Blast From Yer Past: Feb. 15 2003
February 15, 2003 was called by many “The Day The World Said ‘No’ To War”, and was reportedly the largest worldwide turnout for a single day of protest in history. Here’s a little “remastered” slice of what went down in New York City that day:
As I recall, the actual rally site and staging area for the march was somewhere around UN Plaza-ish, but owing to the staggering hugeness of the crowds converging — reportedly in the 1.5 million neighborhood — we never quite made it to the actual rally or march, and ended up just kind of flowing with the crowd through the streets, and spending most of the day hanging around East 50th and Third Avenue.
Here’s my friend Marianne from the Washington Action Group and the “Doghouse” puppet workshop in DC, being gratuitously harassed by NYPD goons for using a bamboo stick — apparently considered a “lethal weapon” that day — to hold up her sign. She was helped out by comrades in the crowd with some spare cardboard wrapping paper rolls.
DC anarchists “representing” on Third Avenue. One of the better flag designs of the day.
Some more of our friends from DC, the ever-popular Korean drummers’ group whipping up the crowd.
Just a few weeks before, the then-director of Fatherland Security, a pug-ugly bastard named Tom Ridge (a guy who looked as if he could play a gangster in a ’40s film noir) advised the nation that their best defense against a chemical or biological attack was to — get this — seal off your doors and windows with plastic sheeting and duct tape.
I never could figure out how these people got onto the top of that Fritos truck. It was an oddly inspiring sight, though they seemed oblivious to the shouts of the crowd below to “throw us down a bag of Fritos, man!”
“What are we going to do tonight, Brain?” This had to be my number-one favorite sign of the day. One is a genius; the other’s insane.
The Radical Cheerleaders belt one out towards the end of the afternoon. About this time, a breakaway unpermitted march had forced its way onto the streets and defied the police to march to a point near our location, succeeding by the strength of sheer numbers.
After the last cartoon, I promised myself I wouldn’t do any more cartoons about the current ongoing lame-assed, phony gun-control circus. Then, after several days of brouhaha about how Obama goes skeet shooting all the time, the White House conveniently released this photo of our Boy Emperor skeet shooting which was actually taken last summer sometime — and, well… I just couldn’t resist.
Why am I not surprised that after weeks of Liberal-style yammering about gun violence and murdered children, Obummer suddenly decides to release this photo in a blatant, weak attempt to pander to the NRA clowns? Typical, really — fake left, run right: classic Obama.
The next four years can’t go by fast enough for me.
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When I saw the initial reports on the Newtown school shootings, I knew I could pretty much skip any “news” coming out after that as I’d seen the same cycle of public hair-pulling, slobbering media frenzy (including cartoonists), and wacky-assed “solutions” every time this had happened — going back to Columbine High, if not earlier.
I’d pretty much gotten to the point where I could guess almost exactly what was going to happen, and when — from the initial round of wailing, moaning and candlelight vigils. to the media putting on a circus, to El Presidente giving a variation of the usual smarmy speech about Our Murdered Children, to the cockamamie suggestions from mainstream Liberals and the NRA, to Pat Robertson saying something intensely stupid, to Liberals wasting time getting bent out of shape over whatever stupid shit Pat Robertson said, to some weasly legislative “solution” that does absolutely nothing to address the fact that American society was built on violence from the ground up… and finally to the media deciding they’ve milked it for all they can and going back to hyping other bullshit, like the next phony budget crisis.
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“I Have A Drone”
Seen above here is the famous Ben Ali’s Chili Bowl on U Street, a landmark of historic black DC, as spotted on the morning of Inauguration Day. Sadly, the window display is presented entirely without irony.
A little later, though, at Malcolm X Park… what better way to celebrate Martin Luther King’s Birthday than with an anti-drone warfare protest? Who would King bomb?
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