[R-G] Jimmy Breslin on NYC protest [Notes From A Veteran Journa...

[DavidMcR at aol.com]

This gives a good sense of Manhattan yesterday (I was among the unlucky 
people trapped in a committee meeting until too late to catch the event in 
all its glory).
 
 David
 
 << -----------
  Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 13:10:40 -0500
  Subject: Jimmy Breslin on NYC protest
  
  (Jimmy Breslin is a veteran journalist who has been regarded as the voice 
  of NYC's blue-collar population, especially Irish and Italians in Queens 
  and Brooklyn.)
  
  NY Newsday, Feb 16, 2003
  Walking Along Streets of Peace
  by Jimmy Breslin
  
  On streets of beauty, the warm people inched along or stood and chanted and 
  laughed against a war and for peace and their warmth made the winter 
  temperature irrelevant.
  
  They were summer people in winter clothes.
  
  They were the largest and happiest crowd seen in this city maybe ever, 
  outside of a war's end in 1945.
  
  There were fathers with children on their shoulders. There were mothers 
  holding their young. There were kids walking alongside their parents. There 
  were religious people everywhere.
  
  And so many were young. Young students, young married, young in a city that 
  belonged to the dreams and love and laughter of youth.
  
  Do you want a life with thrills, years of exhilaration? Come to New York.
  
  Where yesterday they said they did not want war.
  
  They said it with their presence and with the most signs of my time in my 
  city. The signs were against war, and against George W. Bush, who, for the 
  first time, was being heralded as a man who lost the popular vote in this 
  country by 500,000.
  
  Looking down Third Avenue and Second Avenue, as the crowds came up to try 
  to get to the rear of the great crowd on First Avenue, and then peering as 
  far down First Avenue as you could see, the size of throngs caused you to 
  tell yourself, "maybe a million." Whatever it was, out on the street it 
  felt like a million, and it was glorious. A news photographer I know came 
  along. "I've been everyplace. I have to say a million." Because of the 
  Police Department's reprehensible pens, the crowd was separated so that 
  there was not one clear picture of an enormous group that would cause 
  politicians here to faint.
  
  The crowd so frightening was made of people who mostly never had protested 
  before, who were too young for the Vietnam protests and who cannot be 
  classified under any of the old words, "demonstrators" or "anti-war," 
  because they are new and they are real.
  
  War may be a great favorite with a Texas Theocracy, with a president who 
  speaks in the first person more than anybody we have had in decades -- "I'm 
  sick and tired of waiting" -- and who calls on God to bless the country as 
  if no other people made in the image and likeness of God are alive on earth.
  
  Only the sour people could permit innocent people to be scared as close to 
  death as you could do it. "Get duct tape!" her government told Kristin, a 
  friend of mine who lives in Washington. So she went out and got duct tape, 
  which usually is mentioned in stories about bank robbers using it to bound 
  and gag clerks.
  
  Kristin taped the windows and door of her children's room. She then said 
  she was ready for a gas attack. She failed to realize that the attack would 
  leave her kids as orphans.
  
  The crowd yesterday was herded into a mile of pens, like the Omaha 
  stockyards. This was for security. The reason for security was security.
  
  On our streets of beauty yesterday, gladness was in the place of arrogance 
  and meanness. The sole conflict I found, when I arrived at 66th Street and 
  First Avenue, the closest I could get to the stage at 51th Street, a young 
  woman named Leslie Meenan was holding the hand of a girl who said her name 
  was, as I spelled it, Camilla. She was 8.
  
  "You're spelling it wrong," she said. "Only one 'l.'"
  
  "You don't know how to spell your own name," I said.
  
  "Yes, I do. You don't."
  
  "She's right," a woman said. Her name was Cara McCarthy and she was from 
  Bushwick, in Brooklyn. She teaches at PS 145.
  
  Just ahead was Bob Stratton, who held his daughter, Fia, age 3. He said he 
  was from Park Slope and he was in computer development.
  
  And now as you walked along the edge of one of these pens, here was a line 
  of Catholic protests and then a group of schoolteachers and then everything 
  seemed to be Jane Burcaw, in a good, warm and fashionable hat holding a 
  sign that said, "No War."
  
  "I made it last night," she said.
  
  "Where do you live?"
  
  "Bethlehem. I work at the Moravian Theological Seminary. I got here at 
  10:30. I would've been much earlier if I had to."
  
  The number of police and vehicles was unconscionable in this area, blocks 
  away from the stage. The people were beautiful and the overload of police 
  was irritating and deprived people of their rights.
  
  Somewhere far downtown from where I was standing, they had police horses on 
  Second Avenue and people there to protest were behind the endless metal 
  pens and somewhere the cattle turned human and people were arrested.
  
  The mayor of this city and the police commissioner had been spreading fear 
  in this city for many days. Their claims were infuriating. "We know there 
  is something coming but we can't tell you." If they knew it was coming and 
  the people who were doing it knew it was coming, then what are you keeping 
  a secret for?
  
  Bet me that they had the same kind of rumor that Colin Powell tried to sell 
  at the UN, and on Friday he got carried out on a shutter.
  
  But this was only passing. What went on yesterday was an enormous crowd 
  that turned cold sidewalks into beautiful gardens.
  
  They were the nicest people I've ever been with