Count me out

Today, on the train into lower Manhattan for an attempt at finding these men's sneakers (anyone with any ideas, please add to the comments) there were three high school-aged straight couples and a couple male stragglers on what appeared to be a group date to a protest. And what a protest it was--lower Broadway was filled with everyone from aging hippies to... somewhat younger hippie types. While most people I know, Republicans included, are at this point against the war and against Bush in particular, the protest--like nearly all protests--joined together so many causes that had nothing to do with one another. Feminism, hating Israel, and caring about immigrant workers may all fall under the broad category of things that protestor-types get in a huff about, but the causes themselves hardly overlap.

While I agreed with parts of what the march represented, I disagreed enough with other aspects to feel not the least bit guilty when protestors began chanting for shoppers to leave the stores and join the march. Of course, lower Broadway's substantial weekend foot-traffic only helps the protestors' cause, since anyone walking around (say, trying to get from one branch of David Z to the next in search of a perhaps no longer made pair of sneakers) presumably gets added into the police or media estimates of the event's turnout.