This is Marco Jawsario, VFR’s Washington correspondent, reporting from the huge March on Washington.
Amigos, it was indeed a beautiful day, with tens of thousands of fellow patriots filling the streets and displaying their intense dissatisfaction with the current administration and its congressional allies. This was a day long to be remembered, and shame on you conservativistas in the DC area, who decided it was more important to mow your lawn than to make history!
As Senora Jawsario was sidelined by a sore back, I was accompanied to the march by a fellow conservative activist, who is a stay-at-home mom and a good friend of the family. Instead of driving into Washington, we decided to park near the Pentagon and take the Metro into Federal Triangle, where the marchers were to gather. As we walked to the Pentagon Metro, we met up with several people from Florida and Ohio. Seeing very few people at the Pentagon station, I started to worry about prospects of a low turnout. But when the train reached the platform I saw all the cars fully packed and my morale rose. My friend and I squeezed into the train, smiled at our fellow patriots, and during the 15 minute ride to DC chants of “USA! USA!” spontaneously broke out. But when someone started singing “God Bless America” and we all joined in, I knew this was going to be a good day.
As we left the train and took the escalator up to the street, we could already hear the roar of the crowd outside. The main attraction for me was the cleverness of some of the signs. My favorite was “The solution to 1984 is 1776.” Anyway, there were so many people packing Federal Triangle, that the crowd started filing down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Capital, about 3/4 of a mile away, an hour before scheduled. Along the way, it was very obvious that the most vocal marchers were the females. In fact, I would estimate 60 percent of the crowd was female. When we reached the Capital I head one of the Park Police estimate the crowd at over a million.
The one weakness was the lack of a heavy hitter speaker—you know, a Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or even a Newt Gingrich to top off the march with an “I Have A Dream” type speech. I discussed this apparent lack of senior leadership among our movement with several marchers while milling around, and they were all disgusted with GOP politicians who lack backbone and vision. Maybe one will emerge—eventually.
Despite reports of union thugs countermarching to intimidate and harass us, only one group of about a dozen young leftists were on hand to counter our immense presence. This particular group was dressed in tuxedos and evening gowns in an attempt to depict tycoons and “billionaires against health reform.” It was not funny, and many of my fellow marchers did not know at first what to make of these clowns. I picked up on their clumsily satirical attempt to mock us, and immediately thrust myself within their ranks and yelled at the top of my voice “Viva Che!” “Viva Fidel!” and “Workers of the world unite with us for Obama!” With foam frothing from my mouth I yelled and glared at all of them, to include the expectedly unattractive senoritas, and within 30 seconds, the Obamistas scattered, with me and now dozens of my comrades in pursuit. They were last seen heading for the Starbucks at Pennsylvania and 3rd Street. Que experiencia fantastica!
A sleeping giant has indeed been awakened, something that never would have happened had McCain won the election.