Chicago Anti-War protest

This Saturday night I decided to go with my family to the anti-war protests that were arranged in Chicago. We took the red line up to Division St, from which point we had heard the march was going to be starting. We got out of the train, and after a bit of confusion on my parents part about which way we were supposed to go, I pointed them in the right direction East down Division toward State St. Crossing state, there were a large number of police wagons, also a police helicopter overhead, and in true Daley fashion, many street cleaners going after the protest to clean up the mess. After being yelled at quite rudely to get out of the way of the St cleaners, we headed down to the starting point of the protest, and found no one there because the procession was already on Michigan avenue, the main rout for the protest. Pretty soon we found them: a solid mass of people streaching across the intersection, sounds of chanting, and vague sounds of drums. As we joined in we passed a group of "Billionairs for Bush" doing a cute little act. There were some cute signs such as "bush is a category 5 disaster" scrawled in marker on a board, other ones such as "bring the troops home" or "restore not war." It was silent when we joined, but pretty soon people got a chant going "hey! Ho! George Bush has got to go!" which gave the march an invigorating feeling. As we continued marching, I noticed the police in full riot gear who were lining the rout, each armed with a billy club and a helmet, some with guns. There were a few Republican anti-protesters here and there; one group was holding a large sign which said "support our troops." The guy next to me started hollering "support our troops, bring them home!" I joined in and we got about 10 people to chant that as we passed. In complete contrast, we passed a large sign which drew applause which said "Bring the troops home. Send Bush and congress instead" in black block letters on a white background. At the Michigan Avenue bridge, we were turned onto Wacker Drive by 20 mounted police standing in a semicircle. As we crossed the river, I was interested to notice that they even had a police boat in the river, for what purpose I cannot imagine. Some point along here we got stopped, and the current chant was "peace! Now!" I distinctly remember a woman a little over to my left trying to get a call and response started, and saying "what do we want?" "peace" "when do we want it?" "now!" She didn't have too loud a voice so I took up the call for her, and after a while had a good rhythm going with a nice call and response. After a few times my voice broke, and I quit. A few minutes later, I took up the call with again, and got into the army sergeant roll...It took about a minute for my voice to break again, but this time, when I stopped, so did everyone else. When I got it going a third time, I started pumping my fist and really got people going. I think at one point I must have had between 75 and 100 people doing the "what do we want?" "peace!" "when do we want it?" "Now!" when my voice broke again, I was pleased that I got a round of applause. At some point a different woman behind me did the same thing with another cheer, and got another call and response going "Tell me what democracy looks like!" "This is what democracy looks like!" it didn't catch on as well as the "peace" one, but it was still fun. We also tried to get a call going
"where should the monkey go?" "out with the monkey!" but it didn't catch, probably because it was so silly. It was nice, however, to hear my cheers being passed up and down the line with other leaders taking their hand at the call response thing. By this time we had reached Daily Plaza, where there was a small rally. I was pleased to here that people were still doing my cheer while they gathered around the rally speaker who unfortunately had only a small megaphone. After hanging around for awhile, we took heed of the police order to disburse by 9:00, and left the way we came on the L. Official numbers for the protest were 7,000, but I would say It was more like 8,000 to 10,000. It was a good evening, and a great way to get your voice heard by lots of people, even if you couldn't speak for the rest of the evening.