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The
Aftermath
Although I was uncomfortable with some of the slogans, chants and
placards of the anti-war demonstrators not so much because
I disagreed with them, but because I felt they alienated much of the
American populace who might otherwise protest the war I left
Washington, DC, inspired by the most impressive display of civic resolve
I had ever experienced in the United States. According to police estimates,
well over 100,000 gathered people gathered in what was the biggest
anti-war rally since the Vietnam era.
Back in New York, I turned on CNN headline news to find that it was
the number three story of the day, just after the storming of the
theatre in Moscow where Chechen gunmen were holding patrons hostage
and the plane crash that killed Senator Paul Wellstone. But CNN's
piece portrayed the rally as a few thousand people marching through
the streets chanting, "George Bush, You Can't Hide, We Charge
You With Genocide." While there was no denying some protesters
chanted these words or that the demonstration was almost as much anti-Bush
as it was anti-war, CNN's coverage badly mis-portrayed both the numbers
and the overall tone of the rally. A day later, the New York Times,
a newspaper that has set the gold standard in journalism because of
its reliability, ran a short story on page 8 headlined, "Thousands
March in Washington against Going to War in Iraq."
It seemed odd that something so momentous that attracted so
many different kinds of people from across the eastern seaboard and
beyond merited so little attention.
Stacy Sullivan is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn,
NY. She is the author of the forthcoming book From Brooklyn to
Kosovo with Love and Guns.
Joseph Rodriguez is freelance photojournalist and a roving
correspondent for PixelPress. His third publication, Juvenile Justice
will be published by PowerHouse Books next year.
This is the first in an ongoing series of PixelPress
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