With the Capitol as a backdrop, demonstrators listen to the speakers during a protest against the war in Iraq on the National Mall on Saturday, in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)Below from:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/47321/?comments=view&cID=487257&pID=486796#c487257
On Saturday night, before reading any first-hand accounts of the DC protest, I wrote that, "In NY Times math 'tens of thousands' showed up, which means that anywhere from fifty to five-hundred thousand were there..."
According to a first-hand account from a close friend, the number was closer to 500,000.
Tikkun's Deb Kory wrote:
"The news media got this number from an unofficial, un-named police source..."
And that's the number they led with. Not the 400,000 estimate they received from UFPJ organizers quoted toward the bottom of the story. Not even a range. Not even an average. Kory continued: "We did not gather to protest the surge (though it was certainly one object of our protest); we gathered to protest the immorality of the Iraq War. We came to mourn the hundreds of thousands of lives lost to this meaningless war and to express our fears about being thrust against our will to the very brink of global chaos. We did not come to "march against Congress" as some of the media are claiming; we came to hold our elected officials accountable and to use the leverage we have in this so-called Democracy to try to correct for 5 years of political lunacy. We came to let our elected representatives know that if they press forward with their mandate to end the war, we will be here to support them. We came not only to protest, but to engage in dialogue with our elected officials (we will be "lobbying" on Capitol Hill on Monday). And, yes, we came to ask for a Presidential impeachment." [emphasis added]
No comments:
Post a Comment