"War and Occupation Will Never Bring Liberation! That's Bullshit! Get Off It! This War Is For Profit!

Technorati Tags: January 27 antiwar demonstration, Jane Fonda, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Jesse Jackson, Iraq war, troop surge, bring the troops home now

That was one of the best chants at today's antiwar rally and march, which I attended with my 17-year-old daughter and two busloads of activists from NJ Peace Action. It was huge. We arrived at the Mall too late to hear Sean Penn speak, but we did get to listen to Jesse Jackson, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, and Jane Fonda -- the last one the biggest thrill for me.

According to the WaPo, the event organizers gave an attendance estimate of half a million, and I can easily believe that. Certainly it was far more than the "tens of thousands" figure mentioned in several of the news articles I've seen about the protest so far. The WaPo accurately pointed out that the post-rally march "... stretched the length of the route from the Mall, up Constitution Avenue to the east front of the Capitol and back to the Mall" -- after inexplicably claiming that "[t]he crowd, while exuberant, seemed significantly smaller than the half-million people organizers said were present and may not have matched similar protests in September 2005 and January 2003." The rally filled the mall as far back as the eye could see (and we were at the front of the rally, at the Capitol end, near the speakers); when the time came to start marching, the crush was so enormous that the part of the crowd where Maggie and I were standing could not even move a step for about 15 or 20 minutes.

As for the speakers, the two who stood out for me were Jane Fonda and Tim Robbins. Fonda was special because of the emotional enormity of her being there (and I hadn't known she was going to be there) after not being at any antiwar event for 34 years, and then getting to experience her presence with the next generation by my side. Robbins impressed me in general, but one thing in particular that he said really stunned me. He told the crowd that on the train going down to D.C., he had struck up a conversation with a young woman whose brother is one of the troops who are going to Iraq as part of the troop surge. His unit was already slated to go to Iraq, but not that soon; the schedule was moved up when Bush escalated the war. This young man's sister told Robbins that, because of the surge, her brother's unit was being deployed to Iraq so fast that their training period -- normally 12 weeks -- had been cut to two weeks. I will say that again. Pres. Bush is sending this soldier, and many others of course, to Iraq with only two weeks of training to fight the war. And this moral ant has the gall to lecture us about supporting the troops?