It's nine days after I gathered with an estimated 400,000 other citizens, including my best friend, on the Mall in Washington, DC. I went there hoping to redeem myself for being a total grasshopper during the Viet Nam war. A few thoughts below the fold...
We arrived on the Mall at around 11:00 in the morning. The weather was gorgeous...50+ degrees and sunny. What we found was a fascinating assembly of sign suppliers, t-shirt sellers, bumpersticker and button purveyors, dogs, strollers and everyday folks like us. It was already crowded enough that we could not get close to the stage, even though the march was not scheduled until 1:00.
We were able to hear the speakers, thanks to public address towers placed in each section. Though I know she generates a white-hot anger among the warmongers, I was particularly impressed with Jane Fonda. I can't imagine how much determination it must have taken for her to step onto a stage once more to condemn an immoral war. But "silence is no longer an option," she said. She also acknowledged fraud and waste "in our own gulf, after Katrina." Her brief, four-minute speech is here on YouTube.
The number of independent newspapers, tracts, pamphlets and screeds being handed out amazed us. I couldn't help but wonder what we tree-hugging, lizard-kissing liberals were doing causing all that wood pulp to be generated.
We made a couple of circuits of the Mall in the ensuing hours. When I remember that, I'll think of the hundreds of people basking in the sunshine on the steps of the National Gallery of Art and the Museum of Natural History. We joined them for a while, before returning to the party on the lawn.
I'm ashamed to say we didn't actually make the march. By the time it started, a couple of hours late, we were hungry, tired, and getting a little chilled, so we reluctantly headed for the Metro.
I learned a lot that Saturday. I learned to pack lunch and something to sit on. I learned that the schedules on these things are extremely flexible. I learned that you can get almost half a million people together and not have a riot. I learned that Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins are special people.
I learned that our congressmen and senators aren't.
There wasn't one elected representative at that gathering, so far as I know. None of them cared enough to even put in a quick appearance.
More than anything, I learned that we are going to have to get a heluva lot madder and a heluva lot louder before they start paying attention to us. Our politicians don't seem to care much yet. But we do. As I heard chanted a thousand times that day, "This is what democracy looks like!"