Demonstration against the occupation of Iraq!

DC was really cool - beautiful day with blue skies and little fluffy clouds, indymedia reckoned 35-40 thousand people although my estimate was somewhere under half that: well, guess that's what you expect from the loony left,eh?!

It was interesting to see, tho'; they had their rally first, before the demo, so everyone kind of gathered to listen to the speakers: remarkeably there was a counter-gathering of (about) 12 far right christian men, all with beards, range of ages from, I guess, mid-twenties up to about sixty/seventy but most somewhere in the middle. They had brought banners along proclaiming "GOD HATES YOU [SODOMITES, ABORTIONISTS, DRUNKARDS] JUST THE WAY YOU ARE" and "PEACE AND FREEDOM HAS NEVER BEEN CHEAP" accompanied by silhouette pictures of bomber planes (dropping bombs), helicoptors, tanks and other machinery of war - and then reference to the bible! They had a megaphone and were spewing out bilious insults across the tarmac from the southeast corner of Constitution and Seventeenth, the Vietnam memorial barely visible in the background, the foreground occupied by 4 large, burly policeman - of whom the most vociferous happened to be black. Wow, the times certainly are a-changing!

From our side of the road, a 12 year old kid (or so he looked), who wore a stewards flourescent vest and held a megaphone, shouted back at them: "Please, won't you shut up?" / "Can I ask a question?"... all completely ignored.

An elderly women borrowed his megaphone and then shouted "Va Fen Coulo" [Spelling?? - but you get the message...] before trying to have a conversation with my friend in Spanish. He managed to communicate that he doesn't speak Spanish, so she tried Italian instead - turning down the opportunity to try French - but no luck... and finally settled for the simple explanation to us: "'Va Fen Coulo' means 'Go Fuck Yourselves' en Espanol." As if I didn't know that already, but it was good to see (and hear!), especially coming from someone closer in age to my grandmother than anyone else I know...

Just at that point, Reverend Al Sh... passed by. Apparently he's one of the presidential contendors for next year - although not likely to have much of a chance. He should've taken the opportunity as a man of the church to refute the bible-bashers, but instead just strode majestically by.... well, he lost my vote, what with his fancy-schmancy hair-do and smart clothes! Not that I was going to vote anyway (VOTE NOBODY).

Next, it was the turn of the Vietnam (and other) Vets Against War And The Occupation of Iraq to strut their stuff... the cops took a hasty step backwards and the loony, long haired "pacifists" across the road faded into obscurity by the march that was now beginning...

Time to get out of there: we didn't want to get bogged down in the middle of the demo (been on enough trotskyite marches back home before and anyway, i walk faster than that) so we got out of there and wandered towards the White House: or at least, as close as we could get to it.

Interestingly, we could get write up to the outer fencing at the back - from the perspective, the president's residence appeared to be smaller than Buckingham Palace - where we observed these strange box like things dotted around the perimeter every 15 meters or so (sorry, can't think imperial anymore - there's enough of that in the world already). We speculated they might be some kind of laser detection system for intruders, but it didn't look as if they could 'talk' to eachother directly as there was too much shrubbery in the way... hell, i wasn't really planning on breaking in, anyway.

The other thing was the cops - thousands of them, it seemed, and various different types wearing different uniforms, something that is less obvious in the UK. Plus a shit-load of undercover vehicles which were quite obvious... Walking around town, we kept on seeing convoys of between 7 and 25 police cars driving around, snarling up the traffic adn all of them blaring their sirens full blast. Quite unneccessary. And didn't really seem to be doing anything, either: they'd pull into a road, then pull out again just 30 seconds later. AND each car only had (maximum) two cops in it: nothing like the riot vans I've seen in daily usage throughout Europe.

We decided to head up to H Street (ahhh - the originality of the american thought process when it comes to street names: again!) where we positioned ourselves opposite Lafayette Square with it's view through to the White House - and along with a million journalists who all had the same idea. Deciding to try and count how many people - we guestimated 300/minute were walking past - we stayed for half an hour, but by then the march was thinning out and we had already got an arrangement to meet another friend...SO: 15,000 would be a reasonable guess, 20k to be generous and admit we didn't actually see the end of the march - but indymedia still proclaimed "35-40,000" and the authorities (police, media) simply reported "thousands."

And what a good idea it was to meet the friend! I now know one more lovely person, working hard as we all are to change the world and do the best: real, practical attempts to fix the world and not just an afternoon ramble in the sunshine. And we got an opportunity to relax, chill out and enjoy a cold beer whilst watching football (and yes, I mean football - yes, soccer, to you Americans!!) on the television and conversing...

Making our way homeward, we experienced the DC subway system - more English than New York: they had colour-coded lines, but few signs and we ended up running in circles around the station, up and down the escalators, missing trains and observing others - no, quick! this way! Change made, we got to RFK stadium where the coaches were picking us up and exhausted but happy, fell asleep to travel back home...