--I wrote this earlier today during the event, but technology gave me a hard time, so it's finally going up on dKos now--
I am writing this from Starbucks on Connecticut Ave, a few blocks from the White House. I started today at a Methodist Church on 16th and P Sts NW and marched with the UFPJ group to the Ellipse where they proceeded to the White House to risk arrest.
Here is a picture of one woman going to jail.
UPDATE: Final count? 370 people were arrested at the White House, and about 41 others were arrested at the Pentagon early in the morning.
More photos can also be seen on Yahoo:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/thalia115/album?.dir=/3799
Starting out:
Everyone received instructions at a church, although many had training the day before. They were told bring $50 and an ID and given a map of the White House and the area near jail.
I didn't come with a group, but I met some people here - 2 girls from Colorado (Eve, the blond, and Debbie in blue), a woman from Illinois, and a guy from California named Tank (he took the picture). I'm in the pink shirt.
Before leaving, I put my John Hancock on George's eviction notice. The full text reads:
NOTICE TO TERMINATE TENANCY
DATE: WAY PAST DUE
FROM: THE PEOPLE
TO: GEORGE W. BUSH
George W. Bush, you are HEREBY NOTIFIED to quit and get the hell out IMMEDIATELY, if not sooner, the premises now held by you as our illegitimate ruler, namely:
The premises and offices occupied by George W. Bush, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., including all rooms, wings, outbuildings, sheds and storage areas, and all other portions of the Office of the so-called Presidency of this country.
If we the people accept any small concessions after the tenancy terminates, or anything less than the complete dissolution of your power, this fact will no waive this Notice of Termination, or the people's right to take action until you and your entire regime have been driven from power. Concessions accepted will be used for survival only, and will not establish or re-establish a tenancy. No conduct on the behalf of the people may be construed as a waiver of our right to proceed with this eviction.
The rest of your crew is next.
Signed By:
The People, including but not exclusively: (many names)
From there, we marched to the Ellipse. We brought DC traffic to a standstill. As a former DC commuter, I can sympathize. My 17-minute drive in took an hour and a half - WITHOUT a protest going on.
The general plan was to leave from the Ellipse, and split in 2, circling the White House as we marched (picture below). We were led by the military families and clergy. My half walked over on what seemed to me like a roundabout route, and during the walk, I ran into a guy working with the Laura Flanders show, who interviewed me for the show. I was wearing around my neck the name, rank, age, and a few other details of a soldier killed in Iraq, and the guy from Air America asked me about it a little bit. After that, we got to talking about voter fraud and stolen elections. He knew a LOT about it, but I won't go into it now because that's not what today was about. Laura Flanders was here (looking gorgeous, I heard), and several people met her and talked to her. She was here Saturday too.
The two groups circling the White House met at Lafayette Park, right in front of the White House. We had our big eviction notice that we all signed for George. We also had the names of the dead on paper. A few groups - the military and clergy groups - had permission to go to the gate house to request a meeting with George to present the names of the dead and ask for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. "If" George declined our generous offer to meet, those same groups would go on the sidewalk in front of the White House and kneel down to pray. There are fences blocking the White House sidewalk but they had opened them a bit for us, so our groups could just walk through.
A few Lafayette Park pics from when we first got there are here:
These were the lovely ladies of Code Pink.
(Remember this from Fahrenheit 9/11? I remember it from when I lived here in '03)
There were snipers on the roof of the White House (might be visible in the pictures) and we had police with dogs there to greet us as well.
Just for a bit of a timeline, we left the church at 11am. We arrived in Lafayette Park at 12:30pm. Once the protesters knelt to pray, they were fair game for arrest. Cindy was the first person arrested, and that was at 1:45pm. CNN covered it right away. Right now it is 3:30pm.
Guilty confession time. I left the protest at 12:40 to go to lunch with some ex-coworkers from when I used to live in DC. While I was at lunch, Cindy showed up on CNN, under arrest, at 1:45pm.
It's probably the biggest spectacle I've ever seen, to be honest. They ran out of little trucks to arrest people and now they are using metro buses. The group I met this morning that came here from Colorado, Illinois, and California was yelling "Not my son, not my father! You want war? Send your daughters!" Someone else had a clever anti-Bush rendition of American Pie - it had to do with levees, and I can't remember the words, but I am sure you can imagine it. There is a huge American flag on the ground with a peace sign on it, and when I left it there were about 10 people making out on it.
(This pissed me off)
Another group of women was there with a movement called Boobs Not Bombs.
This is a picture of a woman holding up a package of White House logo M&Ms. Her uncle was wounded - lost a limb in Iraq - and wound up at Walter Reed. Bushco came to visit him and posed for a nice photo op. Afterwards he was told "The White House would like to give you a gift" and it was this little pack of M&Ms. How pathetic.
Overall, I think there were about 400 people willing to get arrested as of Saturday. I'm not sure what the numbers look like now. Lots of people are there who were at Camp Casey. There were many, many more there who weren't planning on getting arrested. The major question mark about getting arrested was which police was going to pick them up. If it was one, it would be $50 and if it was another, it would be $250. I think it looked like the $50 one is the ones who arrested them.
I have pictures of the first trucks taking people, including a great shot of a woman, handcuffed, getting in the back of a truck before it left. After that, I have pictures of the Metro buses they started using when they ran out of trucks.
(If you look on the fence, you'll see papers with the names of the dead that our group hung up.)
UPDATED: At 6pm I was in another Starbucks on Connecticut and R (as opposed to the earlier one on Connecticut and K, and then the one on Connecticut and O) and I ran into one of the girls I was hanging out with earlier in the day. She told me what happened up where the people were getting arrested.
When the people who were going to be arrested went into the sidewalk area, the police pushed the rest of the crowd back - including the girl, Eve, who was telling me this. Then they closed gates right in front of them and began arresting people - Cindy first. Cindy sat and refused to be moved, so 4 people had to carry her. She had a big smile on her face. As for Eve's group, three were arrested out of 5. One of the other guys, "Tank," went to get them out of jail, and that's where he was when we met at Starbucks. I'll add that update when I hear it.
Other pictures from the protest are below:
Randy Rhodes had this on her site too. I'm not too sure I get the message from it.
Hillary has a very unique fan. His sign has a good message, but I'm not sold on Hillary.
Buddhists.
More Buddhists.
Apparently the president's spokeshole, Scott McClellan, came out and said that the President knew we were there, and strongly disagreed with the majority of Americans about withdrawing from the middle east because (think 9/11!) we need to fight them over there instead of fighting them over here. Which is a really bad argument, considering the London bombings.