Memoirs of the Sept. 24th rally in Washington DC

By Linda Knutson

Mahli (my 7 year-old daughter) and I went to the march.  Arrangements for the bus were made by Central Vermont Peace from Rutland.  They had received a donation of t-shirts and signs for the march.  The tees were white with red lettering saying "Vermont says no to war" with the motif of a black tank with a red flower emerging from the gun turret.   We boarded at 7:45 pm on Friday night and arrived in DC early Saturday morning.  Two of our most memorable experiences follow:

When the march began, we (the Vermont group - several buses worth) were supposed to march directly behind Bread and Puppet.  We all lined up behind them and entered the street south of the Ellipse.  We immediately ground to a halt as the crush of other people joined the march from all sides.   (As an aside, our last DC protest experience was in 2004 with Planned Parenthood and the entrance to the march was much more controlled so that once you hit the street, you were quite likely to end the march with the same people you started with.)  But Saturday, with people entering at random, and all at once, we found ourselves blocked and in the center of a huge number of people.  My claustrophobia kicked in and we made our way to the edge of the street.  We made less than 1/2 a block headway in about over hour but we hung in there. 

It was boring for Mahli and she picked up a bumper sticker she saw on the street that had the simple message of "Dems 2006".  Typical mother that I am, I tried to encourage her to drop it because it was 'dirty' etc, but she insisted on playing with it.  At one point, two Secret Service cars slowly made their way along the street - right at the curbside where we were - parting the protesters like the Red Sea.  As they passed, we quickly closed the gap behind them.  Mahli accelerated and slapped that sticker on the backside of the trailing shiny, white Secret Service car!  At last, she had disposed of it in the most appropriate way possible!  A couple other adults noticed her activity and offered sufficient praise that, I am sure, will encourage other acts of civil disobedience in the future.   That's my girl!

The other memorable experience was late in the afternoon.  We had been told to meet our bus in the parking lot at the end of the Green Line at 7:00 pm and to begin the subway journey to it by 6:00 pm.  So around 4, we decided to bag it and get some food - we had some with us but were really tired of eating out of our backpack.  We started walking down Pennsylvania Avenue at 14th toward the subway entrance at 7th to see what we could find on the way.  Someone told us about a food court in the Ronald Reagan International Trade building and we went for it.  When we got there, two security guards at the door were arguing with a man who wanted to enter and they would not let him do so.  He had a t-shirt on that had pictures of Cheney and Bush with the slogan "Dumb and Dumber" under the pics (it was a great shirt!).  Apparently that was not protected freedom of speech, in their opinion, and the man and some of his companions were taking down the names of the security guards.  We slipped past them and entered the building.

A second set of security guards were manning the metal detection devices and instructed us to put our backpacks and fanny packs into the bins on the conveyer belt so they could be x-rayed (or whatever that process for displaying contents without opening bags is).   They also said we had to remove our t-shirts and our buttons!  Remember, our tees had the subversive statement of "Vermont says no to war" and the buttons we had purchased from a vendor said "War is not healthy for children and other living things".  I mean, really, how innocuous can you get?!?!?   I was stunned and angry but not ready to have Mahli and myself spend the night in jail, so we complied.

When we got back to the bus, we shared experiences and found that ours was not unique.   One man from the Rutland area, who was a Vietnam veteran, tried to visit the Vietnam Memorial.  He was told to leave by the capitol police or park service guard (I forget which) because he was wearing his Veterans For Peace t-shirt! 

This is the 'brave new world' of the Patriot Act that we are living in, where advocating peace is a subversive activity!   I guess it makes those that want the 'war that will not end in our lifetime' very threatened because it might cut into the profits of all the munitions manufacturers who line their pockets with contributions, and the folks like Halliburton who get hired to attempt to clean up the mess left in the wake of war.

I saw some slogans I liked - a simple yet powerful one was "Make Levees Not War" and another that proclaimed that for the price of our war in Iraq, we could have put a $10,000 solar array on the roof of every home in America.  Think of the lives (American and Iraqi) that could have been saved had our government made such a decision!  Think of the threat to the environment that could have been averted!   Instead we went into a war of aggression for reasons that have been proven a lie - and the ones who lied have been allowed to get away it!  I cry as I write this paragraph.

On the way down and back...long bus ride...we watched the documentaries "Out-Foxed" and "Weapons of Mass Deception" which pointed out just how much our broadcast and print media have been high jacked by right-wing political interests.  I have never watched Fox news and found the documentary about them particularly shocking.  For instance: during the run-up to the 2004 election, there was (I am not making this up) a segment broadcast every night where a large number appeared on the screen - say 217 - and the do-called journalist would say "and there are 217 days left until President Bush is reelected"!!!!!!  Apparently this happened on a daily basis!  The statistics about how many times a Republican was given air time as opposed to the number of times a Democrat was given air time was stunning - it was about 5 to 1.  The Dems that were given airtime were obviously lower in stature and name recognition value, more middle of the road rather than progressive - and weaker in the strength of their delivery than the Republicans given air time - so they were effectively marginalized in the eyes of Fox news viewers.

It is clear, however, that none of the news organizations were 'fair and balanced' either - taking their tips from Fox on how to gain viewership.  If you want to hear what liberals are saying - check out the website www.commondreams.org as a starting point - there are many other sites out there that give voice to the liberal/progressive viewpoint.  

I could go on but I have to stop here as my lunch period is almost over.

Peace,

Linda