Let's Rally for Whatever We Deem Relevant

Today, being the good feminists that we are, Erin and I went voluntarily to the Peace Rally down at the White House. (Well, Erin went voluntarily, and I went since I'm afraid of our boss and she wanted us to go, so...)

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big supporter of getting our troops out of Iraq, and I definitely think that we're fighting a losing battle (figuratively and literally). It was just early in the morning, and it's hard for me to even be aware of what we're rallying for before noon on a Saturday, let alone to be enthusiastic.

We left with the best of intentions (although we got lost somewhere around 14th and New York and ended up missing the women's rally in favor of Cosi) and eventually made our way down to the main Rally, which began at the White House.

Now, if I were in charge of a rally with thousands of people, I would make sure I paced (and kept a number on) the speakers, read speeches beforehand, kept the crowd engaged, and made sure everything ran smoothly. Unfortunately, whoever was in charge wasn't a college educated individual. I'm pretty sure, now that I think about it, that the person in charge wasn't a person at all, but a monkey wearing a suit and a jaunty pair of coke-bottle glasses. I guess they can't be blamed for being deceived.

The speakers wanted to talk about everything, sometimes remembering that we were there to protest the war and shouting out a few "Power to the People!'s" but that was only between rantings about the environment, Palestine, Iran, civil rights, and whatever else particular speakers felt a burning desire to talk about.

This also included an 8 year old speaking in tongues and screaming for "Black Power!" and someone from the Washington Wizards who gave a 25 minute rant about... actually, I don't know what he was talking about, because it was just 25 minutes of beat poetry and lots of interpretive dance. But power to the people! Let's get out of Vietnam. Wait a second... where are we again? No one seems to know, since we've covered every country in the Middle East. For 2.5 hours. In the hot sun. And I got a sunburn, with horrifically tacky tan lines.

Then we started marching, but that was only after everyone had already gone hoarse yelling at the speakers to stop fucking talking and start marching already. The only really good thing about that part was that we watched an elderly woman almost have a massive coronary when she was screaming that no one cares about Israel. I'm not sure why someone was talking about Israel, but I'm sure it was a very relevant topic. They were probably discussing fashion, or entertainment, or discotheques, whatever it is you crazy young people talk about these days.

There was a die in afterwards, in which everyone "died" at the sound of an air raid and threw themselves onto the ground outside the Capitol. We didn't actually make it that far, but I'm sure it was impressive. And totally got the point across about getting us out of Thailand and stopping the threat of Crab Catchers in the Siberian Sea. Damn you, Most Dangerous Catch.