Ain't Gonna Study War No More

I, too, am home now from D.C. and the completely amazing experience of Saturday's mobilization and concert. My partner and I stayed at the concert stage until eight o'clock, at which time the music and speakers all began to blur together. Also, we were exhausted and ravenously hungry, having had only our own healthy granola bars and Neil's healthy M & M's for nourishment during the duration of march and concert. Scoffers from the other wing can say what they will, this was an enormous rallying of people. The figure now, from CSPAN, is 500K, which is what we were estimating ourselves. If you were not there, you can have no concept of the masses of people filling the streets of our capital, filling the concert area - solid masses of people, standing not sitting, up to the Washington Monument and beyond.

The variety of this mass of humanity, ages, races, languages, political persuasions, is indescribable. Tom Engelhardt - who was there, and from his description of his position in the March, very near our Blue Voice crew - has a wonderful piece about this variety, with interviews and photos: Voices from the Frontlines of Protest, Washington D.C. To read this piece is to have a very good idea of how it felt to be there Saturday. Today's Village Voice has a good article also, Veterans, Grieving Families Give Somber Mood to Iraq War Protest. I didn't see this group up close, as they were at the front of the march and I was towards the end. This picture is from the Voice article, Tomas Jones, 25, paralyzed by a bullet in Iraq. Engelhardt speaks of something that impressed and delighted me - the creativity and imagination used in the making of signs, posters, flags, t-shirts, stickers. There was anger, rage even, pain, as well as lots of sardonic humor. I think my favorite sign may have been: "The Rapture is their only exit strategy." Another thing that deeply impressed me was the large number of young people, college students from all over the country, who attended this weekend. It gave me great hope.

Tankwoman took lots of pictures, which I'm hoping to see before she leaves for Italy, actually. They'll be Old News by the time she returns. I took quite a few, not digital - so you'll have to wait for the CD's tomorrow. We were too late to catch Joan Baez on the concert stage, she was in the front lines of the march, but we heard Steve Earle and best of all, we heard Sweet Honey in the Rock. They'd written new songs for this occasion, which they belted out from the depths of their boundless souls - but their last number was one they've been singing as long as I've been listening (and we go back a ways): "We Who Believe in Freedom (will not rest until it comes)." If you don't know Sweet Honey, it's time to get acquainted. We also caught Jim Hightower's and Greg Palast's speeches. We were so blitzed from Saturday that we just couldn't make it to the Green Festival - and I'm double blitzed now after the drive home. I may have more to say eventually - but, believe me - this was a truly huge upwelling of a movement that I think will only grow larger. Get on board, children, this train is taking off. Oh, and speaking of trains - there would have been thousands more in the streets of DC had Amtrak not suffered a power outage that kept trains from the northern parts of the East Coast (Boston, New York, Baltimore) from arriving in time.

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