Meeting the "Other Reality" Face to Face (part one)

See Youtube March on the Pentagon Protest

On March 17th 2007, the number of antiwar rallies that I have attended against the Iraq War out numbered the ones I attended against the Viet Nam War. For this event, I traveled to DC with my husband, my 20-year old son to meet up with my daughter who lives there. We hoped to join up with our friends from out hometown.

Dressed for the freezing weather, we lumbered from the metro line down the Washington DC mall with our peace signs folded inside our backpacks. We could hear competing bullhorns alternating between angry outbursts and songs. The closer we came to the Viet Nam Memorial the crowds increased with characters much different from all past protests. Metal studded, black leather jackets with an open winged eagle on the back covered the rotund middle-aged figures. Each carried one or two US Flags on skinny wooden sticks. They milled around as if they were protecting "their" territory. Bleachers, stands and gates surrounded the memorial so we moved quickly on knowing this was not the time to show my peace loving son the granite wall with thousands of names.

We approached my favorite memorial, the Lincoln Monument, but the commotion of thousands of people distracted me from even looking in to see the giant sitting man. Advice—be sure to follow directions given to you when attending a peace rally.

We could see there was a fence separating us from "our people" friendly, kooky, skinny vegetarians. We asked the overwhelmed policeman where to go and he directed us to the left. WRONG—we later found out the gait was only a half block to the right. We progressed slowly through the crowd of angry leathered flag-wavers. We tried to ignore signs like, PEACE SUCKS, TRAITORS and THERE NOT HERE (do they really believe that propaganda?). Where are our people? Our peace sign, still folded inside our bag, did not give us away to this crowd. My typically talkative children walked big-eyed following their Dad. We knew our way to safety was to run between the police, cross the street and step on the friendly turf on the far side. Police-sticked men could not slow us. As we ran across the street we could hear, "traitor-b!tch" shouted at us. I suddenly understood the police were there to protect us!

On the other side it was a completely different world. A river of people, 20 flowed between the leather-clad row and us. The sound of can drums, shouts of "Peace Now" and "NO MORE WAR" almost drowned out the shouters across the street. Numb from cold and fear, we decided we could best support the peace movement by staying on the grassy bank and cheering on the marchers while holding our "Pray for Peace, Act for Peace" sign.

We actually enjoyed ourselves, reading the creative signs and poising for pictures as people read our sign. We shouted back "Now" when asked when do you want peace?

The "anti-antis" continued to shout at the marchers, "Faggot", "Mother F**ers" giving the finger and adding. "We hate you". The young protesters sang back, "We love YOU" repeating it again and again. The green leprechaun for peace ignored the man spewing hate directly in her face.

After an hour the marchers had all crossed the bridge and we once again were facing the "anti-antis" hate group. You could feel the anger move in waves across the street with the policeman buffering the tide. I felt as if we need to outlast them, or at least hold our ground. Eventually they moved down the hill for a warmer place. They either got cold or they became bored of us as we just stood quietly with the "Pray for Peace" banner.

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