WASHINGTON DC- Speakers were still entertaining an impatient crowd, and coffin carriers were mobilizing for the March to the Pentagon, when from the west came the Black Bloc. Bicycle cops in royal blue lycra scrambled to shepherd the group’s healthy gallop as they appeared from over the hill to kick the parade to a sudden start. They virtually led the parade over the bridge, until organizers prevailed upon the interlopers to allow the veterans groups to resume the lead, as planned. But it would not be the last initiative from the Anarchists.
(Click on image for better quality, wider crop)
1. THE MARCH
Black Bloc gallops into lead position, abruptly starting parade.
International Socialist Organization pass Lincoln Memorial
Peace groups from Vermont to Georgia
Youth and Student A.N.S.W.E.R.
West from the Washington Monument
Hezbollah crosses Arlington Memorial Bridge
Campus Antiwar Network
Across the Potomac
To the Pentagon
Code Pink paraded the parade
To military industrial complex in Crystal City
2. INTERRUPTION
At a narrowing of the route at the Boeing building, several students blocked the march with a plastic barrier.
Raising questions about the gentrified nature and self-policing demeanor of the event organizers and participants.
The Black Bloc honored the picket line, thus the Campus Antiwar Network and following groups were brought to a halt.
When the Black Bloc decided to move on to next actions, the march resumed.
2b. INTERRUPTION
At the first hint of misbehavior, stocky 40-something “videographers” in undercover protest garb were pointing their cameras into the noses of the black-clad participants.
3. MESSAGE VARIETY
Why explain? You won’t listen.
4. COUNTER PROTEST
On the Pentagon lawn, near signs pointing to the “Pentagon Memorial,” white folk waited with the usual anti-antiwar slogans.
Megaphone versus megaphone.
That simple.
5. CONFRONTATION
Police in riot gear await march destination at KBR.
6. COLORADANS FOR PEACE
(Still more photos to follow…)
“We’re fighting for your rights”
My doesn’t that sound familiar…
And the “love it or leave it” freakshow, man, they sure would love it if we did leave it…
…because then there wouldn’t be any Persons Of Conscience left in America to oppose their Evil Warmongering schemes.
Did any of them have a sign saying the (unfortunately) immortal words of the (thankfully) Very Mortal Stephen Decatur “my country, right or wrong”?
Every time somebody pops off with that B.S. it’s a clear and imminent signal that they’re fixing to do something to make sure America is going to be in the “Wrong” part of the equation.
And they call themselves “patriots” for destroying America and call us “traitors” for opposing them.
When you gonna be home? We ordered three days of steady rain for you…
The black block were almost without exception themselves white. The ones who were not cops were cheesey-fuck middle-class white kids who cover their faces so they can take jobs in middle management when they grow up.
Now that “Atlas Shrugged” is the number one best-seller in literature and fiction according to Amazon.com, it may be wise to consider the words of Ayn Rand from another work, “The Roots of War”, in “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”:
“Observe the nature of today’s alleged peace movements. Professing love and concern for the survival of mankind, they keep screaming that the nuclear-weapons race should be stopped, that armed forces should be abolished as a means of settling disputes among nations, and that war should be outlawed in the name of humanity. Yet these same peace movements do not oppose dictatorships; the political views of their members range through all shades of the statist spectrum, from welfare statism to socialism to fascism to communism. This means that they are opposed to the use of coercion by one nation against another, but not by the government of a nation against its own citizens; it means that they are opposed to the use of force against ARMED adversaries, but not against the DISARMED.
Consider the plunder, the destruction, the starvation, the brutality, the slave-labor camps, the torture chambers, the wholesale slaughter perpetrated by dictatorships. Yet THIS is what today’s alleged peace-lovers are willing to advocate or tolerate — all in the name of love for humanity.”