Everyone seems to know that the tea party “movement” had a rally on the steps of the capitol yesterday. They got in the face of a few Congressmen and now every Beltway media outlet from the Washington Post to Meet the Press is talking about it. But there was another protest in town yesterday. Thousands of people showed up in front of the White House to tell Obama (and Congress) to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to treat Palestinians fairly, and to generally end the US military empire.
MSNBC estimates that somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 tea party people showed up at the capitol building. Yet the low end of the estimates for the number of people who showed up at the peace demonstration (including myself) is about 2,500, and the high end is about 10,000. Where’s our moment on Meet the Press? Where’s our article in the New York Times?
If you ever needed proof that the tea party “movement” is not really a movement but a few people newly interested in politics magnified one thousand times by a lazy, irresponsibly press, this is it. Two rallies in DC yesterday. One was for peace, one was for stopping the health care bill. One was put together by the ANSWER Coalition and other antiwar groups. One was put together by the tea party people and their friends in high places. One had as many as 2,000 people attend. One had as many as 10,000 people attend. Yet the smaller tea party protest had a much higher profile in the news than the march for peace!
The peace movement is a real grassroots movement that exists Without the wmagnifying glass of the corporate media to exaggerate the impact of it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t benefit the Washington Post to admit that the reason the march stopped in front of their building was not actually their “editorial board’s positions on the wars,” but their reporting which – in its substance and topics which are covered – is completely biased in favor of a corporatist, echo chamber view of reality. Maybe that’s the reason why there was a speaker from Project Censored.
As for what happened at the protest, starting at about noon there were speakers on a platform that had been set up in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House. When I arrived, I spoke to Mike Gravel for a bit, although he did not give a speech. Famous personalities like Cindy Sheehan and Ralph Nader spoke, as well as prominent people in the antiwar movement like Kevin Zeese, along with some lesser known people, like a group of high school students.
http://blogs.alternet.org/rossl/2010/03/21/1000s-march-on-capitol-against-healthcare-on-white-house-for-peace-guess-which-is-covered-more/
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