I missed the march, but I got off at the Pentagon City Metro station and took what seems to have been the same route as the marchers. Pentagon City is an urban, probably upscale area with large office buildings and a lot of construction (but the route passed at least one apparently vacant office building) just south of the Pentagon. If it had been a really large march, there might have still been a crowd when I got there, but things had already settled down. This being a large demonstration, I went towards the nearest police car after I came up from the subway, probably at the corner of 18th and 12th streets. I saw a small group with yellow signs who must have been returning from the event, so I went up 12th Street and turned north on to South Fern Street. At the time it was sunny with some clouds, but when I got to S Fern Street there was very strong wing and the wind chill made it feel pretty cold at the rally, exposed out on a very large and treeless parking lot. It probably wasn't a very cold day otherwise; I saw a monarch butterfly trying to migrate south by the Pentagon, perhaps coming from a large bed of dark red Lantanas near the Potomac, but the wind carried it back north. I crossed under I-395 going into Washington and negotiated the confusing Pentagon grounds. I imagined the Pentagon as being on flat ground, but there is actually a lot of topography, along with spike-topped black fences. I passed Abraham Lincoln, who seemed to be talking about 9/11 truth, in a group probably leaving the rally. Another person who must have been coming in late showed me the way to the rally. The rally was of course visible from the Pentagon, as well as two highways, South Washington Boulevard and Virginia Route 110, but a participant I know had the criticism that the rally wasn't located where it could reach other people. I saw a man in a gray suit, who might have been a civilian employee arriving at the Pentagon, come over to see what was going on, but very few people were around beside activists and police personnel. I might have seen a counter-protester far away with the police.
A steady trickle of people were leaving the rally as I arrived, so it must have been larger at the beginning. I had hoped it would be a major demonstration, but my impression was that there were more than 100 people, but less than 500, maybe less than 200, when I tried to estimate the size. Cindy Sheehan was one of the organizers and said there were 1200 people at the march, the best part of the event, 500 at the start of the rally and 30 at the end. Another organizer put the march at 2000 people. A participant told me there were about 1000 at the march, while another participant said there were at most about 300 (and around 75 on Saturday). This would be a pretty large peace demonstration in Durham or Raleigh, but was much smaller than national demonstrations against attacking Iraq that I participated in, with turnout in the tens or hundreds of thousands. There were apparently a lot of police at the march, but few and mostly in the distance at the rally. Several college students, maybe from George Washington University, are surveying participants in mass activist events, left and right, for a professor Michael Heaney at the University of Michigan ( lsa.umich.edu/ncid/people/diversity-scholars-directory/michael-heaney.html ). Videos, photos, and articles about the events have been linked at www.marchonpentagon.com/march . Many famous activists and organizations endorsed the March, including the Green Party of the US and seven Green groups (including the Pennsylvania and Texas state chapters and Utah's Green Women Rising), unfortunately not including the NC Greens or any other local organizations, though there might have been an NC Green contingent, carpooling from Asheville and Greensboro/Winston-Salem. I did meet some people from North Carolina, but I don't know if they were Greens. There was a vigil in solidarity with the march 12 – 3pm in Asheville's Pack Square that Sunday.
There were many speakers and musical performers, but I didn't hear all of the names. They included former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, a leader of the Movement for a People's Party, Dakotah Lilly, Ann Wright, Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers, Medea Benjamin, Yahne Ndgo, Alison Weir, Cindy Sheehan, Sameera Khan, a leader of Students and Youth for a New America, the Raging Grannies, a band from Vermont, and the DC Labor Chorus. One woman mentioned the “military occupations of Palestine and Kashmir,” referencing an issue the US left rarely talks about. The SYNA speaker might have been the one who pointed out Honduran coup resistance banners in the audience. The woman who spoke last said something along the lines of “you're still on top of a s--- pile” on the question of who is elected to head the government (there weren't any children around by that time, since this was supposed to be a family-friendly event) and predicted that there will be a war on Iran in a year.
No one was circulating literature or tabling (or collecting donations, which are probably needed) when I got there, other than a water table, but I found literature from the US Marxist-Leninist Organization, the Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts (a fusion of the state Green Party and Rainbow Coalition Party, a state chapter of the GPUS), Movement for a People's Party, #New Jersey AntiWar Agenda (NJAntiWarAgenda.org, a very informative newspaper for organizing published by Bob Witanek), Women for Racial and Economic Equality, the Black is Back Coalition, and postcards referencing If Americans Knew (ifamericansknew.org) and their blog, www.israelpalestinenews.org. I heard that the Party for Socialism and Liberation was represented in the march. I saw yellow ANSWER (the Act Now Against War and End Racism Coalition) signs against attacking Syria, a Veterans for Peace flag, and a blue flag with an image of the Earth. There was a Honduran flag imprinted with “Fuera JOH” and a red flag with FNRP in yellow and a portrait, representing the movement against the US-backed coup in 2009 ( www.liberationnews.org/fuera-joh-stolen-honduran-election-sparks-massive-protests-2/ , laborrights.org/fuerajoh , and peoplesdispatch.org/tag/fuera-joh/ ). Code Pink donated some of the equipment and was represented in the march. All sorts of people were there, half or more women when I looked around.
