For 8 years I attended over 20 massive protests in DC & NYC

Some of those protests had over 500k attendees. I remember a protest in Sept of 2003 when Bloomberg wouldn't give us a permit to march. We ended up shutting down lower Manhatten thru Times Square - that takes a TON of people to manage that.

Why did we gather? Mainly to protest a war we felt was start without any reason. Sure there were a few nut jobs in our group but for most of us we were everyday regular folks who had something to say and gathered in unity to say it.

Did we get front page news everytime we gathered? Not really. Were we covered all the time on mainstream news - nope. We were lucky we got coverage on C-Span and even then C-Span would give equal coverage to the counter protest that maybe has 100 people gathered.

The Mainstream Media poo-pah'd us as irrelevant but yet bend over backwards to promote way smaller gatherings of white folks who haven't figured out yet they benefit from what is going on with the Obama administration.

The Tea Party is nothing more than a bunch of fringe fanatics who are hypocrites of the system. There protests are all about "ME" and "My Money", "My Guns". Whereas our protest were about illegal wars - soldiers being sent to die, civilians caught in the crossfire, illegal practices of torture.

I guess if we were a bunch of angry 50+ white folks protesting maybe they would have taken notice. Instead we were a cross-section of American - All colors, all nationalities, a regular melting pot of American Society. I guess that doesn't sell well on MSM.

starting in September of 2005, and you're absolutely right. We never got any big coverage.

folks were still on the Mall when those who started the march finished. Yet did the MSM say anything or publish a picture? Nope.

dg

I didn't miss a march for eight years.

The one I remember in the media was in Jan of 07 when we had 700,000 and CNN said "thousands" and FOX said "hundreds".

I had hesitated going because I was afraid it was going to be too cold in January, but we had a gorgeous 50-something day with bright sunshine.

Everyone with a camera had to take a picture of that. And I was marching with him so we didn't make it to the end cause we were stopped so many times. We were also interviewed by the NY Times. That was pretty cool.

And unhappy camper was passing out those little flags to stick in dog poop. I still have mine:)

:evilgrin:

it's still around here, somewhere....

dg

David did love that. Pretty clever.

:(

cowards.

dg

What a great day that was!

We saw blossoms when we went to the new Native American museum.

Was that the time those people wouldn't get out of the street after the march and we stopped on the way back to the hotel to watch the police come? We went to so many marches, I can't keep them straight in my mind.

I went to try to talk some sense into those idiots, but they refused to move because it was "their" street. Never mind the permit was only until 5pm & it was about 5:30pm at the time. I thought the cops were quite restrained dealing with them.

dg

In fact I think I was at that 2003 march with Lynne. Was that the one that ended in Washington Sq. Park?

Because it was an election year when we had it. And I had brought the cut-out of Bush from a Philly DU gathering. And that one was close to about a Million - we filled the entire mall.

I was so sad and afraid that no one would want to show up afterward -

edited to say - oops! that was SF in 2002 :blush:

They're all young hippies who are supposed to protest. There's nothing counterintuitive about that.

Middle-aged white males getting fired up apprently is something new and unusual?

And when I go protest, there is little mention of that. Why? Maybe because I am a middle aged white LIBERAL male.

Like any large gathering of protests there is bound to be a few troublemakers - they want to engage the police and ilicit a response and don't care if they get arrested. That fine, go for it but why are they the poster-children for our movement? Why not put the Korean War Veteran who brought his grandson to join in the march? Or a group of grandmothers from a local church who are part of the march? Instead the media would find the 1-2 people that no one really could identify with and made them the poster child for the protest.

Shame on them.

(btw, those were some of the people that would be on our peace protest bus here in WIlmington)

That the poster posters for the anti-war protests (that is, the posters that got featured on the popular media coverage) were usually the ones that could be made fun of easiest, or misinterpreted, or that didn't represent what most of the people were there for. In contrast, the coverage of the Tea Baggers might show some of their stupider placards, but there's always a helpful talking head to explain just exactly what the Tea Baggers are talking about.

As confused as the media commentators were about the anti-war protests (What are they really saying? Why don't they support the troops? Shadowy, nefarious forces (George Soros, ANSWER) might be bankrolling these demonstrations!), they show a remarkable ability to divine the One True Meaning of the Tea Bagger gatherings, ignoring about 60% of their rhetoric and signage to distill the Pure Essense to Tea Baggery in its most palatable form: Taxes are too high!

"They" being the ones who hide behind the facade of the ridiculous propaganda being spewed out our televisions and newspapers.

