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Three boys, aged 1415, Rowan, Brennan and Griffin, on their first demo with three middle-aged parents in tow. We drove 95 miles down from our rural homes on the edge of the Catskills. Parked uptown and took the subway to Grand Central Station. Fellow passengers, some of them coming in from the boonies like us, smiled at Brennans cartoon of Bush saying Mmmm, Oilicious! Griffins was No Bushit. My own son had been on the fence, so I made him a blank placard. In the rocking train he wrote Dont Trade Blood for Oil and No War with another War crossed out in a circle. Brennan teased him it now read No War War, and straphangers smiled. It was that kind of crowd, almost all the way.
In the station the boys held their placards high, but I wasnt sure I felt comfortable yet. I was waiting for safety in numbers. A man said to Brennan, Give war a chance. Bren shot back, Weve given war lots of chances. Read your history, pal.
Outside Grand Central, the police stopped us from going further until we had stripped the wooden sticks from our placards. We wanted to take the most direct route to the site of the rally, at 49th and First Avenue, but rally organisers diverted us along Third Avenue. We walked north, block after block, stopped by police barricades at every cross street from going over to Second or First Avenues. At first the crowd stuck to the sidewalk. Soon we spilled over into half the street. Finally I realised that we had occupied the entire wide street. This was huge. With so many bodies, the police could do nothing. The city had prohibited a march, only allowing a rally. But we had got our march, just trying to get to the rally.
It was hardly a march. The crowd was so thick, we were able only to inch forward. We chanted, shuffled to drumbeats, appreciated giant puppet heads of Rummy and W. We had got onto Third at 42nd Street and were finally allowed to turn east at 60th. By now we could only take a step forward every now and then. Our feet froze. We speculated that the temperature was around 20° (we still do Fahrenheit here), but with the wind chill it felt like 10° (thats 4 to -12° Centigrade).
Some young men started an angry chant of Let Us Through! and a young woman with a big smile led a chant of Our Streets! I kicked a loose cobblestone, and thought how those young men, if they had numbered more, and been next to the police, could so easily have found a use for it. But no windows broke. A few moments later I saw a middle-aged woman lecturing the young men on peacefulness.
No hard feelings
It was a very mixed crowd by age and apparent occupation. Everyone wore solid warm clothes purchased from capitalist clothing manufacturers. Predominantly, but by no means entirely, white and middle class but almost everyone in America looks middle class. Most signs were mass-produced, by the rally organisers. The many handmade ones tended towards humour (How Did Our Oil Get Under Their Sand?), but included quotes from Arundhati Roy, and questions like If Saddam was the dictator of England would we be bombing London? As an Englishman raised in London, I rather hoped that, if things had got that far, we would be.
My fear was that I was repeating the failure of the left to oppose Hitler in 1939. My greater fear was that this war would be more destructive than liberating, and if liberating, then still a dangerous precedent and harbinger of American hubris. I am not sure the alternatives to war for liberating Iraq are at all exhausted yet.
I took my placard slogans from openDemocracy: No to Saddam, No to War and Indict Saddam, Law Not War. In all that vast crowd, I saw no other placard that criticised Saddam; hundreds targeted Bush.
Finally, after being stuck forever at 60th and 2nd, prevented by the police from reaching the rally, we split. We passed a brave lone young woman leaning in a doorway, her sign: Saddam Hussein is the evil tyrant, not Bush. She saw my sign, and we smiled in recognition. An older woman hurried up to me. Her placard also suggested how Saddam could be got rid of short of war. She said she had come over because I was the only like mind in the crowd. We felt somewhat bleak about that.
We never did get to the rally. Police vans full of uniforms screamed by as if there were trouble elsewhere. We did not see it. We retreated to the zoo, to warm our feet and listen to Desmond Tutu and other rally speakers on the radio. But the boys were psyched. Brennan heard one cop say to another cop, Theres close to a million here. Could have been true. First Avenue was stuffed so full for a mile that the rest of the crowd had to be left on the other avenues, the news said. They had only expected 100,000. Bet the city wished it had allowed the march, instead of having the crowd take over the east side.
As we walked back up the west side to our car, still carrying our placards, people stopped us and asked for news. Whenever we stopped, a small crowd gathered, supportive, eager to hear. It felt like the city was full of people who hadnt gone, but wanted the rally to be a success.
We get home. CNN says 100,000. Give me a break a six-lane avenue full for a mile, and the other avenues full for blocks? Remind me, who owns CNN? The New York Times says it could be 400,000. We think the cop we overheard had a better feel for it.