I got to the “act of Civil Assistance” Monday (the 22nd) at Lafayette Square, across Pennsylvania Avenue NW from the White House, in early afternoon. This being outside a center, or the center, of US imperialist power, there were several demonstrations at the same time, and it wasn't obvious where the Women's March on the Pentagon event was as I walked over. In front of the White House around 100 or more people with the Human Rights Campaign were protesting the Trump Administration's actions against trans rights. When that demonstration dispersed, another relatively large, but smaller group, took over the street to denounce President Paul Biya of Cameroon. The leader with a megaphone spoke mostly in French and their signs were in French (Cameroon is predominantly francophone, but English is also an official language) and they had a Cameroonian flag/banner. There must have been an organizing group, but a woman I asked said there wasn't one. A small group protested the treatment of the Uighur ethnic group in western China. They had East Turkistan flags, sky blue with a white crescent and star in the center, and a US flag, and at one point played the US anthem and another anthem I didn't recognize. Presumably they were from a nationalist organization; their pamphlet refers to an online petition, but doesn't say what group they represent. According to Wikipedia, there was an independent East Turkestan twice in the first half of the 20th century, inhabited by several ethnic groups, but it is now China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Province (the protesters date the loss of independence as December 20, 1949). I found out that there has been an anti-nuclear weapons/peace encampment or vigil directly across from the White House since 1981 [8/27/2022 edit - Rare coverage of the vigil: covertactionmagazine.com/2022/08/12/meet-the-man-jesse-ventura-called-the-bravest-man-in-washington/ ]. Individual people were also holding signs. Christine Travis talked about how Agent Orange has harmed the health of multiple generations of her family and the lack of adequate aid for victims of this poison from the Vietnam War. She mentioned the Children of Vietnam Veterans Health Alliance ( www.covvha.net ) as a good resource and I think she mentioned the Second and Third Generation Agent Orange Coalition ( www.facebook.com/groups/1505293713104045/ ). A veteran with a cape showing a design with marijuana and the medical caduceus, possibly famous on social media as the Duke of Hemp, etc., was talking about voter registration and marijuana. A white homeless man had a sign about the “agent orange” currently in the White House. A black homeless man who might have been protesting as well harangued the Cameroonians for asking for US help, though he might also have been a little mentally unhinged. Someone was soliciting money for Haitian children; his sign seemed very familiar from other trips to DC, but I don't know if it is a real charity. There might have been even more protests I missed. As I was leaving I thought I saw a sign about freeing someone from prison.
The Women's March event ended not long
after I got to Lafayette Square (it ended at about the same time as
the Human Rights Campaign event). They gave out sandwiches,
tangerines, etc. to homeless people and then to anyone in the park,
and some extra food was left on a bench. A participant told me that
10 to 15 people turned out. She also talked about Basque political
prisoners held in Spain, accused of being terrorists, from the town
of Altsasu. Marchers from beyond the Beltway were urged to do civil
assistance actions of some kind in their own areas. The police
closed Pennsylvania Avenue not long after the Human Rights Campaign
protesters left, and later all of Lafayette Square, after an influx
of tourists had arrived (some seemed to be Chinese, and I wondered if
they noticed the Uighur protest and what they thought). A helicopter
could be heard on the other side of White House. Travis said the
park's sprinkler system had been on earlier, but it might regularly
activate in the morning. It was interesting and exciting to see so
much protest in Lafayette Square, but I had to head back to Durham in
mid-afternoon, so I wasn't there very long.
There are photos on the Women's March
on the Pentagon, ANSWER, USMLO, and other websites and the hashtag is
#WomenRise4Peace. Here are some photos from the events Sunday and
Monday ©:
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| A striking and seemingly vacant office building, with a lot of leaves and litter on the sidewalk, near the Pentagon ©. |
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A purple martin house given to the Pentagon by a town or company in Canada for Earth Day 2008 (?). I don't know if purple martins actually nest in it during the summer ©.  |
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| The DC Labor Choir at the rally ©. |
At Lafayette Square:
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