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WASHINGTON - Convinced this is their moment, tens of thousands marched Saturday in an anti-war demonstration linking military families, ordinary people and an icon of the Vietnam protest movement in a spirited call to get out of Iraq.

Celebrities, a half-dozen lawmakers and protesters from distant states rallied in the capital under a sunny sky, seizing an opportunity to press their cause with a Congress restive on the war and a country that has turned against the conflict.

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500,000 US protesters oppose more troops for Iraq

...The crowds rallied at the foot of the Capitol, chanting, "Bring the troops home now!" and waving banners reading: "Escalation in Iraq? Wrong Way."

The moment for the protest was ripe, as poll numbers turned against Bush ahead of a Senate vote expected in early February on a non-binding resolution condemning Bush's new strategy to deploy 21,500 additional troops to Iraq.

Len Singer, 74, traveled 300 kilometers (180 miles) for the demonstration held just weeks after Democrats took control of Congress.

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http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=19321

Wow, and the police privately said:

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but police, who no longer give official estimates, said privately the crowd was smaller than 100,000.

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Among the tens of thousands of Americans protesting in the nation's capital against George W. Bush's war-quagmire in Iraq this weekend, more than a few will probably wonder why there are not more folks with them or, at least, more marching in other villages, towns and city squares around the country. After all, nearly 70% of the American people believe the war was a bad mistake and want out.

Amidst all the proper discussion of restrictions and underminings of democracy in our society, one subject stands out almost as an unmentionable--namely, unused democratic capacity.

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Originally posted by kit:
I just got back from the Washington demonstration.

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Originally posted by kit:
I just got back from the Washington demonstration. To answer some of the questions above, the size was at least 500,000 strong. One of the biggest I have attended -- very similar in size to the RNC in New York City.

Speakers included:
...

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I can post a couple more if people are interested.

[ 29 January 2007: Message edited by: kit ]

One

Two

Jane Fonda's speech

Sean Penn's speech

Susan Sarandon's speech

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The roster of speakers for the UFPJ demonstration in Washington D.C. on January 27 speaks volumes. The key was not so much who was included but who was not. The list of speakers certainly had a lot of wonderful activists in the peace movement, but to a considerable degree it was a line-up of Democrats and movie stars.

Ralph Nader, who was in Washington that weekend, was pointedly not invited to speak. On Saturday night Nader was reportedly inquiring of other independents just who had been invited to speak among their growing number. Imagine that; the only antiwar candidate in the 2004 elections was not an invited speaker, even though he and Cindy Sheehan drew tremendous applause at the last mass rally in 2005 (Notice how these rallies occur now only in only non-election years, nicely tailored to get activists to work for Dems, but not to pressure the Dems to take a strong anti-war stand.) The non-invitation removed Nader from the movement every bit as effectively as the censors armed with air brushes removed dissidents in the "socialist" Czech republic chronicled by Milan Kundera. Nor was there anyone who spoke as a representative of the Green Party, even though at least one speaker was in fact a Green and even though an informal survey showed an enormous number of people in the crowd were Greens or Green sympathizers.

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