misnomer: Huge Protests Everywhere

February 16, 2003

Huge Protests Everywhere

Between 5 and 12 million people in over 600 cities worldwide protested against a US war on Iraq yesterday. From reading the police estimates, I suspect it's pretty close to 9 or 10 million. London, Madrid, Barcelona, and Rome had well over a million each, and a large number of cities had 100,000+.

I made a poster [200k, pdf] to help convey the magnitude of the event. Suitable for home, office, or telephone poll use.

Photos from protests on every continent provide a good sense of the massive scale of the event.

Even if it was 4 million, I can't really see how it wouldn't be front page news everywhere. But the politicization of crowd numbers and the power of willful ignorance can never be underestimated. Police managed to whittle the New York City figure down to 100,000 (Organizers say 800,000, Indymedia says 500,000), and CNN talked about "as many as 500,000" in London when the rest of the media was saying one million or more.

That's why I made the poster.

posted by dru in activism

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About

Misnomer is a weblog about the politics of new and old media, foreign policy, tech, culture, philosophy, and photography. It is maintained by Dru Oja Jay, who edits a newspaper called the Dominion. He lives in Mile End, a neighbourhood of Montréal, Québec, which is, in some ways, a part of Canada, which in turn subsists on occupied native land to which Canada doesn't actually hold the title. He also travels a lot.

The Dominion

The Dominion is a newspaper with the aim of promoting decent journalism, annoying the overwhelmingly right wing Canadian press, and being non-profit and democratically accountable. All at once. This newspaper also has its own weblog, where I post often.

Others

Some other folks who contribute to misnomer from time to time include Kendall Clark, John Haney, Amanda Jernigan, Ola Mork, and Sylvia Nickerson.

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