Asia Times: 'Voices from the march to nowhere' (nice article)

[G_j]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FH31Aa03.html

Voices from the march to nowhere
By Tom Engelhardt

NEW YORK - Let the numbers battle begin. The first unofficial police estimate of Sunday's mega-march in New York: 120,000. The organizers' estimate: 400,000. The earliest news pieces used the usual vague "tens of thousands" or "more than 100,000", but the Washington Post wrote of "more than 200,000", and the usually march-unresponsive New York Times picked the phrase, "hundreds of thousands". So the choice is yours.

On a boiling-hot late-August day, on the eve of the Republican Convention, 100,000/200,000/400,000/500,000 upset, angry, anybody-but-Bush marchers (with the odd Green Party or Naderite supporter thrown in), walked up Manhattan's Seventh Avenue, doing for small businesses - delis, corner groceries, Tasti-Freezes - what several thousand Republican delegates and the massed imperial media will do only for a few fancy hotels, posh restaurants, and theaters. There was a rush on bottled water, on in fact almost anything drinkable, and at one point when the well-branded Fuji surveillance blimp, stamped with an NYPD (New York Police Department) logo, passed overhead, blocking the fierce sun and throwing a shadow on the crowd below, a cheer went up from the massed marchers on their way to nowhere in particular (having been denied a permit to rally in Central Park).

The anti-war, anti-Bush movement, which had disappeared from New York's streets after a final massive but depressed demonstration with the war already under way in April 2003, was back - and the mood was different indeed. Gone was the carnival atmosphere of early anti-war marches. The hand-made signs were still there, and some of them were still funny or clever ("Kerry dodged bullets, Bush dodged the war, Rove calls the shots" or "Back by popular demand" next to a peace sign), but most of them caught the essence of the moment: They were angry ("Worst President Ever", "Stop Mad Cowboy Disease"), even outraged ("War Monger, War Criminal", "No one died when Clinton lied. F--- Bush", "How many people must die for 'your mission' to be accomplished?" - with the quote marks as drops of blood). And the single most omnipresent word in all its various forms on people's lips, and on their signs, was "lie" ("lying", "liar") - "Bush lies, who dies?" "The war on terror is a lie", "Liars, thieves, murderers", "George Bush, 971 Dead ... and still lying" - while Bush (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Ashcroft) photos, masks, and puppets all had noses that would have made Pinocchio blush.

Given the months of intimidation - the Bush administration Code Orange alert, the endless discussions of possible terrorist acts, the hair-raising statements of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor George Pataki, the highly publicized showing off of new police weaponry and tactics of a sort fit for a police state, the regular labeling of the New York Police Department as larger than all but 19 militaries in the world, the rumors that the world's most dangerous anarchists were headed our way, and so on - given the attempts, that is, to scare protesters out of town, this was a march you had to think about. You had to make a decision to attend. You had to have a reason (or multiple reasons) for coming. When asked, marchers tended to stress the "seriousness" of the moment and to suggest a sense of being at the edge of a volcano.
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[Jerseygirltoo]

1. Thank you so much!

I was at the march on Sunday, and this article is the best I have seen. It puts the US media to shame

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. thanks

this is the best description I have read so far

[G_j]

3. I thought so too n/t

[Pow_Wow]

4. that was good

it does justice to the amount of conviction and courage the protesters have displayed in the face of the fear-makers.
True democracy is being kept alive by these people, but not by their leaders sadly.