Tao’s 2 Cents

After writing my previous post about Burma I decided I really wanted to do something. The next day while I was cutting my hair(yes, I cut my own hair), I was looking at my head and thinking about the monks shaved heads. It dawned on me that shaving my heads in solidarity with the Buddhist monks would be a good way to do something. It turned out I was right, I probably had several dozen conversations about my head and Burma. I think I raised a lot of awareness.

When I got the e-mail from the U.S. Campaign for Burma people about the rally in Washington, D.C. I decided to go for it. I spent the few days before the protest thinking about what I wanted to put on my sign and I finally got the idea after seeing an illustration of the Olympic rings with a bullet hole for the last ring…

I arrived in downtown D.C. in front of the White House about 30 minutes late for the protest. I was a little worried that the march would have already started but the speakers had only just started. The place was packed, it was an ocean of people. If I had to guess I’d say that there were 50-60,000 people (the organizers claimed 100,000) there when the march first started. However I think only about 20,000-30,000 ended up at Congress after the march.

I managed to get within about 50 feet of the stage and got to here Cindy Sheehan, Ramsey Clark, Adam Kokesh, Etan Thomas, and Ralph Nader speak. I think the largest applause was for the Iraq veterans, but calls for impeachment and ending the corporate dominated government also got big cheers…

Here are the pics and a video from the September 15th Anti-War March on Washington, D.C.
[Show as slideshow]

http://www.stopandwonder.com/2CentImgs/crowd-iraq-veterans.flv

Tomorrow morning, September 15th, around 10 a.m. I’m heading down to meet up with thousands of anti-war protesters on the lawn in front of the White House. At around noon we’re marching to congress, supposedly in the hopes that this will influence them into some form of action.

I’m not convinced of the power of mass demonstrations, but I know that it certainly can’t be hurting. Agressive resource wars against foreign nations will never solve the problem that there simply isn’t enough cheap energy/oil in the world. We could and should be spending our money to find some other type of energy source…

It’s taken awhile to actually get situated and to the point where I’ll get to do some of the political things I’ve been itching to but unable to do over the last few years. I found a job doing web designat a place just outside of Baltimore. That’ll take most of my weekdays but most protests are on the weekend anyway…