On Saturday, Jan. 27, three busloads from Chicago arrived at the Mall in Washington, D.C. We had driven all night to be part of the rally and march opposing the war in Iraq. Our Chicago folk were sleep-deprived and cramped from the long bus ride, but I heard no complaints over petty logistical issues. We were thrilled to be in Washington. We gathered near the corner of 3rd and Pennsylvania Avenue with the familiar and beautiful U.S. Capitol building providing the backdrop for the speakers’ stage. Our Chicago contingent was surrounded by 100,000 new friends. Many of us felt so strongly about the need to be there that there were tears. We had come to tell President Bush and the new Congress, “No more war!”
The first speaker shouted out, “Want to know what democracy looks like?” In unison, as if it had been rehearsed, the crowd bellowed back, “It looks like this!” The day of protest had begun. Every demonstration has speakers, and this one had a full slate-senators, representatives, presidential candidates, movie stars, and leaders of national organizations. None were more emotion-provoking than the “Gold Star parents” who spoke about their patriotic children who had fallen in Iraq. None were more thought-provoking than the military families who spoke about their sons, daughters, husbands or wives deployed in Iraq. One wife of an officer said she was heartbroken at having to attend so many funerals as his representative to the families of his fallen men. She went to the funerals as he continued to patrol the mean streets of Baghdad with the rest of his men.
This raucous group was not the Junior League; it wasn’t a genteel crowd. People had traveled to Washington from all over America, exercising their constitutional right to tell President Bush that the war had to end. This cross-section of America included 1960s Vietnam war protesters and Vietnam veterans, college and high school students, military families, steelworkers, Hispanic “Unite” members, NAACP marchers, families with strollers, and “Grannies for Peace.” NOW was there, as well as Code Pink. Pax Christi and national Protestant church denominations with professional banners were there, next to small country churches with proudly hand-lettered signs. Priests stood next to Methodist preachers, rabbis saying “Shalom” were next to Catholic nuns, all sorts of Americans-many, but not all, from the left of center-saying, “End this war!”
By some counts the crowd swelled to 200,000 by the time the sun warmed the mall. These were authentic, regular American voices speaking truth to power. Those Americans spoke for millions who had realized they had been lied to by Bush and Cheney. They realized that Mr. Bush had tarnished America’s image around the world. The Americans on Washington’s mall realized that we had drifted away from a war against terror to a war to uphold “The Decider’s” pride and stubbornness. They observed clearly that perhaps in the beginning the American army had been viewed as liberators but now were seen as occupiers.
These regular citizens from around America could do the math. They added up the young American lives lost. They tallied up the shattered lives of America’s wounded. They totaled up the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead. They realized “collateral damage” was a euphemism for dead Iraqi children. To the Americans in Washington’s streets that Saturday, that all added up to “End the war now!”
The massive mobilization against the war in Iraq was organized by United for Peace and Justice (www.unitedforpeace.org), a coalition of 1,400 local peace groups. The Chicago buses were organized by the West Suburban Faith-Based Peace Coalition (www.faithpeace.org) of which Oak Park’s Coalition for Truth and Justice (www.opctj.org) is a part.
Join us. Help us tell truth to power and end this war!
