I have just one word for the September 24 protest: WOW.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many people out against the war in Iraq and the like, even counting J20 (which seemed to consist of a smaller, but very dedicated bunch). They say that more than 100,000 people attended.
I’m working on a full narrative for this trip like I did for the Million Worker March, J20, and A16. The full report for this trip will end up in Life and Times as a photo set when I’m done with it. Unlike in those other three cases, however, I’m not posting the narrative here. It will go up when I finish the entire set.
All in all, I took 391 photos and 41 movies. Of that, roughly 360 photos and 30 movies were protest-related, while another 31 photos and 11 movies were rail-geek stuff.
And, as always, my standing DC goals (each line at least once, each car type at least once, and one terminal other than Vienna) were mostly met. I rode all five lines, each one at least twice. I visited Huntington, wading through some serious single-tracking in getting there. The only thing I missed on was the different car types. I rode Rohrs, Bredas, and Rehabs, but I didn’t ride a single CAF car all day. Must be something about protests and CAF cars. For the Million Worker March, I didn’t ride a single CAF car all day. And for that day, the ride I figured would be my CAF ride (taking the Green Line from Mt. Vernon Square to Gallery Place) turned out to be a Breda. On this most recent protest, on my Green Line ride, which I again figured would be when I’d get a CAF, I got Bredas again.
I also saw eight-car trains running on the Blue, Orange, and Green Lines, and no train was shorter than six cars all day from what I could tell. For that matter, the Metro was packed with people all day, going to and from the various protest events.
I’m not going to post photos from September 24 now, since it’s late and I don’t feel like it, but certainly a number of the photos will make it onto the photo feature on the main page (one’s there now, in fact), plus I’m still sorting out the memories of the whole thing and writing my narrative for it. My friend Angela Bean, who was originally supposed to go with me, saw a couple of the photos, and agreed I did get some real gems in there. Again, it will all come out in the wash.
There are also a number of articles on DC Indymedia about the protest. It was a lot of fun.
Oh, and I should mention that Mom was also in DC that day, attending the 2005 National Book Festival, or as we called it, “the book thing”. We met up at Pentagon City later, after we’d finished with all of our respective events.