anti-war march

[redbird]

It took us four hours to walk about two miles--but that includes over an hour to cover the first 3/4 of a block, while people fed in from the side streets ahead of us.

My feet are sore, from so much standing; I have two fine small buttons, saying "Surveillance undermines liberty" and "Stop the war", and two pages of notes on slogans and such. There appear to have been around 200,000 of us, and maybe 100 counter-demonstrators; a warm sunny day, news helicopters high enough overhead not to be unnerving. I'll write up more later.

Comments

[dabroots.livejournal.com]

Wow, you have an official "Adult" ID card. Not sure I qualify for one, just yet. However, I'm really dropping by to say I'm glad you got to the march. I was tied up with my son until about 2:30. I took the train over to G. Village and Washington Square, just as the official announcement was being made, "The march has ended. Please leave the park so that others in the march may enter."

[redbird]

Ah. That didn't mean that the march had stopped happening, but that this was the end of the march route. We got to the park around 4, and heard the same announcement.

(Adult just means I don't get a student discount--and having the ID at all lets me buy weekly and longer Tube tickets. Unlike the NY Metrocard, weekly etc. Tube tickets are not bearer instruments. The daily ones are, so there are signs at the exits of busy stations urging you not to give your pass to people who hang around asking for them. And this is more than you probably wanted to know about how London Underground fares work.)

Re:

[dabroots.livejournal.com]

Yep, I could see that people were still moving into the park, but my experience of getting smushed up against a cold steel barricade at the February rally dampened my desire to work my way into another crowd. At least I was wearing my bright red Eugene V. Debs tee shirt while hovering on the periphery, just north of Washington Square.

Tube. I was just thinking about how that at least one subway station sign in lower Manhattan uses the term "tube" to describe the train going under the Hudson into New Jersey.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Well done you!

I have singularly failed to get to any of the demonstrations apart from the student die-in.
Looking forward to your report...

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

That's how the one last month in San Francisco was -- much of the time things were either totally halted or I was having to take very tiny steps to slowly move along bit by bit. The next couple days afterward I found my wanting-to-be-stretched-out legs taking very large steps everywhere to make up for it.

[redbird]

We did some walking-in-place during the waiting around period, which helped a little.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Good essay (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/03/23/ny_protest/index.html) on the march in Salon.

B