A narrative from the D.C. anti-war demonstration

"Have a good time guys. And thank you for doing what's right for America."

And so started my three day weekend as the van driver dropped us off in front of four buses boarding at MCC in the dead of night, about to head to D.C. for the massive demonstration this weekend. Some of you may have heard about it on the news, about the tens of thousands of radicals and activists who converged on the mall, disrupting business as usual. Let me dispel a few of those lies. First of all it was somewhere around 300,000 people. Second of all the faces I saw taking to the streets were not just seasoned activists of all colors (Socialists, communists, anarcho-syndicalists, etc.) but parents and grandparents with photographs of their children serving in the military, registered Democrats and Republicans fed up with this fiscal, unconstitutional and moral disgrace, heavily religious men and women including nuns, priests and monks, and veterans fresh off the plane from overseas. Third, I'll concede that we did disrupt business as usual. But not nearly enough.

Not wanting to only publicly demonstrate my distaste for the war, I stayed on to lobby members of Congress on Monday with a sizable delegation representing Buffalo and the Western New York area. In fact, there were several hundred citizen-lobbyists from 47 states that day on Capitol Hill, each one trying to tell their representatives what their votes did not-why they were opposed to the war. In the fight to get re-elected and to appear to be "supporting the troops" according to an obsolete rubric (unflinching support of the Commander in Chief), it is easy for our elected officials to forget certain facts; such as the disproportionate loss of 43 soldiers from WNY, decreasing funds for veterans benefits and other services because of money needed for the troop surge, a VA hospital across from South Campus that is in shambles, and the majority opinion in the U.S. and the Middle East that our troops need to be put where they belong, that is, home with their families and friends. I was in the halls of power on Monday, reminding Reps. Slaughter, Higgins and Reynolds as well as Senators Clinton and Schumer of those facts. Please take the time to remind the people you voted for of those facts as well.