Pen-Elayne on the Web

We Stand Actively Vocal

I admit it, various fears and the frigid weather made me a bit of an armchair activist yesterday, but it gave me a chance to listen in on WBAI (and I'm sorry, but Desmond Tutu just always makes me giggle, he's so adorable even on the radio) and monitor how the various worldwide protests played on the news. Overall pretty good, much better on CNN than on MSNBC (the only two all-news channels on my cable system), and NY1 had various folks in the field both here in NYC and, wonderfully (because they got some great patriotic sound bytes from Angelica Houston, Rob Reiner and Martin Sheen), in Los Angeles. (I was also pleased to see NY1 covering this local strike occurring within walking distance of where we currently live.) The numbers are of course being lowballed, especially domestically (they're admitting millions and hundreds of thousands in worldwide cities but local NYC news teasers just say "thousands"), so if you want to get pretty accurate estimates you'll want to go to IndyMedia, which also has this NYC open newswire for eyewitnesses to contribute their perspectives. I was moved by so many citizens all over the planet engaged in the same action with the same goal, and wished this had gotten the kind of constant coverage given to the millennial festivities a couple years ago - first you see them protest in Australia, then the protests sweep across the world from east to west... ah well, that was the way it unfolded in my head at least. My favorite quote was from London mayor Ken Livingstone, who had so many great quotable lines, but I loved how he began: "I cannot tell you the pride I feel that, as Mayor of London, I can officially welcome you here to this city in the biggest political demonstration in 2000 years of British history!" (Click here for the Beeb link whence you can watch all the speeches, including Livingstone being momentarily "hijacked by the comedy terrorists.") I expect I'll be updating this more throughout the day as I find more cool links in the blogosphere.
Update: Check the following blogs (in order top to bottom on the sidebar) for first-hand experiences: Wil, Tom, August (here's a great picture of August and Tom, by the way), Max (mostly pictures), Skippy, Jeanne at Body & Soul, Cyndy (who passed along this helpful Error-Not Found message for the benefit of the weapons inspectors), Jeralyn, Katie, Natalie and Natasha. I salute their courage and patriotism.