That's when I really knew the msm was the enemy of democracy and no longer a vanguard of the truth.
They showed almost nothing of hundred of thousands that marched

I don't remember seeing anyone burning George Bush in effigy. There were no mock-hangings of Dick Cheney. I didn't see anyone toting guns and assault rifles.

and they were all older women who were normal average Grannies working for peace for their Grandchildren.

We had vigils for years here in NC...where we would come with lit candles. We had a huge demonstration in our state Capitol with over 1,500 people to protest the invasion of Iraq before it started. We had marches in Durham, NC downtown every weekend for two years with theater groups and ordinary folks with handmade signs.

All that effort and we would get a snip on the local news always reporting small numbers that were not the reality.

The MSM never intended to cover us. We just kept hoping that it was a mistake and one day they would.

No matter how few show up, no matter how unfounded their "grievances". Same as they're trying their damndest to turn Palin into something other than a shrill, clueless twit.

good luck with your little "project" there, M$M.

We the people ain't buyin' your expired shit sandwich.

get a hundred people to show up and the Corporate Media does the rest.

The revolution will not be televised.

At each of our tiny, little, local vigils... and we knew there were hundreds more in the next town, and the next, etc. And we didn't have a full on political party buying us buses and whipping up the hate in us... no, we were peacefully there of our own accord... no guns, not racism, no hate... just the love of our fellow man and our need for the wars to end.

in the Vietnam protests, they didn't get much positive coverage either. Lessons to be learned in there.

Nobody cared that I was at the anti war protests Lynne is talking about. That was what struck me about the protests. We were a really mixed group.

all the airtime they want and then some. TeaBaggers have become the front line for Wall Street, Insurance Co. Death Panels, and Murderous Mine owners...iow...for the Fascist agenda.

I actually have heard on CNN and MSNBC that the far right is no worse or certainly not more dangerous than the far left. And the example given was thousands marching in NYC in 2004 against Bush/Cheney before the Republican National Convention with "extremist" signs.

Funny though, these were anti-war marchers, who were NOT packing guns, hoarding weapons, and making inferences at shooting the man in the White House. They weren't in militia groups. They were for PEACE!

We have to stand up to this false parity argument. It's dangerously wrong, and deliberately so. The right has to own their violence, real or threatened.

yeah and we barely got noticed except the few extremists you might find in the group.

What really pisses me off is this. With any protest it does seem they find the most extreme and use that person to vilify the rest of the group. Except with our protest they were finding one out of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of protestors. But with their extremist it was usually one out of perhaps 100 that showed up to the event.

The Tea Party is really the Republican base. The majority of them still think Bush was a good president and just today they had new numbers on Bush and he had 27%.

http://www.pollingreport.com/BushFav.htm

Bring guns... Lots and lots of guns... Be really really angry and take over meetings and shout people down.

the mass media is. :shrug:

that sums it up

You are going to get this kind of coverage or lack of coverage depending on what hurts or helps the bottom line.

The corporate media doesn't want any attention given to the fact that lots of people are protesting our wars.

On the other hand, they would like to give lots of attention to protest against social programs, no matter who's doing it.

:mad:

shut out of the debate. how many answer or unite or people-on-the-ground were given time on hardball / msnbc? none.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_protest

Bitter cold day in Quebec City yet thousands participated, including moi...Canada's coverage was reasonable, but when I returned home to the States the very next day, it was if nothing had happened here...

Brief mention (like 30 seconds) on the major networks. And the coverage mostly mentioned only places like NYC,LA,DC,Chicago...even though the protests were everywhere, even small towns. Barely a word about it being international too... Grrrr! :mad:

Thank you!

peace~

the "free market without any government interference". The Tea Party backers are all about DEREGULATION-the very thing that has caused economic pain for so much of the country.

Media is probably a misnomer, even with the qualification.

Dressed up in nonsensical costumes and carried misspelled, racist signs.

demoralized it --

while encouraging the t-bag gun nuts!!

it isn't covered. That's news today. Rupert rules. May his Karma bite him soon and hard.

