and a group of us went to have lunch. We came outside at about 4pm and there were thousands of people still going by. We asked the cops, are the same people and they said, NOPE. There were still people coming down the hill.

It was awesome.

During the day, I whipped out the tree-carcass to scribble some of the best quips of my fellow bloggers and/or slogans I had seen on boards. Here I give you the list of 10 best quips and slogans of the day :

(1) Enough with the wind metaphors!
After Congresswoman McKinney got too carried in a votex of high winds and gusting tales of jet streams and cruel/ill/nefarious blowing away with her use of hurricane imagery to describe the Bush Administration

(2) Get better speakers
Rox, Barbara and I quipped how nowadays we just don't have good speakers. You get an angry guy with a microphone or a bull-horn and, godfuckingdamnit, the platitudes! the cliches! the lack of fucking rethorical imagination. Get these people a speech coach, please!

(3) Best slogan ever
"The rapture is not an exit strategy". Quick! A t-shirt!

(4) Best political performance group ever
Raging Grannies. They best captured the spirit of this march. White. Middle class. Somewhat Old School Progressive yet Witty. And because they were so seriously tongue in cheek, hopeful. They were awesome.

(5) The best questionable "We" of the day, brought to you by Jesse Jackson:

We will take Congress in 2006
We will take the White House in 2008
Followed by Hope
ot backed by Fear

This was an awesome speech but this was not a Democratic party rally. The only two party officials where Congresswoman McKinney and Congressman Conyers. That was it. And that's a shame. As Maha explains,

Y'know what? If Hillary Clinton or John Kerry or any other Dem who wants to go for it in 2008 had showed up for the rally and march on Saturday, they'd have scored big with the Democratic Party base. But they're afraid to be associated with their own base. The don't want to be seen with actual grassroots Democratic voters in public.

I have nothing else to add to that because it is the truth.

(6) Best Cindy Sheehan quote: "I think I'll just stand up here and read the signs while you talk amongst yourselves".

(7) Second best political concept of the day: Bill for first lady

(8) Voice from the crowd: "This is less a march and more a milling about"

(9) Rox about political strategies, speechifying and blogging : "We are not here to be right, we are here to win". Which is why she added, "Follow clean for Gene. Take a bath". Meaning, the march is a photo-op but also a moment for massive persuassion. It's your '30 second' pitch to the world only, you and like half-a-million other people have to do the pitch all together at the same time. The useless rabid anarchists, just have to go. Seriously. Just shut up. No bull horns for these people. Ranting for the sake of ranting? We're long past that privilege. Now it's only time to act.

(10) Given the amount of double-entendres, Maha says: "There ought to be a law against electing people to the highest offices in the country with names like Dick and Bush".

Heh. Dick. Bush. Heh heh heh.

My parting words? Thomas Jefferson once wrote, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism". Indeed. There were some counter-demonstrators (a few, btw) who did all to lay blame on the liberal media and all the vast left-wing conspiracy. Well, I never, ever sing the US anthem because I was raised an independentista Puerto Rican and we just didn't play by that book. Well, never did it seem so fitting to sing the US anthem but in front of these people who were calling the marchers anti-patriotic. And so, we broke into song and it was just awesome. About 100 people, who were basically trapped in a corner with the wingnuts ,just broke into song and no less than the Star-Spangled Banner?

I did get goosebumps.

It was patriotism as dissent and with a few high opera quality octaves to boot. It was the first time that singing the US national anthem made complete sense to me.

Democracy was very much alive on Saturday.

Others managed to be more efficient and they have stuff on their little magic boxes. There's stuff in the following:
Anti-War & Protests on Yahoo! News Photos

On The Left Tip: My Photo Journal of the DC March

Yahoo! Photos - limboigah's Photos - DC AntiWar Protest 2005-09-24

Yes, and then some...: 9/24/05 4:30pm

Yahoo! Photos - m_cole's Photos - dc antiwar 9/24

Pre-March: Worst Disaster on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Posted by Liza Sabater in Activism, Government, Iraq, John Roberts, War
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