Sunday, January 28, 2007

El Paso reflects D.C. demonstrators

The Grim Reaper, as portrayed this day by Mrs. Dada. As I warned
her beforehand, "I want no embraces from you while in costume."

Saturday's national protest in Washington, D.C. was echoed in cities and towns across the nation. El Paso was one of those communities which chose to speak out. I had the pleasure of accompanying Mrs. Dada, who is a member of the local peace group, Border Peace Presence, downtown to observe and participate in a show of their displeasure of the administration's endless, pointless, unwinnable Iraq war and their plans to escalate it.

I was impressed with the turnout of demonstrators at one of the downtown's busier intersections. The peace group was joined by church groups, sympathetic citizens and, for the first time, university students organizing against the war and military recruitment tactics in our high schools.

But most impressive was the tremendous outpouring of support shown by passing motorists. The waves, flashing peace signs, thumbs up and the blaring horns evidenced the true tidal wave of public opinion that is taking place against Bush and Cheney's "victory" delusions.

During the two hour event, I personally witnessed only three disapprovals: one thumbs down; a bird which flew in our direction and a funny car with driver's thumb down, his female companion with an ever so coy thumbs up. This small minority is probably a standard representation of the greater national population still buying into George Bush's Willie Loman impression of a man who is no longer able to meet the demands of his own selling job.

Besides the great outpouring of public support, I was also pleased with local TV news coverage of the event. (Dada's "BUSH IS NUTS"sign was flashed prominently three times during one channel's reporting of the event.) But I have to take a moment here to chide the local newspaper.

SHAME - SHAME - SHAME El Paso Times!

Today's El Paso Times coverage of the D.C. demonstration proved puny ("see page 4A"). And coverage of El Paso's own demonstrators proved totally nonexistent!

Maybe the fact anti-war protest took place on Saturday explains why it received no coverage, i.e., it's "newspaper" reporters don't work on weekends.

Thankfully, that's a nice coincidence because, apparently to the El Paso Times' way of thinking, this is the same time of week no news happens either!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is great ;-)
Thank you so much for sharing and REPORTING the news...yeah the coverage of the March and the Peace Protests sucked..Big TIme...disgusting...

we have to keep This Alive...I am Proud to know you Dada and Mrs Dada

Anonymous said...

Hey, at least your paper covered it at all. Now, we had no local protests, but even news of the DC protest did not make our paper.

Somehow though, the local TV news top story of the evening was how Rocky Anderson once again embarrassed Utah by speaking at a mob rally. He gets little or no support at home, just like a certain other prophet. Thank god for C-Span!

ps, I loved your description of the guy with his thumb-down, while his female passenger gives a shy thumbs-up! You & Mrs. Dada made my day. ~~ D.K.

msliberty said...

Came over from enigma's site...

Sounds like things went great in El Paso! We had similar response here in Palm Springs...very little disapproval and lots of passersby who honked their support!

Like you, I have pics up at my site!

Dada said...

e4e: Thanks for the kind words. We mirror the admiration back at you! Keep up the good fight.

raed: Don't you love news spoofs? Rocky Anderson at a "mob" rally. God, what great propagandists!

msliberty: Enjoyed all the photos over on your website. Thanks for mentioning them!