I agree with you. The media is paid off by the right wing nut jobs to do their bidding. They will create fake backgrounds, compound the frames so it looks like more people, cook the numbers as they usually do, and consistently play the false propaganda over and over. The media is totally responsible for this "uprising" of people who don't even realize they are protesting against themselves. Sure, there are wealthy folks in there dressed down for the occasion to keep them incited, that don't want to pay their fair share of taxes and don't want to lose their stock dividends. And they are igniting the old racism tactics to assist them in attaining their goals. But the majority of the tea baggers are in the dark, don't know it, and are going to wind up in jail or dead if they continue on this path of violence. I don't know too many people that are going to let them shoot at them without retaliation. And it seems cops are the targets for some. It's time to bring in the Marines to quell this bullshit. These people don't even realize Obama is the one who expanded their gun rights and is truly trying to help them. How utterly shameful this whole scam is. And all for the almighty $$$$$$$$ for these greedy money gubbers. Don't forget people...there are 250ish millionaires in Congress, too. Do you really think they are going to try to stop this unwarranted anti-Obama rage? Who's side do you really think all of these promoters are on????? The average American? NOT!

Or the anti-Bush protests in general going back to the first coronation.

I was there in DC that bleak day and can tell you there were huge numbers of anti-Bush protesters, not that anyone saw us on corporate media that night.

Same goes for all the numerous anti-war demonstrations I went to from 2002 to 2006 or so.

I always stop them right there.

"The same liberal media that didn't mention antiwar protests, but gushes about T Parties 1% their size? I thought we were going to talk sense here..."

On these days we lifted our voices! LINKS to antiwar protests 2003-2005

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4439801

You can tell by all the banners being flown in the neighborhoods, media attention on a large FOX scale, and even the GD newspapers, who for some reason put this front above the fold... we had the wrong backers, people!

Yeah, sarcasm....

doing programs that were considered anti war..and Donahue i believe had the highest rated show on MSNBC at the time of his firing!!!

Didn't the network executive change not too long after that, and the format for KO change? It's like Donahue was the litmus test, and they said, "oops... we fucked up".

Ralph Nader spoke.
Cindy Sheehan spoke.
Veterans against the War were there in force.

We marched to the US Capitol, filling 16 to 18 blocks curb to curb and carrying all manner of anti-war posters and banners.

9-16-07 national media: "What march?"

EarlG, and Ray McGovern too. Beautiful day. Marched right around the Capitol. No coverage.

Great circle of friends, though.

:patriot:

Why would GE/NBC, for example, want to give any negative coverage to a war that has been so profitable for them ... They know where there bread is buttered.

it's how useful they are to corporate interest.:grr:

They simply don't want the public to know about a grass roots anti - war movement.

Excellent and important post!

attended more rallies, meetings, and marches that I can count, and have just given up. It sucks not to be heard or even acknowledged.

"Tea Party" rallies...

Here is me and some friends...walking from Boston to NYC in 2004.

Nearly one hundred activists committed to countless social justice causes will take to foot, leaving the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Boston on July 30 and walk 258 miles, crossing 4 states and arriving in New York City on August 26 just in time for the Republican National Convention (RNC), which takes place, Aug 29 to September 2.

(by our arrival in NYC there were 260 of us)











After that we helped do this...

Between 5,000 and 6,000 participants took part in the Critical Mass bicycle ride on Friday August 27, 2004. The monthly NYC Critical Mass ride promoted by the environmental group Time's Up! occurs on the last Friday of each month and prior to this ride had usually attracted about 1,500 riders. Police eventually blockaded roads and arrested 264 people in relation to that event. Most of them were charged with disorderly conduct and held in custody for 24 hours. This was the first time the NYPD had made any significant arrests of Critical Mass participants.
edit

http://CriticalMassRides.info/stillweride.mp4

One of the weird things about this march is that we could'nt get away from the cameras and reporters.

It's good that you remind all of us about these differences. It's time for the Dems to get proactive--especially its liberal wing of the party.

"Useful idiots", if you will.

War makes a lot of money for a lot of corporations. Those same corporations have stakes (or like GE, just flat out have their own stations) in media companies. This is why you see the same message on the news: always pro-corporate, ALWAYS critical of Democrats, ALWAYS apologizing for neo-fascists Republicans.

They learned their lessons from the 60s - you broadcast actual public sentiment, and eventually Middle America just may wake up and demand an end to it all. The TeaBirthers are the kind of people the M$M loves: Democrat-hating, racist, retired and pissed off. TeaBirfers don't even need a cohesive reason to be angry, per se.

And if any of the TeaBirthers bring up the racism card . . . chances are, they just may be.

This is why I refuse to pay cable and broadcast news outlets. I feel a little less complicit.

The behavior in double standards and hypocrisy of the MSM is absolutely appalling and disgraceful beyond words. It has really shown what a joke the American media has become -a bunch of pathetic, inflated egos whose bias and sloppy reporting pollutes the national environment more and more by the day.

how do you plan to get around the media?

against the Republican convention in 2004. It was a stunning day, and we had a great turnout!

