Saturday turned out to be a great day for a protest in Chicago. The night before there was rain, but by mid-morning it had stopped and after that it gradually cleared until by the time we were ready to march they skies were blue and the day was beautiful. Even the wind died away, leaving a lovely fall afternoon.
I was supposed to meet up with sheddhead, but while I was preparing to head for the train I began feeling the unmistakable signs of panic creeping in. My sister, who isn't able to walk that much due to bad knees, generously offered to drive me downtown and hang around closeby so that I could feel safe and still do what I felt needed to be done. That did the trick, and I was able to force myself out of the house and into the car to express my anger over the disaster that is the Iraq war.
sheddhead has already put out this fantastic diary on the day's events, so I'll try not to duplicate too much what her thoughts and impressions were or post alot of the same kinds of pics, although that really can't be helped, we saw the same things, just from different angles. So let's have a look at what my day of protest was like.
Union park was where the opening rally and starting point were. The march itself was to start around 2:30pm. When I got to Union Park at around 2:00pm I found that the crowd was already fairly large. It was a diverse crowd....
and they were all listening to the Raging Grannies as I made my way through the crowd.
There were quite a few speakers to sit through even though I was late. Three of Chicago's aldermen showed up to lend their support....
and the crowd was attentive and respectful.
Although the criminal element wasn't present, it was still well represented. May we be so lucky as to someday see them in this kind of attire.
Ron Paul was by far the best represented candidate there. He had his own plane and everything.
Finally, we were on the march.
One of my favorite groups was the Raging Grannies from Wisconsin, who sang at the rally earlier (sheddhead has a great clip of their singing). I saw them go past as I was taking a few pics.
Being a raging grannie myself, I caught up with them and we walked together and chatted for a while. Here they are from the front.
About a third of the way through the march we came across our first counter-protesters.
Yes, all two of them. They had their very own cops, as you can see. They also had some charming signs....
and
In case you can't read them, the first says "Home of the Brave (and a few creeps)" and "No Hippie Scum Allowed". Since the crowd looked like an entire town of middle class families, grandmothers and grandfathers, moms and dads and kids, I'm not sure where they were expecting the hippy scum to come from or why they thought they'd be interested in joining them, but hey, no one said they were geniuses. The Chicago Tribune says there was a group of about 20 counter-protesters at the end of the rally, but I didn't see them, they were gone by the time I got there.
Soon the Sears Tower came in to view....
and kept getting bigger...
and the crowds got bigger, too.
At the corner of South Desplaines St. and Jackson there was a group of people who were waiting to walk across the street. As I walked past, several of them just jumped in and started walking with us. One of them, a man about 60 who said his name was Joe, asked me who had organized the march. I explained it to him, and that there were 11 other big rallies and lots of smaller ones all across the country that day. He told me he'd just come from a wedding, but that any day was a good day for a peace march. He took off ahead of me, and several blocks later I saw him take a turn on the megaphone. He was pretty good, too. He kept on going to the end.
The eyes in the skies were on us all day. There were two police copters and one news copter that circled us from the rallying point and during the whole time we were marching, as well as one that stayed stationary above the ending point. Here is one of the circling ones and the stationary one...
and a pick of the stationary one alone...
I never knew that helicopters could hover so long in one place.
When we got close to the Sears Tower, the ordinary cops gave way to cops in riot gear.
As you can see, they've got all the goods; little bags full of tazers and pepper spray, and those baseball bat-sized nightsticks, just in case those babies in the strollers got out of hand.
The crowd began to tighten up as we got closer to the narrow canyons of the downtown area...
We were welcomed by adoring fans from high up in the canyons of the buildings...
and by bucket drummers from Indiana below.
Finally we reached the end, where there were more speeches to be had.
The regular cops and riot cops had closed in behind us as we walked, and at the end of the rally they pushed us forward so that there was no retreat back down Jackson street. In fact, the intersection of Dearborn and Jackson was blocked on three sides. Going west on Jackson you were met with this....
south on Dearborn you were met with this...
and east on Jackson you ran into this.
At the beginning of the march the cops were stoic but friendly. As the march progressed they became more unfriendly, until at the end they were downright surly. I tried to ask directions of one of the cops on how to effectively get out of there to meet my sister at our meeting point, and his response was to tell me to back off. Since his hand was resting on his gun at the time I complied, but I wasn't feeling all warm and fuzzy about it. One of the police horses expressed my feelings better in actions than I could in words.
Now, when i was in Washington DC last month for the March for Peace, there were probably half the number of cops present at that rally as there were at this one, they were more friendly, and the crowd size was +100,000. The Chicago Tribune says that the cops estimated 5,000 for this rally, Yahoo News has the estimate at 10,000, and my best estimate would be somewhere in between 7,000 and 8,000. So the show of force and the attitude of the cops, given the predominance of elderly and families with children, seemed more than a little excessive to me.
Yes, folks, this is what Democracy looks like.
It looks a lot like average Americans, families, organizations with diverse points of view, individuals who have had enough and finally take it to the streets. It is our right as Americans to do this because the very first Amendment in the Bill of Rights tells us we can do so.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The grievances that are being committed in our names need redress, and they need it now. And none is more critical than the killing of innocents that goes on day after day. We must speak out against it, we must make those with the power to change it listen to us.
I intend to continue to exercise my rights so that they will continue to be our rights. We've entered in to a frightening period where those things we've taken for granted will be lost if we don't exercise our rights, raise our voices and speak out against the kind of tyranny that is being foisted on us today. Use it or lose it. Now is the time, we are the means.