Our band of musicians was now a bit nervous. You might have read in the papers about arrests, pepper spray, and the like. What they don't tell you is that even if you were standing in a park with a tambourine and a sign painted in psychedelic colors that reads, "Give Peace a Chance," you were being closely monitored by helicopter and riot police. There were also photographers everywhere, with and without media badges. Comfortable? Ready to exercise your right to express an unpopular opinion?

"We were given the finger a couple of times. We were given sympathetic honks and waves a couple of times. That would put our unofficial public opinion poll at 50-50." * * * * * Illustration from Michelle Lougee Illustration

Once we felt all our friends had arrived (they came from Athens GA, Pittsburgh PA, Raleigh NC, Boston MA, Hoboken NJ, New York NY, Washington DC, and a few points unknown), we marched through the streets to the site of the protest. It was a longer walk than we had anticipated, because the Secret Service had at the last minute prevented the protest from taking place in front of the White House, and the organizers had been forced to move it further away. We decided to avoid H Street, which is close to the White House and which was where we had seen the anarchists running, and we also decided to exit the park in a direction that would take us away from our personal motorcycle brigade, rather than toward them.

We played an improvised march as we walked through downtown DC under the banner, "Musicians for Peace: We Are Not Afraid To Make Noise." We were given the finger a couple of times. We were given sympathetic honks and waves a couple of times. (That would put our unofficial public opinion poll at 50-50.) We passed a shop displaying stars-and-stripes bikinis. There were police and Secret Service (conspicuously incognito in unmarked black cars) on every corner. We were careful to cross at the green, and not in between.

Once we arrived at Freedom Plaza, the new site chosen for the protest in lieu of the White House, we were greeted by some encouraging cheers and applause. At the corner of the plaza that we entered, there were three Buddhists playing drums and chanting for peace (later we heard that one of them had been keeping vigil in Union Square ever since the 11th). They smiled when they saw our rag-tag orchestra.

The plaza filled with people. We are terrible at estimating crowd size (just ask our booking agent), but news reports said later that it was somewhere between 7,000 (the police estimate) and 25,000 (the organizers' estimate). Reuters put it at 10,000. CNN said 13,000. (Note: today on NPR we learned that the "Northern Alliance" opposition in Afghanistan is estimated to be 7,000 strong.)

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