Protest Nation

Indymedia has a roundup of the anti-war protests that took place this weekend. It reports that the San Francisco protest was 200,000-350,000 strong. A friend of mine who attended, whose crowd estimate was "at least 150,000," reports that she was amazed by the crowd's diversity, by any measure. She even ran into members of her former church, a very conservative Catholic congregation. Her favorite sign of the day, from a football fan: "Raider nation, not raider of nations."

On the downside, Indymedia also reports: "Later in the afternoon, one thousand people joined a radical anti-capitalist breakaway march and militantly marched through the financial center smashing windows and graffitting the San Francisco Chronicle building, the British Consulate, CitiCorp, the Immigration & Naturalization Service building, Starbucks and Victoria's Secret.

Comments

[Rad]

Actually, I don't mind them trashing the consulate and the INS...

[Steve]

Sounds like the usual suspects to me.

I'm all about NOT going to war at this time. I'm also all about not waiting until someone lobs a nuke at New York city (as much as I dislike all things New York).

[Anonymous]

How weird would it be if ANSWER is COINTELPRO in action?

[Kevin]

Sexy panties oppress womyn! Destroy Victoria's Secret!

Jackasses

[Johnny Rockets]

As someone who took part in the rally in San Francisco, I'm very well aware of ANSWER's extremist Stalinist background. And yeah, I've sometimes wondered whether the wackos who usually dominate antiwar demonstrations are actually government plants.

But this time, the antiwar moderates and patriots clearly seemed to at least match if not outnumber the fringie wackos -- and I think it just shows how obvious it is that war with Iraq at this time is just a bad idea.

[Omnibus Bill]

ANSWER has shown us the path to world peace. All it will take is unilateral U.S. disarmament, stopping the export of evil American kkkulchur, and smashing capitalism. Other minor items on the list were freeing Mumia, trying BusHitler for warcrimes against humanity, bringing down the system, and redistributin' the wealth to the po peeples. (Courtesy of the Right Rev. Hon. Dr. Mr. Sharpton).

After watching about two hours of Saturday's speechifying on C-Span, the only question I was left with was whether the cause of peace required us to eliminate the Kulaks, Trotskyites and the reactionary counter-revolutionaries, and Leninites as well.

There may have been some reasonable people participating in the protests, but they must have been of the dumber, more oblivious breed of reasonable people. I will give their motives the benefit of the doubt and call them useful idiots. I'm sorry to offend Ms. Riemensnyder's friends - but there are some people that one should never support, no matter the rectitude of their cause, because of who they are. I'd sooner have rabid weasels eat my spleen than be seen chanting along in response to the invidious crypto-stalinists of ANSWER and their masters, the Workers World Party.

The presence of "reasonable people" at these protests only lends legitimacy to an invidious pack of collectivists - something no libertarian should willingly do.