So when 10,000 march in San Francisco (good grief, a gay pride rally draws 100,000 there!), the organizers work hard to portray the protesters as non-professionals:
No official head count was available. Organizers of the event estimated about 30,000 people participated in San Francisco. It appeared that more than 10,000 people attended the march.
"I got the sense that many people were at a demonstration for the first time," said Sarah Sloan, one of the event's organizers. "That's something that's really changed. People have realized the right thing to do is to take to the streets."
There were other protests, too, of even smaller "crowds."
But I love Sloan's comment. It's as if ordinary Americans are protesting.
But that isn't really the case. Ms. Sloan has been around the anti-war block, for example. She's no protest virgin:
Miss Sloan dropped out of college at age 17 to promote International ANSWER and other WWP front groups such as the International Action Center (IAC), of which she serves as youth coordinator. She also writes for Workers World, the WWPs newsletter, and was the news editor of the Iraq Resource Information Site, a website that refers to the pre-war sanctions against Iraq as a "holocaust" and "genocide."
A communist? Say it ain't so!
Another quoted protester has been at this a while:
Bal Pinguel, coordinator of the Peacebuilding and Demilitarization Program, gave a larger context of US nuclear proliferation in terms of a widening war on Iraq, Afghanistan, and others.
He's not just anti-Iraq War, he is against the "good war" in Afghanistan and looks to demilitarize America just to be safe. And I'm not so sure that Bal is on the same page as Sarah as far as getting those new protesters hauling signs around. Bal thinks the anti-war movement is too white and too male. I'm sure he wasn't speaking of Ms. Sloan, when he said that. I'm sure she's a fine looking woman in her own right.
Sadly for the anti-war side, the American people prefer to win our wars, and generally don't think we are genocidal maniacs when we go to war.
So those "anti-war" protests will remain largely white, male, middle class, communist, and badly in need of a shower and shave.
UPDATE: Yep, Main Street they ain't. Mom and pop aren't exactly joining the ranks of the protests.
UPDATE: Another sad "Democrat", this time from Florida:
An ardent lifelong Democrat, Hillary Keyes thought that when her party took control of Congress, it would finally bring an end to the Iraq war. After all, to her the 2006 election was a mandate on Iraq.
But Keyes is at the 2007 state Democratic Party convention this weekend, still pleading with members of Congress from her own party to end the war.
"It's so frustrating," said Keyes, of Boca Raton. "People I know are frustrated with the Democratic Party."
No doubt the people she knows are frustrated, because Ms. Keyes is a member of Code Pink, the radical anti-war outfit, rather than the lifelong Democrat she pretends to be.
If there are so many ordinary Democrats and other Americans turning on the war, why do the people interviewed in the news seem to be the Lefty whackos? What do they think this is, a FEMA press conference?
