Media: How to Marginalize the Protest in Washington Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit [AP is playing it cagey on the numbers, having been burned so many times before. Since the 1960's, the usual rule of thumb to determine how many demonstrators really showed up has been to take the cops' numbers, the organizers' numbers, and figure it's 2/3 of the way between those two figures (toward the numbers claimed by the organizers, naturally.) Here, we only have an unofficial police "estimate," since "official" government lies on crowd size are a thing of the past. Note the last paragraph, designed to marginalize the however-many-thousands actually showed up. -- NY Transfer] source - Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews AP - 20 April 2002 Protesters for Diverse Causes Join Forces for Day of Demonstrations in Capital WASHINGTON -- Marching with puppets and placards and armed with many messages, tens of thousands of protesters joined forces on a warm spring Saturday to demonstrate peacefully against everything from U.S. policy in the Mideast to globalization and corporate greed. Protesters massed at sites across the city, then swarmed down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, in an eclectic crowd that mixed young communists, Black Panthers and "Raging Grannies." People came in busloads from around the country to show there is active political opposition in the United States. "I think the movement is beginning to wake up," said 80-year-old Valerie Mullen of Vershire, Vt., part of the "grannies" group. She said she came to protest "any war." Six-year-old Kira Appleman of Silver Spring, Md., came with her mom and held aloft a sign that said, "Palestinian children have rights, too." After starting the day with separate protests around the city, the various groups converged for a concluding rally that brought their causes together. Authorities do not provide official crowd figures for demonstrations in Washington, but by midafternoon Police Chief Charles Ramsey gave a rough estimate of 35,000 to 50,000. It was the spring meeting of world financial powers at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund that attracted the protesters to Washington, but anti-globalization forces did not seem to mind sharing the stage with many other causes. The various protests are "all connected in the sense that it's all part of how the world economic structure works," said 24-year-old Brad Duncan of Detroit. Protesters marched with two open wooden coffins bearing young sisters of Palestinian descent. When 7-year-old Philastine Mustafa was overcome by the heat, a young boy quickly took her place. "My people back home her age are being killed," said Anwar Mustafa, 33, of Philadelphia, the father of the girls. "Me and my daughters can spend a little time in the heat to show people who don't know." Not all the groups were in perfect agreement. When Black Panthers chanting "jihad" and "holy war" hoisted a Palestinian flag next to a picture Osama bin Laden, a Palestinian activist urged them to take the flag down. [And which Black Panthers are these? US homegrown Black Panthers? Nope - they're too smart. Members of the Middle Eastern Black Panther movement? Nope, they're mostly dead, and they know enough to translate "jihad" as "struggle" rather than "holy war." Or FBI provocateur "Black Panthers?" Ahhh... -- NY Transfer] ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrad-04.20.02-17:01:37-14511