I arrived at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at 11AM or so and saw a bunch of people. I'm no good at counting - it was somewhere between many dozens to few hundreds people showed up for this anti-war event. Since I am talking about numbers I have a little ax to grind. I am unhappy with how UFPJ and ANSWER are not cooperating. OK, you don't have to be at each others events - but at least frigging coordinate, don't have two events at the same time. If they had agreed that UFPJ start earlier and ANSWER started later, we could have had lots of people at both events. As it was, some people went from the UFPJ event to the ANSWER event (including yours truly) anyhow. We all know ANSWER people can be blockheaded, but UFPJ people are being blockheads to - while getting into bed with ANSWER may not be wanted, we can work with them on at leats coordination, but some people have their noses too high in the air. And ANSWER had thousands of people while the UFPJ event had hundreds, if that. Anyhow, I'm not one of those people who knows every damned thing about the UFPJ and ANSWER meetings, but being someone in the UFPJ camp, I point my finger *at* UFPJ people and say stop pointing fingers at ANSWER and come to some accommodation. Too much petty sectarianism and nonsense, you can't just blame ANSWER for everything, die-hard anti-ANSWER people are dividing the anti-war movement, just what Bush and the capitalists love. Anyhow, I had to get that off my chest...OK, so people were at the Plaza. I chatted with a bunch of Wobblies I know - there was a larger IWW presence at the rally and march then I had expected. At the platform, people started speaking - someone from Catholic Worker spoke, a Vietnam veteran spoke (who was good), Daniel Gross from the IWW spoke (his grade is a "B", some parts were very good while some parts fell flat) as did others. The Catholic Worker guy asked people to carry symbolic coffins, and for the people planning on doing direct action who would probably get arrested to put an overshirt on, with a picture of a US soldier who had died in the war on the front, and a picture of an Iraqi who had died in the back. He also talked about how the direct action would be non-violent, and asked that people respect that we were using just that tactic at this event. The march began and we marched down to 42nd Street, with people in front carrying the coffins. Then we marched down 42nd street to Times Square. Along 42nd Street and into Times Square a lot of people saw us go by, and the media was all over Times Square. Then they announced for direct action people to move to the front. I am afraid to say I was not as brave and sacrificing as those people, and was trying to avoid being arrested - despite this, I stayed up front taking pictures. We marched to the armed forces recruiting center which is on a traffic island in Times Square. The direct action people made a speech in front of it but with the press there it was pandemonium and I didn't even hear what they were saying. Then they walked over to Broadway and lay down. The police announced anyone not on the sidewalk would be arrested, but all of the photographers, including me, ignored this. Thus the scene was a few people still on the traffic island with the recruiting center, a few hundred people (protestors and some curious passerby) on the sidewalk on the other side of Broadway, over a dozen people lying down on Broadway wearing white overshirts with pictures of the dead amidst representative coffins of the dead, a number of police officers surround them, and a bunch of media photographers next to them. Then the police began arresting the people engaged in direct action, and the press went into a frenzy. David McReynolds was arrested, three Wobblies were arrested, as were several others. Protestors on the sidewalk shouted their support to the people engaged in direct action, the NLG were there with their green caps as well. Since Indymedia has a nine-picture cap, I've posted just this event for now. I began walking up Broadway by myself and ran into several young girls (and one guy) who were Christian evangelicals. I told the girl I was an evangelical too and she said "Oh!" and then I said "An evangelical atheist". Then we talked about different things, she asked me what I thought happened when you die, I said you're just dead but if you have children and have raised them part of you lives on in them. They were from Florida and nice. I said it's good they came from New York because they can tell things to people in New York and they can in turn learn things from people in New York. It's probably good for these evangelicals from Utah, Florida and so forth to come see us heathens, perhaps some of it rubs off on them. Then I walked through Central Park up towards the ANSWER rally and march. I passed through Strawberry Fields where someone had put a flower over the mosaic that says simply - "Imagine". Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. I walked on to the East Meadow, where I saw thousands of people gathered on the lawn listening to the speakers. But I'll go into that in another post.