Report from the Throng

You can find reports on today's antiwar marches all over the Web; here's an optimistic one from New Yorker Phil Leggiere. "A cynic might try to describe the throngs as a cacophony of special interest groups," he writes, "but as one who's been (periodically) to large peace demonstrations since the mid-70s (and is predisposed in many ways to cynicism about political demonstrations) this one feels qualitatively different. Less politically sectarian and far more widely gauged in terms of age and social groups." Leggiere adds that he "can remember going to the huge anti-nuclear march in 1982 and thinking that, despite the crowds, Reagan-Haig and company had very little to fear from the movement, which could [be] (and was) dismissed as a '60s' holdover." Not so this time.