“From New Orleans to Iraq Stop the War on the Poor.docVIP

Voices of the People: The September 24, 2005 D.C. Protest Against the Iraq War All Aboard the Peace Train Anti-war organizations billed the protest as the largest since the Iraq War began. Unless you were on one of their email lists, however, you probably didn’t hear about the event until it was all over. The U.S. peace movement seemed to be stuck on the political fringe, mentally, even though all the recent polls showed that a solid majority of the American public had finally turned against the war. The public might have wanted to come, but nobody actually invited them. Amtrak had offered the kind of deal activists couldn’t resist: if you could get a group of six people together for a round-trip between Boston and D.C., the first two tickets would be full price and the others would get a 90% discount. Many emails later, I’d secured a ride with a group from the South Shore, and sent a total stranger a postal money order for my share of the cost. I meet up with Linda and the rest of her group at South Station, downtown. We’re taking the overnight train, leaving Boston at 10 o’clock Friday evening and arriving in D.C. around 7 o’clock Saturday morning, a few hours before the start of the demonstration. It isn’t hard to identify people going to the demo. Most people are lugging their own handmade signs, rolled up or attached to cardboard tubes. Any sign with a wood or metal support might be confiscated by the D.C. police so it can’t be used as a weapon. Unlike the regular passengers, the activists are charged up, chatty, scanning the crowd for people they know. As we stand in line to board, the conductor says, in the standard repetitive drone, “Rebellion to the left”. We more than fill up the left-hand car, the last one. By the time we get to D.C., most of the train will be full of protesters. People are already tired after a working week, and still the aisles buzz with excitement. I sit next to Linda, a sweet woman in her 50’s who makes her living as a t