I kept flipping through baseball and the C-SPAN cameras showing the march past MSG without commentary. They had cameras in the crowd and stationary above the street. I noticed a few things about this crowd of what I deem "professional" protesters.
This crowd was all ABB (Obviously.) and huge on the GIMME GIMME GIMME aspect. I was stunned at the lack of variety of signs and the creativity of the slogans. BUSH LIED, Healthcare Not Warfare, or Immigrant Rights or **EDUCATION PHRASE HERE** Not Bombs seemed to be 60%+ of the signs.
There were also numerous streetwide banners that had the organizational names below their ABB phrase, they typically included words like "Proletariat", "Socialst" or "Progressive". In other words, this was the fringe radicals. I also noticed a large amount of union signs from the SEIU so who knows how many union members were in this crowd that marched today so they got a free trip to NYC Friday-Sunday or Monday but didn't give a rats ass about the cause. Don't think it's possible? Only about 1-8 to 1-10 in the union groups had signs.
The other thing that cracked me up were when they actually did do man/woman on the street interviews. Not one person out of 40+ I saw interviewed mentioned John Kerry or how there was a better choice available to the people. All they could do was talk about generally being against war or wanting free something; free healthcare, free college educations, free housing, free money (Loan forgiveness for various groups of Americans.) not one person though mentioned they had a choice coming up in less than 70 days. The tone I took away from every person was a sense of non-reality, they almost didn't know why they were marching except they didn't like Bush.
If anyone else spent time watching this did you notice that there's a big FOX News billboard at 33rd and 7th Avenue? The funniest thing was there were chants.... against the billboard
. I mean c'mon, they alternated between "FOX News Sucks" and "FOX News Lies" depending on the group passing by. Who the shaq fu chants against a billboard ? Is it going to talk back?
The last thing I wanted to point out was that IMHO these were typically the same shiftless and aimless people you see lounging about in coffee shops and crashed in the chairs and on couches in book stores reading books they'll never buy. Poorly dressed, rag tag looks about them, few had pride in their appearance. About 1-10,000 had something of ANY value on them like a camera or even something as trivial as a wrist watch. The rest were dressed like the slobs playing hacky sack or ultimate on a college campus.
Outside the union people I'd really like to know who paid to get these people here to show up, they didn't look like the bridge and tunnel crowd.
The thing that really killed me were examples of such blind obvious stupidity. I saw several signs relating to an erosion of freedom of speech or civil rights. Did it not dawn on these people that 50+city, state and federal government agencies allocated over $50 million dollars to protect 250,000+ Americans that would be able to safely and hopefully peacefully assemble and address their political grievances in a public forum? Isn't that ENSURING your civil rights and freedom of speech? Did you not see the massive dumptrucks filled with sand at intersections with 7th avenue that were established as mobile barriers against a car comb attack? Or how about the dozens of uniformed personnel with automatic weapons? Did it not occur to these MENSA rejects that police states don't allocate funds and resources to be denounced on worldwide television?
I'm glad the major protest went off without violence. I hope the rest of the week is as uneventful.
