There was a real disconnect between the majority of the quarter-million people who gathered around the Lincoln Memorial and the professional Democratic Party hacks who spoke at "One Nation Working Together" protest held on October 2 in Washington, DC. The crowd, estimated at around 250,000 was larger than the Glenn Beck right-wing "Tea Party" protest rally last month and more than the "tens of thousands" described by the pro-corporate Washington Post.
Many protesters were shocked to see National Park Police stationed throughout the protesters with automatic weapons at the ready. Some expressed shock that such a protest by people who had been Obama's base in the 2008 election would be met by machine guns, a scene never witnessed during the multiple anti-war protests in Washington during the Bush administration.
In a scene not even witnessed during the anti-war marches and rallies during the Bush administration, protesters demanding peace, jobs, education, and public health care were confronted by Park Police bearing automatic weapons. The automatic weapons angered many protesters, formerly part of Obama's political base.
Even the sponsors of the rally, representing such Obama political base groups as the AFL-CIO, NAACP, National Council of La Raza, the Service Employees International Union, and the U.S. Student Association that distributed less-than-controversial protest signs bearing such messages as "Working Together" and "Supporting Change We Voted For" and paraded political, civil rights, and labor leaders who supported the usual laundry list of demands, could prevent anti-Obama speeches and protest signs. Harry Belafonte told the protesters that Obama's decision to surge U.S. troops strength in Afghanistan cost an estimated $30 billion, He added that the money could have been better spent in the United States.
WMR provides the following pictoral gallery of today's protest. Many of the signs were far from "Obama friendly." The loss of the progressive left by Obama could have a dramatic effect on the chances of Democratic candidates in the off-year election, now just weeks away.
This family was overheard telling other protesters that Park Police told them they could not have their sign on the grounds of the Washington Monument. The reason: it was disrespectful to George Washington. Who knew George Washington was a Zionist?
