the blog of DC Drinking Liberally

September 26, 2005

The Other Side

by

After marching Saturday, yesterday I went down to the Mall again to check out the prowar rally, which was organized by the same folks who brought you the “You Don’t Speak for Me, Cindy” caravan last month, including Move America Forward and Free Republic.

Not surprisingly the rally was somewhat whiter and maler than Saturday’s antiwar march. Also, it was a lot smaller. The smallest estimate in the media for the number participating in the antiwar march was 100,000. The largest estimate for the prowar rally was 400, and I think that’s about right — as long as you’re counting all the observers, curious tourists, and antiwar protesters who were gathered around too.

The speeches I heard included a mention of a letter of support for the rally from Senator Lieberman, a reference to participants in the antiwar march as “100,000 radicals” whose views don’t represent those of real Americans (that was from Senator Sessions, who was one of the speakers), and a call for the marchers to be shipped to Iran. I didn’t stay very long, and from StealthBadger’s report I apparently missed some excitement, though he’s pretty vague about it.

Photos follow.


The white sign in the middle reads “Shoot the Traitors: Cindy Sheehan, Jane Fonda, Phil Donahue, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Jessie [sic] Jackson.”


As you can see the crowd was pretty sparse. This was not that far from the stage. The orange shirts in some of these photos are Club G’itmo shirts sold by Rush Limbaugh — one sad indication of how far today’s Republican Party has moved from anything resembling moral values.


At this point the crowd, such as it is, appears to be mostly observers.


At the front, behind a fence, were a couple of dozen people, presumably the speakers and other VIPs.


These banners were collected by Move America Forward during their anti-Cindy road trip.


The woman in the blue helmet is wearing a sign that says “Armor Our Troops — Our Vets Need the Best Health Care!” She was wandering around among the crowd, who weren’t sure how to react to her. She also had a “War Is Not the Answer” bumper sticker, but it wasn’t very visible.


This group of antiwar folks stood at the side quietly and the crowd seemed to be ignoring them. I spoke to the guy with the “Stop the War” sign briefly. He had come from Washington State. He hadn’t heard of Drinking Liberally and was afraid we were promoting alcoholism.

I left during Sessions’s rant and headed down to the opposite end of the Mall to check out Camp Casey. It was pretty quiet.


This is the (transplanted) field of crosses that the guy in Texas decided to mow down with his truck. Among the crosses are a few stars of David and crescents.


This is a field of boots with votive candles and name tags. The banner in front reads “Mothers Say No to War”.

comments

  1. Well done, Keith. This is a solid piece of independent journalism.

    alt hippo11:58 pm

  2. Thanks. Not sure I’d go that far, though. It’s really just a set of notes. For real journalism I’d need to assemble them more coherently into a story.

    Keith12:19 am, September 27

  3. Apologies for the vagueness, the excitement was pretty much

    1. an attack freeper who was hustled off by a VERY kind, patient, and wonderful officer who was very professional about being fair to all parties without exposing her own views (I have no idea what those views happen to be, only that she didn’t want anyone beating anyone else’s head in).

    2. A second attack freeper who went through spitting on protesters until he got slapped by one. Complaints were sworn out on all sides

    and 3. One of the people who were “blessed” with freeper spit was a young man holding a sign for the proposed Millions More March. When he went to swear out a complaint, they “ran a background check on him,” and it came back, allegedly with an outstanding warrant for auto theft. So he was the only person on either side who was actually arrested. I was unable to get his name, and that’s the bare facts of what I have. I’m still exhausted from the days of protesting (and still snickering about the KILLER ATTACK DOLPHINS story, which is only creepy because we’ve already got dolphins searching for mines and such), but I should be able to get more substantial details up soon. More “stay the course” pictures are available at http://www.speakeasy.net/~stealthbadger/content/images/09.25.05/ - have fun.

    StealthBadger9:46 am, September 27

  4. See the following link for how one DC Republican (actually he’s the former chair of DC Young Republicans) viewed things:

    http://gopliberty.blogspot.com/2005/09/military-families-honored-in-dc-rally.html

    —Jason Bradfield • 5:36 pm, September 29

  5. Ready, Aim, Sing!

    Rich at Blogging for Change was yet another observer at the September 25 prowar rally (and like the rest of us might have been included in the count of 400 war supporters). He’s discovered, a week later, that we all missed something important be…

    DCDL8:11 pm, October 3

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