One
Nation
Rally
Washington DC
2 Oct 10
People arriving on the Washington DC Mall for the One Nation rally. The
signs being held up accurately represented the priorities of the rally.
Jobs were the number one priority, the rally was very heavily attended
by labor supporters (I got there on a free labor-sponsored bus). Peace
was present in the speeches from the Lincoln Memorial, but I didn't see
people holding up many signs with a peace theme. Justice was a concern,
of course, but again, there wasn't much visual evidence of that.
From the blog Crooks
&
Liars:
-- As you can see from some of these shots (and the video we ran
yesterday), the crowd was amazingly diverse: It drew people of all
colors and persuasions -- except, of course, conservatives. That was
quite a contrast with the Beckapalooza snorefest, which was amazingly
white and otherwise perfectly monotone.
C&L also reports that the regular media gave us little to no
coverage. Big surprise there!
[/snark].
The website One
Nation For Peace had some really
awesome posters. If I had been able to collect them and store them properly for the
trip back, I would happily have done so. Even though an announcer at
the rally said our rally was bigger than Glenn Beck's a while earlier, The
Atlantic
Wire doubts that.
NPR
says:
More than 400 organizations - ranging
from labor unions to faith, environmental and gay rights groups -
partnered for the event...
Organizers insist the rally is not partisan. They say the message is
about job creation, quality education and justice. However, the largest
organizations, such as the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees
International Union, tend to back Democratic candidates.
A blogger from OpEd
News says:
One thing that I remembered from the
protest's back in the early "70's was the way that the left behave.
I'll state this unequivocally, the Left has more fun at these things
than the Right. I saw much joy at the rally, people singing and
dancing, talking to each other and having fun.
One thing that I was really happy about was the amount of Socialists
that were there.
And yes, Googling around about the rally shows that the right-wing
bloggers/commenters are terribly upset (Check out
especially the caption to the 2nd photo) about the communists and
socialists that were at the rally. Those groups were indeed
well-represented. This
YouTube and photos 13 thru 15 from the previous link show garbage
strewn on the lawn.
Unfortunately, I got a quickie lunch just off-site about 300 yards off
from the rally and didn't see a trash container anywhere where I could put my
refuse. Sorry, but large crowds makes for lots of trash and ya gotta
have someplace to put the stuff.
continued