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1�0�101010�0�1 2003-03-20, 9:13 a.m.

In which I get all self-righteous


Things are eerie here this morning. I woke up this morning, looked at A., and said "It's going to be fucking nightmare in the city today" — leading up to the beginning of the war, there's been a lot of talk about these folks shutting down the city in protest. I had no idea what to expect. I pictured in my mind riots and looting and mass chaos. Or protestors taking the double S's out of my company's name on the sign out front, like they did during the first peace rally (that'll show 'em!).

BART stalled a bit coming into the city, and the driver announced there was a backup getting in. So of course, that reinforced the convictions of my overactive imagination.

Instead, I came up out of the BART station, and everything was eerily quiet. No traffic on Market Street at all (protestors have blocked many intersections, and buses have had to stop and let people off). A young woman in a rainbow-striped cap camped out on milk crates right in the middle of the street, with a sign over her head that read "Stop George's War." Small groups of people here and there waving banners (I even saw the French flag), but intermingled with frustrated-looking working folks waiting for the buses that will never come. A few bored-looking police officers. Peaceful, yet enough to quell the usual buzz of a weekday morning in San Francisco's Financial District.

I teared up a bit. It's moving, to be a part of a world that is passionate. It's tragic, that it had to come to this. It's implausibly wrong, that people will die. But somehow, instead of annoyed disagreement with this war, today I am overwhelmed by the hugeness of it. I am an American, but I am also a citizen of the Earth, and a human being. I am horrified and saddened at the injustice of war — any war.



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