.How can they just blatently ignore big crowds like that.It first came to my attention after John Kerry was slighted on his victory and after the election I saw pictures floating around her at DU of his big crowds enver once did MSM show these gigantic crowds that came to see him compare with small crowds of *.

Except, let's do it much bigger and more frequently.

I'm over 50 and white. So were lots of the other participants. Be careful of stereotypes, you little whippersnapper. ;)

whereas the over 50 and white was just one of the many many groups of protestors at ours.

Agaisnt the drumbeat to the war in Iraq and we were given precious little mediat attention as well.


In fact the protests agaisnt the Iraq war were some of the biggest protests in history and the mainstream media ignored them.

Now the media is 24/7 all about whackos, reality shows, gossip, mockery, pushing the envelop of good taste, outrageousness... and RATINGS.

Sad, sad days in the USA.

These people don't stand for anything. What is their philosophy?

At least I know where I stand -- and the big notice on the back of my car says the same thing:
# of American soldiers dead in Iraq
# of American soldiers dead in Afghanistan
# wounded in both wars
# of civilians dead in Iraq

I update regularly. I don't want people to forget. At least I know what I stand for and I am proud to be a liberal.

I do not get what this bastard "tea party" (a ridiculous title) does that will benefit mankind or even the good of this entire country.
Ugh.

>>>>The Mainstream Media poo-pah'd us as irrelevant but yet bend over backwards to promote way smaller gatherings of white folks who haven't figured out yet they benefit from what is going on with the Obama administration>>>>>>

That's probably part of it right there. People don't tend to be very sympathetic to individuals who bring other people's day to a halt because they have something to say. If you want to protest, fine, great. But if your opinion is that correct, you should be able to get it out without handcuffing yourself to your friends in an intersection. I've personally always had extreme distaste for those who feel like shutting down the rest of society because they have an opinion.

I am of the "opinion" that war is the greatest of crimes against humanity.

If it were within my grasp to shut down the entirety of society's daily rounds to prevent or put an end to war, I would do so immediately and with NO hesitation.

Being against war and protesting it is no mere opinion...

for those 8 years. You know, the pro-war "Gathering of Eagles" crowd standing behind the barricades on the sidewalk.

my experiences echo what has been posted here.

It's VERY disappointing.

At the same time, I learned more about life, and how it really is, each time it happened.

People consider them "legitimate" sources of news. Even progressives think they are "real news". We cannot have a free country if we don't have freedom of the press. When they are bought and paid for by the corporations, all the rest of the corporatocracy just pretty much falls into place.

folk singer Charlie King's great intro and song captured this best:

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/vaguely-reminiscent-somebodys/id319173934>

(couldn't grab the lyrics to post, but the story and song are worth seeking out!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP5J6VZr-E8

You can get a real sense of the size of the crowd. Of course the media was pursuing a conscious policy of supressing coverage therby minimizing the impact of these demonstrations. The level of social control at work in the US now is truly astounding. Our only hope is to somehow get real Progressive candidates elected. Republican lite Democrats are just making things worse slower.

think regular people act. That's why they're so stupid.

Sad that the media is allowed to get away with this, still.

Just as Mr.G did for Adolph, the MSN is doing for the right.

To this day most people have no idea that there was a pretty big anti Bush/Supreme Court Coup protest in January 2001 on what many of us saw as the inauguration day of the actual loser of the the 2000 presidential election. That is because the networks bent over backwards to not show any of it.

There have been many enormous peace rallies here and around the globe since Dubya attacked Iraq on false pretenses and they barely saw the light of day in the US - however now every time 60-70 spelling challenged nut balls gather to protest our "socialist" (if only!) president/government it's all over all the news.

It's getting scary and awful things seem just around the corner. Germany 1934 or so = USA 2010 IMHO and I'm not alone in thinking that.

I mostly liked the US I grew up in and I don't want to leave but I'm making contingency plans, right now I think that's quite the prudent thing to do if you're sane and believe in live and let live.

anyway.

I think what needs to happen is one day all the talking twinkies at CNN and Faux show up to work one day and find their offices completely blocked off by protesters demanding that they clean up their act. I'd LOOOOOVVEE to see how they react to that. The media never likes being part of the story, especially when that part is negative.

disparity of coverage.

The primary motivation in determining corporate media coverage of protests is whether it helps or hurts the corporate media, their ownership or their commercial buying clients.

