Comments on Anti-war Rally and March 9/18

Last night I was at the Downtown Berkeley BART station to support the Anti-War and Anti-Racism March and Rally. Many groups were represented with speakers, poets, and singers; even Medea Benjamin and Wavy Gravy were there. The crowd (this is a bad guess) was probably under 1000, which was a good turnout considering the minimal coverage given to the event. People of all ages, races, religions, locations etc. were there in solidarity.

The rally lasted for more than an hour; there were speakers from groups like Berkeley Stop the War Coalition, Middle Eastern Children's Alliance, STORM and many others. Local poets spoke, and a few songs were sung by all.

At about 6:30pm, the marching commenced. The energy was high and most people had a sign or symbol to carry. The best was a guy with his drum, who kept us all in time with his beats. We started at the BART station on Shattuck at Center, and began by blocking traffic and marching up Shattuck. We marched up University and down Sacramento, and finished where we started almost two hours later.
Along the way, many many motorists and residents gave us their support - honking horns, giving peace signs and shouts of excitement - along with a few commuters that were obviously peeved at our traffic block.
But overall, it was a good, loud, strong, peaceful group, and I think we got our message across. One person told me that Channel 7 News approached them, and personally, a NY Times photographer asked if I consented to having my photo in the paper.

This link is to an SFgate article with a mention of the rally:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2001/09/19/state0418EDT0017.DTL

Hopefully we can get this message across to more and more people that there are some of us against war and against racist attacks!

I forgot a camera unfortunately, but if anyone has pics, please post them as comments here!

And to finish, this was our main chant last night:

1-2-3-4 - We don't want your racist war!
5-6-7-8 - Stop the war! Stop the hate!

Hope to see you all Thursday at noon in Sproul Plaza in Berkeley!