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Anti-War Demonstration in Washington, DC

My Saterday started at three o'clock in the morning. I got up, took the train through the Bronx, through Manhattan into the heart of Brooklyn where I was supposed to meet the Brooklyn Parents for Peace and Christian Lehner from the Austrian Broadcast to go to Washington, DC for the Anti-War march.

I arrived a little early (05:20 am), the streets have been quiet, almost no traffic. Christian came a couple of minutes after me and the first participants of the march waited around the corner already. We got to talk to a couple of people and finally left with the second bus at about half past six. It was an interesting four hour bus ride to the capital city of the United States. I was sitting next to Mark Gibian, a Williamsburg artist whose father originally immigrated from Prague and whose family still owns a glove shop in Vienna. Austrian connections everywhere. We had a good time talking about a lot of things. Want to try and meet him again before I return to Austria.

After a stop on one of the motorway service areas we got to the outskirts of Washington. The stop on the motor way already promised a lot of people coming to the march. Buses with peace-protesters whereever you looked. Arriving in DC there were buses and hundrets (if not thousands) of people waiting and trying to get onto the subway. Thanks Washington for not letting buses into the city, thanks for running the subway trains on a Saterday scheduled and thanks for doing subway construction work that day. It easily cost us an extra hour. But of course that didn't happen because officials wanted to keep the number of demonstators down... Oh no...

Anyway, we finally got into town with good cheer, found our way to the rally and just came in time for the beginning of the march. I started walking in the march on my own and sometimes even had troubles to take photographs because I hardly could move because of the crowd. Man, there were so many people holding banners and signboards, speaking out against war.

It was a loud but non-violent demonstration. People of all races, from all over the country, young and old, veterans and relatives of military families attended. And I think there have been well over 100.000 people on the streets. Hard to prove since the numbers published by organizers of such events are always to high and the numbers pubished by police is always to low. I usually take those two numbers and the one in the middle seems to come closest. Nowadays Washington officials no longer publish estimated numbers of attendses to such events. I wonder why... Could it be because they don't want the world to know that a lot of Americans are against the war?
As the New York Times reports Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey thinks that the 100,000 people mark was probably hit.

Regarding my feelings throughout the march... I have to say that I was touched by that many people protesting for what they believe in: Peace. I saw parents who lost their sons in Iraq, I saw Vietnam war veterans who don't believe in war anymore. Iraq war veterans who came back from war not that long ago, a lot of them hardly out of teenage age. And there were people stopping in front of the White House stretching their finger towards it. I kind of liked that. But what I even liked more have been those who stopped in front of the White House to form the Victory sign with their hands. Just as the man in the middle photograph told me (unfortunately I didn't get his name): "He is sending peaceful spirits into the White House to stop that mess".

More photographs of the Anti-War demonstration in Washington, DC tomorrow.

Posted by Martin Fuchs on September 25, 2005 11:57 PM