Protesting against war regardless of the numbers threatens the corporate military industrial complex and related industries.

The Teabaggers whether they know it or not support corporate supremacy; over the government and in turn the people, this constitutes a corporate media moist dream.

Thanks for the thread, LynneSin

I mean, I know it's common hyperbole to say protesters shut a city down, but that's exactly what happened. And the overwhelming majority of it was completely peaceful, but 2200 people were arrested. That's a hell of a lot of arrests.

And there was nary a peep about it on the media. They were too busy going ga ga over those really cool images of "shock and awe" coming out of Baghdad. And the local media just focused on the few incidents of violence (which were committed against property) to make it seem like there was mass rioting in the streets and people should say indoors and not come out because the big bad protesters will get you.

The teabaggers could dream for decades about accomplishing what we accomplished that day, and it would still be just a dream. They NEVER will. But in the meantime, they will get far more coverage and be deemed far more important that we ever were.

I missed the Viet Nam draft because THE YEAR I WAS ELIGIBLE Nixon stopped the draft. Having to serve would have broken me, even if I wasn't wounded or killed. The term that best describes my state as an 18 year old is "socially retarded". (I stole it from Zappa, who used the term during the rock rating debates in the mid 80's)

But, the FIRST ANTI WAR PROTEST in my life was Jan 2003 in DC. Good show - Rev Al, Jesse J, Ramsey clarke, and so on.

The disconnect between what we really think and what our MSM is telling us to think is growing so wide that it's becoming apparent to most Americans that our MSM is now PURE CORPORATE PROPAGANDA BULLSHIT. The majority of Americans have been against the war since it's inception. The will of the people is no longer even a consideration for how our government does things. Our elected officials all seem to serve something else besides the people that voted them in.

A sad state of affairs. I'm glad I'm not a young person starting out these days. I am old enough to remember the post WW2 times and how much opportunity was there after the war. I even remember in the mid sixties one of our main worries was what to do with all the leisure time our productivity afforded us! Looks like we as a nation don't have to worry any more about all of us having too much leisure time, now, doesn't it?

-90% jimmy

Pathetic really.

Back in the 70s, we did get a lot of attention. I still see the scar over my left eye where a pig whacked me with a night stick at Mayday in 71. Seven stitches after I got out of jail. Of course then, we were the anti American subversives. Yes, we got lots of attention from the media! Of course, we had Abbie Hoffmans, Bobby Seals, Jerry Rubins, etc. Lots of people with balls. Seems we don't have many of them now.We also burned shit, turned cars over and were VERY disobedient. I'm just glad they didn't have tasers back then!


Getting old is a strange thing. I forget that many weren't around for Viet Nam. Same players, different war. Brown and Root, now known as Haliburton was the big beneficiary of that one and we lost 58,000 fighting the Boogie Man Du Jour. The filthy commies. Now we have the Islamo Fascist as our current Boogie Man. I've seen this movie too many times and it's a bad one. Now, the media is drumming up for war with Iran. Saw this one too not very long ago. They will have missiles capable of hitting the US in 3 weeks or some bullshit like that. The crazy righties are rambling about Amen nut job being the 3rd Mahdi or some mumbo jumbo, not realizing that he has about diddly to do with what Iran does. Just like Obama has about diddly to do with what the US does. Things the media leaves out~

Which is: What would Zappa do?

There is actually a large data base of what Zappa would do because he gave interviews tirelessly and was a highly skilled self promoter.

Back in the DON'T TRUST ANYONE OVER THIRTY days of the sixties, Zappa was asked in England about helping to start a revolution. He did not advocate this, instead he suggested gaining control of the things that were screwing up life in America in the first place. His suggestion on the first place to start was TELEVISION.

I think the Conservatives of the seventies and especially the reagan eighties really listened to that one, as they have tactically taken over American Television News!

Our job is to take it back and I'm also in favor of MORE AND BIGGER MARCHES! Something so frigging big it just cannot be ignored!

-90% Jimmy

Not a lot. I remember a huge march in Boston @ '69 that filled the streets all the way from Kenmore Square to the Commons . . . and the only thing that got covered on the local news was a short clip of Abbie Hoffman calling the John Hancock Building a "hypodermic needle" then quick cutting to tear gas and the tactical police whaling on people in Harvard Square. Actually, some of the best coverage we ever got was from the "photo journalism" magazines - Life, Look.

What we did have then were our own private media outlets - posters that we copied and hung all over the streets, alternative newspapers, announcements at concerts and FM/or college radio. Those things are all gone now.