First, try to convince yourself that if the sign that you carry is on-message, it will somehow lead to the overall on-messageness of the whole event. Believe that if you walk near the Endless War - Not In Our Name banner -- and not by the Venezuelan-Bolivian Bolshevik Power or the One Korea Now or the Bring Back Aristide or the Anti-Capitalist Anarchist Front (nice face masks, guys) -- that your message might get across to the bystanders. Wait a minute... there really aren't any bystanders, are there? the roads are blocked off and who would walk toward a group like this?



Goodie, the Butoh theater group is back again, wrapped in gauze and covered in paste, dragging picket fences and representations of dead babies -- they ought to make things clear. No wait a minute, what's clear is that you have gotten near the front of the march and are suddenly walking beside the world's largest Palestinian flag. Now heaven knows that you are concerned about the plight of Palistinians and that you are for a peaceful solution to that conflict, but wasn't this event supposed to be primarily about IRAQ? And shouldn't these young liberals do some research into the phrase "right of return" before making it the central focus (so it would seem) of this event? And if they really are calling for the destruction of Israel (which they are doing when they demand unlimited "RoR") they should say so and take the heat for it and not hide behind catch phrases.



Walk faster, there's a group with a globe on their signs that you can march with. But when you reach them, you see that the globes are made of meat and somehow you are swept into the Vegans for Peace contingent (and while you are indeed vegan, you don't feel comfortable with the "Every day is 9/11 for the animals" and "Boycott Murder King"-type slogans they seem to be shouting every time they pass a fast food establishment - which is about every 200 yards in this part of Hollywood).



In the end, you decide not to leave the march -- your voice is needed in the Million Message March (as you have come to call it). What you learn is that it's safest to hang out with the drummers. They're marching, so they are probably peaceniks, but they don't say much and seem mostly about having a good time banging their bongoes to help us all march together more cheerfully. Bless 'em.