It was so crowded it was literally hard to walk. We inched along shoulder to shoulder. Parents with children in strollers, baby boomers, teens with body piercings, and the majority just mainstream Americans. It was an enormous relief to see that, despite the size of the crowd (possibly 500,000), the police presence was low-key. Unlike a march I participated in a few years ago, when the sidewalks were lined with a black-helmeted force that looked straight out of any totalitarian nation's playbook.
It was a powerful experience--entirely peaceful but passionate. At the very end, as I was leaving the Mall, I saw Jesse Jackson walking ahead of me. A young man caught up with him to shake his hand. Then, across the road, I saw a woman walking alone with a large poster. The side facing me said "President Bush, you killed my son." As she turned slightly, I saw an image of a young, fresh-faced man on the other side of the poster. I hoped she had been surrounded by friends as she made the long walk. But there's no way to be anything but alone with that pain. That's what this war means, but the human heart is rarely, if ever, mentioned in all the arguments. As if love were not an essential part of the human condition.
