Seattle’s largest march and rally in many years was held to great effect, and with the intensely focused crowd making its point from one side of town to the other, only the ignorant could miss the message-PEACE NOW.

The Global Peace Movement moves into high gear as Seattles’ streets see the largest rally & march in recent memory, exceeding 60,000-75,000. The enormous outpouring, on a day that started out just dripping wet, gathered first at the Seattle Centers’ International Peace Fountain at Noon. Seattle Police Dept. Radio reported at 2:01PM that the front of the march had just reached 2nd & Pike, while the end was just leaving the Center grounds, 19 blocks away. The end of the march passed 2nd & Pike at 3:22PM –a total midtown pass time of 1 hour 22 minutes. At Westlake Center, the rally organizers had a “Peace Toll Booth” set up, so the marchers could contribute directly as they passed.

The police motorcycle squad did a fine job of stopping and controlling traffic, except that they blocked the street at the end of the one-way streets rather than at the beginning, causing motorists to sit for an hour, not just drive way around. The Front of the March had banners that stretched the length of the street, as chants of ‘This is What Democracy Looks Like”, and “What do we want? PEACE! When do we want it? NOW!

Seattle’s Police were visibly in possession of heavy weaponry, such as hand grenades of various types, etc. The did not deploy them, but did seek to dampen the crowds spirits by calling on the Seattle Monorail drivers to stop supporting the crowd by the honking of their horn-which did cause a roar every time! It should be noted that the leftist monorail did honk, while the rightist monorail did not. An expected flash point at Westlake center was peaceful as the counter demonstration was so small, about 20-30 people, no one noticed. On the contrary, all along the March folks leaned out of the brownstone and brick apartments lining the way crying out support and encouragement.

This anti war movement is just in its infancy, and will hopefully accomplish its immediate goal of deterring the administration from soon attacking Iraq. It is difficult to imagine that even if war with Iraq averted, this crowd will consider it’s job done. These Peace-Mongers are just getting their feet wet.