What do we want?

There was an anti-war protest in Spookytown today. You may have seen it on tv. I had been feeling kind of ambivalent about going -- so many slogans and speakers that aren't fully endorsable! Joan Baez. Al Sharpton. The conflation of this war with Israeli-Palestinian issues (and not in a productive way). Conspiracy-theory naivete. And so much more. But my friend Hellraiser was coming down from Philly with her friend Warrior, and so we went on down to Constitution Avenue. Many groups of young folk were unabashedly enthusiastic:





















Others kept their composure:

















"The man" was out in full force, but had nothing much to do.












Same for not-quite-the-man as well:














Some older women who had been helping to carry one protest piece, a long (really, much much too long) piece of rope with the photocopied photograph of every US military casualty to date, in alphabetical order, asked me, Hellraiser, and Warrior to take their places, and so we did.


































It was just as moving as you might think, if not more so; some of the plastic sleeves had personal notes from people who either knew or had been in touched in some way by these men and women. We ended up laying the pictures down by the Washington monument, next to a field of 1900 crosses (with some mageyn davids thrown in).

























I cried.

But there were lighter moments, along with the inexplicable:










Can any of you mid-Atlantic types explain the half smoke pretzel? Because I sure can't.