Thousands of people marching for peace in Seattle

I made it up to the Seattle peace demo along with several friends (and one charming old dog) but I did not take a camera with me. Luckily, my fine friends at PDX Peace did, and they’ve posted lots of photos at Flickr. Pictured on the left are the banners that AFSC brought up for the march. Yes, they are quite tall, but surprisingly easy to carry… I was so lucky as to get to carry one of them for most of the march. If you squint at the photo you can see the back of my head holding one of them (the farthest one from the camera).

This day of marches across the country drew over 150,000 people (watch a slideshow of images from across the country — the first slide says 100,000 but I guess they were tired when they did the addition because the cities listed total over 150,000). The official October 27 website reports that 6,000 people attended — I’m sure that’s the minimum number. In a few locations we could see that for blocks and the street was thick with people, signs, puppets, banners.

We were with a well-organized, vocal group of folks who had a bullhorn in their possession, and we chanted most of the way. Lively chants like:

1-2-3-4– We don’t want your racist war!
5-6-7-8– We will not cooperate!

Money for housing and education!
Not for war and occupation!

And a few call and responses that I don’t remember (it takes a lot of attention to carry a 12-foot high pole in a city with streetcar wires) but there was definitely some creative rhyming happening. Including a chant about a Walk-out on November 16th. If you’re wondering what to do next, you can visit October 27th’s “What Next?” poll and vote.