By: Jennifer Saba The heat didn't prevent hundreds of thousands of people from protesting the Republican National Convention here in New York, and an army of journos from covering it. Nor did the high temperature tempt people to behave their worst. The United for Peace and Justice march was calm, subdued, and resembled a very, very crowded 10K race more than the riots of the distant political past.
People started gathering in the West Village around 10 o'clock to wend their way up 7th Avenue to Madison Square Garden, looping back down Broadway and ending at Union Square. By 1 o'clock, Bushbeaters were still arriving at 15th street and 7th Avenue. Then it took two hours just to move a few city blocks. People were still marching past the Garden and chanting anti-Bush slogans as late as 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
During one burst of spontaneity, a marcher pulled out his trumpet and attempted a rather decent rendition of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love." A few cops leaning against the steel barricades lining 7th Ave, languidly looked on.
There were lots of slogans, signs and T-shirts, running from "Where's Osama?" (the body of Waldo with a face of bin Laden) to the rampant puns on "Bush" and "Dick."
But every so often, there were haunting images. One lone man, looking defeated, marched down Broadway towards Union Square hoisting a hand-made sign. His son, Juan Torres, was killed in Afghanistan on July 12. An organizer approached him and directed him towards 16th street where other people who lost family members were located.
Another: A huge mass of people carried roughly 1,000 hand-made cardboard coffins draped both in American flags and black cloth.
At Union Square some organizers urged marchers to disperse, encouraging, but not outright directing them, to move uptown to Central Park, the original site of the protest group's (banned) rally. A few thousand people did and the scene there was much the same -- quiet and almost conciliatory. One pony-tailed man asked the police for permission to sell his t-shirts: "BushSharon, Wars r Us" and "Stop the Bush Whack on Palestine and Iraq."
The biggest rabble rouser: A wayward rat who charged a group of protesters resting under a tree. One woman groused, "It must have been Bush."
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