Massive Washington march demands end to war in Iraq

Organizers of the demonstration put the crowd at 300,000, while Washington’s chief of police—which routinely underestimates numbers in anti-government protests—freely acknowledged that more than 100,000 had participated.

Thousands began marching on their own, filing past the White House, before what was supposed to be the leading delegation set out from an opening rally at the Ellipse. While the march began at about 12:30 p.m., demonstrators were still clogging the city’s streets after 5 o’clock, hours after a concluding rally opposite the Washington Monument had begun.

Cindy Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son Casey was killed in Iraq last year, received the warmest response of any of those who addressed the rallies. Her month-long vigil at “Camp Casey,” set up near Bush’s ranch last month to demand an end to the war and press the US president to meet with her, was widely seen as emblematic of the growth of mass popular opposition to the war.

“We need a people’s movement to end this war,” she told the crowd. “My good friends in the media aren’t doing their job. Most of our friends in Congress aren’t doing their jobs, and George Bush certainly isn’t doing his job. So you know what? We have to do our job.... We’ll be the checks and balances on this out-of-control criminal government.”

She said she intended to challenge Congress: “How many more of other people’s kids are you willing to sacrifice for the lies.... Shame on you for giving him the authority to invade.”

While a few of the other speakers referred briefly to the failure of the Democratic Party to oppose the war, the main message from the platform was to pressure Congress and the Democrats and look to the party’s future electoral victories as a solution to the war and social crisis.

Most explicit in this regard was Jesse Jackson, who twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination. “When we march, things change,” he told the crowd. “We’ll change Congress in 2006. We’ll take back the White House in 2008.”

How the success of a party that has voted some $200 billion for the war—and many of whose principal leaders have advocated sending even more troops—would spell an end to the carnage in Iraq was not explained.

Not a single prominent figure from the Democratic Party made an appearance at the rally. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, who was previously hounded out of her House seat with the tacit support of the Democratic leadership, was the only elected official to address the march.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/wash-s26.shtml