hundreds of anti-war demonstrators on the north side
two intrepid pro-war demonstrators on the south side
New York activists were able to attract a couple of hundred demonstrators to the Times Square military recruiting station on Thursday night, responding to Bush's announcement of the night before that he would significantly increase the count of troops in Iraq rather than reduce or eliminate the numbers already there.
On the south side of the kiosk two lone young men stood beneath a banner mounted to an American flag on one side and the Gadsden flag on the other. The man on the right wore a baseball cap with an NYPD emblem, I suppose as to indicate another allegiance, or perhaps only in the hope of gaining the cooperation of the police monitoring the demonstration site.
When I first saw the second image uploaded onto the screen on the camera back I thought the flags looked like they were attached to the recruiting station itself and I was going to go with a blog headline something like: "the government-approved demonstration". What I can see now however the NYPD was acting very correctly, just isolating the two groups, so this time there's no real excitement to report from jimlog quarters.
Everything was actually going very peacefully while I was there (the two militarists were vastly outnumbered and the rest of the crowd after all was out there demonstrating for peace). I will say that there was a lot more energy and excitement on the north side - and definitely a lot more smart-looking and attractive people:
communication