New York City Peace Rally (& March) February 15 2003

Well, I can't give a number. I will leave that to the organizers for the high count and the police for the low count, but I will say that it was so big it could not be counted for as a rally. That is to say, the police had prohibited a march, but the rallying point could not absorb the inflow of people from all directions. The police set up barricades blocking off the main rally area and forced people to march uptown on neighoring Avenues. You have to imagine this: The rally was noon at 49 and First Ave. Okay, after 11:00 it was impossible to get anywhere near that place and after 11:30 you could not even get to First Ave.

I carried a sign saying "If we had wanted Bush as Commander in Chief, we would have elected him" and got hundreds of smiles, thumbs up and slaps on the back. Thousands of others had printed signs, picture of the globe and "No War in Iraq in English, Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish. There were also a lot of good hand-made signs, two of my favorites being "Jesus, France, and I are against killing Iraqis" and "You aren't even the President!!"

It was blocked by a million police in riot gear, trucks and thousands of their blue police walls. We tried to move eastward on a cross street but were instead forced uptown on Third Ave. Apparently First Ave was simply chock full, and to keep the crowd moving, the police just drove us like cattle ever farther north in densely packed crowds for some twenty blocks. So, there was not ONLY a defacto march, there were dozens of small feeder marches all over downtown Manhattan and three of four massive marches oozing uptown in parallel with First Ave.

With my radio at my ear, I heard Julian Bond (Southern Poverty Law Center) Desmond Tutu, Holly Near (singing) Congressman Dennis Kuchinich (who is part of a coalition suing Bush for illegally declaring war) and other local folks. It was bitter cold and it was just as well that we were walking, densly packed as we were. There was nothing else to do and there was no chance to get within sight of the platform.

The massive turnout was heartening, but I was disappointed insofar as the speakers seemed to have only been cheerleaders, rather than leaders. That is, there was lots of agreement on how terrible war is and how wonderful all of us were who opposed it, but no one had any substantive suggestions of what to do next.

And that's the problem, isn't it? If Bush presses the trigger tomorrow or next week, what will we all do then?