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peace rally report, take two
Nov. 3rd, 2002 06:51 pmMy mom and I went to another peace rally today, this time in Boston, an easy 15-minute subway ride away rather than the 10-hour bus adventure we had last weekend. ;) It was much fun and very gratifying to see the big turnout. We estimated there were about 15,000 people, which is also the estimate that the Boston police are giving last I checked. Like the Washington rally last weekend, this one drew a wide variety of people from dreadlocked teenagers to college students to yuppies with babies to elderly folk.
Tim Robbins gave a speech, which amused us since we heard Susan Sarandon at the D.C. rally so now we've got a matched set. It was a good speech, in which he spoke of his pain and anger after 9/11/01 and how conflicted he felt when the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan; but he also said that it's important to acknowledge the validity of the human desire for revenge, while resisting the urge to actually indulge it. Speeches were also given by a Boston city councilman; by the historian Howard Zinn, whom I don't know how well-known he is outside of the Boston area but he's a veritable institution around here; by Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for governor whom I plan to vote for; and by a woman named Randy Tolberg who is running a write-in campaign against Senator Kerry because he voted in favor of attacking Iraq in the vote a couple of weeks ago. No one expects Tolberg to actually win, but her write-in campaign (which I also plan to participate in) is designed to send Kerry a message and remind him that he was elected on the basis of an anti-war platform and he shouldn't renege on that now.
The free-food guy who was in the parking lot when we boarded the buses for D.C. was there today too, giving out a wide and bizarre assortment of food that included bread, peanut butter, brown rice, fruit salad, and a weird beet stew that I was too chicken to sample. ;) I was sad that I had left my beautiful signs on the bus, but I made a new sign with the "Bush Cheney Ashcroft axis of evil" on one side and the ever-popular "Dissent Protects Democracy" on the other. My mom saw numerous people she knew, which happens any time we go anywhere. And we even saw Margo, the Brandeis student we hung out with at the D.C. march. :)
Anyway, after the speeches, we marched around the streets of Boston for a while, and then mom and I stopped to watch the crowd go by for a while like we did in D.C., and then we left the demo and walked up to the corner of Mass. Ave., where there was an elderly couple (at least 70, quite possibly older) engaging in PDA at the bus stop, to the great amusement of my mom. Then we took the bus home and collapsed.
I'm really heartened by the turnout at these demos, and I hope tomorrow's newspapers (and maybe even tonight's newscasts) will mention this one. It feels good to see how many people are in our camp, and it does give one some hope that maybe the anti-war movement can make a difference. As Tim Robbins said while drawing a Vietnam parallel, it's great that we're getting numbers this big *before* the war has even started. Maybe it's naive and quixotic, but I can't help feeling a bit more hopeful when I see this many people turn out.
(There was one -- count him, one -- counter-protester, but he wasn't even, he was just a guy who was walking his dog when we were marching and he decided to yell some imprecations at us. They were of the extremely intelligent variety, namely, "If you love Iraq so much, go live there!" About twenty or thirty people gathered near him to try to explain the anti-war position, upon which he started walking again and yelled over his shoulder, "Go home!" Very compelling rhetoric, that man.)
Tim Robbins gave a speech, which amused us since we heard Susan Sarandon at the D.C. rally so now we've got a matched set. It was a good speech, in which he spoke of his pain and anger after 9/11/01 and how conflicted he felt when the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan; but he also said that it's important to acknowledge the validity of the human desire for revenge, while resisting the urge to actually indulge it. Speeches were also given by a Boston city councilman; by the historian Howard Zinn, whom I don't know how well-known he is outside of the Boston area but he's a veritable institution around here; by Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for governor whom I plan to vote for; and by a woman named Randy Tolberg who is running a write-in campaign against Senator Kerry because he voted in favor of attacking Iraq in the vote a couple of weeks ago. No one expects Tolberg to actually win, but her write-in campaign (which I also plan to participate in) is designed to send Kerry a message and remind him that he was elected on the basis of an anti-war platform and he shouldn't renege on that now.
The free-food guy who was in the parking lot when we boarded the buses for D.C. was there today too, giving out a wide and bizarre assortment of food that included bread, peanut butter, brown rice, fruit salad, and a weird beet stew that I was too chicken to sample. ;) I was sad that I had left my beautiful signs on the bus, but I made a new sign with the "Bush Cheney Ashcroft axis of evil" on one side and the ever-popular "Dissent Protects Democracy" on the other. My mom saw numerous people she knew, which happens any time we go anywhere. And we even saw Margo, the Brandeis student we hung out with at the D.C. march. :)
Anyway, after the speeches, we marched around the streets of Boston for a while, and then mom and I stopped to watch the crowd go by for a while like we did in D.C., and then we left the demo and walked up to the corner of Mass. Ave., where there was an elderly couple (at least 70, quite possibly older) engaging in PDA at the bus stop, to the great amusement of my mom. Then we took the bus home and collapsed.
I'm really heartened by the turnout at these demos, and I hope tomorrow's newspapers (and maybe even tonight's newscasts) will mention this one. It feels good to see how many people are in our camp, and it does give one some hope that maybe the anti-war movement can make a difference. As Tim Robbins said while drawing a Vietnam parallel, it's great that we're getting numbers this big *before* the war has even started. Maybe it's naive and quixotic, but I can't help feeling a bit more hopeful when I see this many people turn out.
(There was one -- count him, one -- counter-protester, but he wasn't even, he was just a guy who was walking his dog when we were marching and he decided to yell some imprecations at us. They were of the extremely intelligent variety, namely, "If you love Iraq so much, go live there!" About twenty or thirty people gathered near him to try to explain the anti-war position, upon which he started walking again and yelled over his shoulder, "Go home!" Very compelling rhetoric, that man.)
