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"More on antiwar protests"
01/20/2003 Entry
Kara just posted a comment on a previous entry pointing to a better coverage of this past weekend's anti-war protests in DC. (The one point my experiences do not mirror is that the age of participants was more varied than the article makes it out to be.)
I wanted to add a note to all this especially for the European readers in the audience. It is a BIG deal for people from states like Ohio (OH), Minnesota (MN) and Wisconsin (WI) to get in a bus or car and drive all the way to Washington, DC for a march. It's hard to comprehend the scale of the United States from a continent where you cross national borders by driving an hour or two in any direction. The US is different. The Village Voice article is quite explicit about this noting that some had to drive more than twenty hours to participate in this protest. In that amount of time you can pass through five-six countries in Europe.
To give you some idea, I've sketched a little map with distances to illustrate the point. The distance between Minneapolis (located in the state of Minnesota - MN on the map below) and Washington, DC is larger than that between Paris and Budapest which are two cities quite far away in European terms.
I think it's great that people have this kind of conviction about this and I hope people elsewhere realize that not everyone in the US is in support of the Administration's interest in war.. and last weekend some traveled quite a long way to show their support for peace.
Replies: 3 Comments have been posted, click here to see them and add your own
Indymedia covered it too. It still didn't make me feel any better.
Posted by Kara @ 01/20/2003 11:03 PM CST
It's sad that most Europeans are convinced that Americans are ignorant and know nothing about geography. It's even worse to find out that Americans believe that Europeans know nothing about the distances in America. ("It's hard to comprehend the scale of the United States from a continent where you cross national borders by driving an hour or two in any direction. The US is different.") But the worst is that the previous sentence was written by a European. Thank you for telling us that the US is different. It was a revelation. Now we know. Also, thanks for the sketch. It's really useful for people who have never seen a map before.
Posted by Elek @ 01/21/2003 02:55 PM CST
I thought your map was interesting and helped to support the point you were making in your blog entry. One of my passions are maps, so I am quite at home judging distances and knowing where different cities are, but that did not stop me from appreciating your simple, yet very helpful and informative map.
I cannot understand the previous comment by Elek. This is your blog Eszter, you may want to write about any topic you choose, he does not have to read it. Why does Elek need to make such arrogant comments? Your statements were not degrading, and you were supporting your argument (various distances between cities) by a map. By the way, how many times have you seen people get on a bus and travel from Budapest to Paris (or vice versa) just to attend a demonstration?
Posted by B.L.I. @ 01/28/2003 08:29 AM CST
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