Stateside With Rosalea: Sloganeering

According to the ANSWER Coalition, 100,000 people marched in the anti-war rally on from Lafayette Park, opposite the White House, to the steps of the Capitol Building on Saturday, September 15. (The AP report put the crowd at “thousands”.) Culminating in a mass act of civil disobedience—a Die In—the march was led by veterans of the Iraq War.

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Jeannette is the mother of a soldier who is fighting in Afghanistan in a military action she thinks was justified. “I’m proud of my son but ashamed of my government,” she told me. She doesn’t believe the US should have gone to Iraq and is concerned about the direction the US is headed. Her husband likes to say he has two people in his family fighting for the USA, one in Afghanistan and one right here at home. She flew across the country from Portland, Oregon, to join the march.

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Members of the anti-anti-war movement Gathering of Eagles also traveled across country for the event. They held their own rally at another park, and lined the street on both sides of the march for two blocks. My attempt to interview people of similar background to Jeannette to get the other side of the story came to naught when the man I asked refused to let his words be used unless he had absolute control over what is published. Will I wait in vain for his email to post here at Scoop?

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The famously “fair and balanced” network gets its ups from a Gathering of Eagles supporter.

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The Code Pink ladies, who are famous for their outspoken and often terribly funny opposition to the war but are nonetheless prepared to get arrested, held their own pre-rally rally at Freedom Plaza, before marching to Lafayette Park to join the main group.

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Many of the contingents of marchers were college students, who—along with the Iraq Veterans Against the War, accused of not being vets at all but of buying their camouflage from the army surplus store—were tirelessly regaled with put-downs by the Gathering of Eagles supporters.

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My favorite slogan is this one, etched in stone on the Department of Justice building.

The two bookends to the march—the rally at Lafayette Park and the Die-In, 175 arrests and pepperspraying of protesters at the Capitol—may be available at www.cspan.com in the coming days.

Rosalea.barker @ gmail.com

--PEACE—

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