word.

So very true (from here, via here). It's a bizarrely familiar ritual at this point, observed in several cities--Oxford, London, Istanbul, here--over the last four years.

The turnout was good and good-spirited, though smaller by far than last year's march (note to UFPJ: in future, consider not scheduling demos on the day after 17 March. The NYPD was clearly feeling the aftereffects, for one, and I think citywide hangovers may have hampered our numbers). Several people took pictures of my sign (like my shirt, it said we will not be silent in Arabic and English). A diverse crowd: lots of kids and teenagers; a determined-looking delegation from the NY Gray Panthers, some excellent bands--one, a brass band with dancers, in green uniforms that looked like leftovers from the day before. I was trying to tell if their tuba-player was the same one I'd seen at a previous NYC protest: with "this machine kills fascists" neatly printed in metallic pen across the opening of his instrument.

Instead of heading down Broadway, the march proceeded--for reasons I cannot fathom--up to Bryant Park, past Grand Central, and towards the UES. So afterwards, as often happens when I find myself on Lexington Avenue, my thoughts turned to dosas. We headed downtown in search thereof, only to be cruelly turned away from Saravanaas, which was closing for the mid-day break. Quantities of Indian Chinese food were consumed instead--which cheered the itinerant thing-theorist, and warmed my heart with memories of a certain Bombay evening. That day, too, there had been marches and speeches and signs--and the joyful noise of (among others) the Tamil Nadu Antique Percussionists Union, who are now joined by the man with the fascist-killing tuba in the pantheon in my mind.