We sent to San Francisco, a place near Civic center. I started from Berkeley. People came from all parts of San Francisco bay area. Many residents, many Jews, many Jews from other parts call them self-hating Jews. Most UC, Berkeley professors, students, almost entire Oakland, and so on.
I think there were about 1,00,000 people in the park in San Francisco. We were singing songs, dancing.
News reports later said we were about 50,000. Seemed incorrect grossly.
After a few minutes a defense forces helicopter appeared on the sky. It encircled the entire field. I guess it was taking videos of the people demonstrating.
At the same time I had a feeling that demonstration won’t have an effect on the government. San Francisco, and New York were two major protest areas, there were smaller, mostly well educated student towns like Seattle, Austin, …that were against the war.
Most people were for the war. On a made up letter a NY Times reporter showed where Saddam wrote that he has WMD. He came on TV denying it, nobody believed him. We knew he had WMD hidden probaly in his pants. I couldn’t believe it. Even for trivial matters, courts require more evidence. NY Times had a fact finding team, just like most other big publication.
I stopped reading NY Times, except rarely like Hersh Seymour write up on murder of Osama Bin Laden. I moved to the Guardian, a UK publication, and drove my car less, until I got rid of it. Last 7 years in America was without car, and I didn’t miss it.
At the time of the demonstration I knew what we were doing was a waste and America will attack Iraq. About a million Iraqis dead, and now everybody has nearly forgotten it. America kills millions to get what it wants. A very determined country.