Back In One Piece, Arrest Record Unchanged

I will not go into too much detail at the time, as I've been riding a bus since about 9 EST last night. All I will say for now is that the march was a truly inspiring event that, if adequately covered by the media, is sure to have an effect on the "hearts and minds" of our nation. At a later time I will try to upload some pictures of a few of the highlights: an Arlington-style arrangement of crosses for the fallen troops (1,900+ is more when you see it spread out in front of you); a group of 4 or 5 kids (aged no more than 13) who started leading chants with such enthusiasm that within instants they had hundreds of people around them joining in; the seemingly endless procession snaking around the streets of D.C, despite (unknown to us at the time) police efforts to redirect the march at various stages in an attempt to separate groups and (in my humble opinion) interfere with freedom of assembly; the plethora of signs and sounds ranging from your roving bands of anarchist agitators to families with signs reading "Republicans against the war" and the surprisingly high number of teenage and early college aged youths with signs expressing their desire to go to school, not war. I will come back to this post and throw in some links as I find them, but over all I just want to say that it was refreshing to see that overall, the march seemed to be composed mostly of ordinary people from various walks of life than of the tired groups of hippies that the mainstream so readily dismiss. I always find it more effective to see khaki-clad parents with their children at a march than 20-something kids in dreadlocks.

That being said, it is notable that in one of the blackest cities in America, the biggest African American presence was probably among the police, though even then it was small. Some speculated that the relative absence of minorities was due to the fact that America's minority population, especially in D.C., tends to be poor, and so is unable to attend either due to work or already being in Iraq. In any case, I'm willing to bet that there were far more minorities there yesterday than are there today at the pro-war response. As far as overall numbers go, I still haven't gotten caught up on the news, but per CNN a few minutes ago there were about 20,000 people marching today, versus 100,000 yesterday. Go figure...