Eclecticism

As mentioned in my previous post, today was the day for NION rallies across the country. Prairie was visiting for the weekend, and she and I decided to head up and participate. Something of a new experience for me — I’m fairly vocal with my friends and occasionally here on my site about my beliefs, but I’d yet to ever actually participate in anything like this. I figured it was time to ‘put my money where my mouth is’, so to speak, and so about 12:30pm we started walking up to Volunteer Park for the rally, in time to get there right about 1pm when it was scheduled to start.

Not really knowing what to expect, or how these things generally go, we just wandered into the park and found a spot on the grass to sit and listen to the various speakers they had. I didn’t have anything to write on with me, so I don’t remember who all spoke, but there was a lot of interesting stuff, if fairly predictable for the crowd and event (that sounds horribly cynical, but it’s not meant to be at all — forgive me, I’m tired and need to go to bed, but I wanted to get this in first). One thing I thought was really interesting was the broad spectrum of people there. There’s something of a preconceived notion of the people you’d ‘typically’ find at a political rally like this, usually leaning more towards the obviously leftist/radical side of the population. This rally seemed to attract a very wide range of the population, however — rather nice, it makes it seem like more and more people are starting to question where our government is taking us, rather than just accepting everything that comes down the line. Definitely neat to see.

At about 3pm, everyone started moving to begin the march portion of the day’s events (no small feat with an estimated 7,000 people gathered at the park). A giant inflated globe carried by a bunch of kids led the march, followed by a bunch of giant puppets, then all the rest of the gathered masses. We marched out of Volunteer Park down to Broadway, down the main drag of Broadway to Pike St., then hung a right and went down the hill into downtown Seattle, ending at the plaza in front of Westlake Center.

The entire event (rally and march) went quite well from what I saw. After reading things like the account of the march in Portland that ended up in conflicts with the police, I knew that it was possible for things to get a bit hairy, but thankfully enough, that didn’t happen. I did see a few people in the crowd that came prepared for conflict — dressed in black, with black stocking caps, black bandannas tied across their face, and goggles — which made me a little nervous, but apparently none of them actually felt like causing any problems.

I don’t entirely understand people who would take this approach to a protest. If they were just bringing along facemasks and such in case things did get out of hand, and they had them ready to wear if necessary, that would be one thing. However, coming to the event and spending the entire event ‘dressed for battle’, if you will, gives the definite impression that not only are they expecting conflict, but they might even welcome it — if not instigate it. Not very encouraging when the intent is for a peaceful protest, and when the protest is focused on crying for peace.

I was also rather pleasantly surprised that there didn’t seem to be an overbearing police force out (something that Seattle seems to have an issue with in recent history). They were definitely present, but didn’t at any point take an aggressive attitude — at least, not that I saw or heard of. About the only time I noticed tensions rising at all was as we passed one street in Downtown, where there was a line of riot troops blocking off the street about halfway down. This, unfortunately, did attract some amount of boos and catcalls from some of the marchers as we went by, however the troops did nothing except stand there, and march organizers made sure that noone broke ranks to actually try and directly confront any of the officers. I’m pretty sure that the only reason they were there (especially since it was only on that street) was that a protest last summer suddenly changed direction and blocked traffic on I-5 for a couple hours, and they were blocking off the access ramp to I-5 to ensure that this march didn’t try to do the same thing. Nobody went after them, though, and they left us alone, so aside from a few unnecessary taunts tossed their way, it was pretty uneventful.

Eventually we made it down to Westlake Plaza, where a post-march rally was being held. I saw one of my favorite rally signs being held up here by a guy probably in his late teens: “And I heard the Reagan administration was bad”. It made me laugh, at least. We hung around for a while longer and listened to a few of the speakers that were at this rally, then decided that we were hungry, it was a good time to duck out, and did just that. All in all, a very entertaining day, and it felt good to actually get involved and give some more visible, vocal support for the NION movement.

Some other reports on the march:

A crowd estimated by march organizers at 6,000 to 8,000 people registered their dissent yesterday, rallying and marching in a nearly mile-long procession from Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill to Westlake Center as part of a nationwide anti-war protest.

They chanted “Drop Bush, not bombs,” carried origami birds on long poles, wore Uncle Sam costumes on stilts and sported signs that said “Save us From Mad King George.”

There were the occasional whiffs of patchouli, John Lennon buttons and refrains of “we ain’t gonna study war no more.” But this wasn’t a repeat of the 1960s.

Mennonites mixed with anarchists. There were groups of Vietnam veterans, social workers and blue-haired teenagers — all opposed to a brewing war.

Strollers got stuck in potholes and baby boomers in Dead Kennedys T-shirts carried camcorders.

— Seattle P-I: Thousands walk for peace

Yesterday’s march attracted a broad collection of protesters — young and old, students and professionals, and many who said they rarely, if ever, attended rallies.

Tracey Marsh, a graduate student at the University of Washington, had begun to wonder if anybody paid attention to demonstrations anymore. Taking a break from the procession, she said she now feels a new urgency to be in the streets.

“It does give me a sense of hope,” she said as the people flowed by. “It’s really important to let Congress know we don’t support (an invasion).”

— Seattle Times: Thousands hit Seattle’s streets to protest war

After rallying in the park for several hours, the group moved en masse towards Westlake Park, bringing their message of peace to the downtown streets of Seattle.

Speakers included Congressman Jim McDermott, who recently traveled to Iraq; Rev. Jeffrey of New Hope Baptist Church; Peggi Thompson, mother of Seattle political prisoner James Ujaama; and Mark Kolner of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“If theres a problem well work through the United Nations, we cannot go alone,” McDermott told KING 5 News. “If we go alone we lose the whole world.”

— King-5 News: Thousands rally for peace in Seattle