War Protest, University of Cincinnati - 04/11/2003
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Peacemakers On The Scene |
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War Protest, University of Cincinnati - 04/11/2003 |
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The rally was held between 4PM and 6PM at the intersection of Calhoun and Clifton so the traffic was very heavy. There were a few passing cars whose occupants had the unusal vocabulary of one word and I did hear one passing car yell "nuke em all" but for the most part the passing motorists seem to either be indifferent or very supportive by honking their horns and waving the "V" sign at us.
I would estimate the number of people at the rally at the most 100. I think that more people attended but they kept coming and going. At the apex there were approximately 100. I quit counting at 78 and there were more behind me. The neat thing was that they were very vocal and had a loud speaker that was being passed around. Believe me, we were being heard! Peacemaker Najib Abudakhan was holding a "Remember Rachel Corrie" sign as he was speaking to the passing cars with a bull horn. There were at least four others who where holding similar signs. It's good to know that the real heroines of America will not be forgotten. It never fails to amaze me how each protest seems to have so many talented young people creating music with instrutments of their own creativity and imagination. This group of marvelous youngsters had one "real" drum and a whole lot of other drums made out of re-cycled plastic containers. One of these youngsters even had a conch shell and boy could he make some vibes! I oft times ponder that if we could ever get Bush, Sharon, Blair and the other wars mongers together with the Sadaams of this world around a group of youngsters like these wonderful kids whether or not they would see the light, hug each other as we often do, and work for world peace together. The rally concluded with a lively march down Calhoun, across to McMicken and back the the starting point at Clifton and Calhoun. As you can see from this picture taken looking east down McMicken the group stretched out a pretty long way. While the police were present during the whole rally they let us alone until the very end. As we were crossing over Calhoun back to the starting point an officer on a bicycle took the group leader off to the side and proceeded to write a ticket for blocking the side walk. Why he didn't give tickets to all of us remains unclear to me because we were all together in a group. We all gathered around this officer and the young man getting the ticket and started chanting "we want a ticket" but that didn't work so the chant turned into "we want complaint forms." Soon there were other police, four in total, and the officer in charge told us that they didn't carry compliant forms anymore but would have some brought to us. We decided that this would probably take several hours since District 5 was several "blocks" away so after donating what we could to help the young man pay for his ticket we left. Peacehq reporting - 04/11/2003 |
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