At three o’clock Sunday morning I got back to Connecticut from Saturday’s peace march in Washington DC, and all day I scoured the Internet for news stories and photos to document my experience. Maybe I’d spot myself somewhere in the masses, I thought, or maybe glimpse a witty homemade sign that I’d seen, such as “At least Bush had an exit strategy for Vietnam” or “Thou shalt not kill. Any questions?” or “What would Barney do?” I didn’t dare hope to see the censoriously clever “Make love, fuck war” in the mainstream media, yet there might be a chance for “How many bodies per gallon?”

But no. I should have known that the cameras weren’t aimed at the middle of the crowd where these signs bobbed. More often than not, they were shooting for Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, and the like, with any extras on the crowd scene providing interesting background.

Some headlines even played up Fonda as the protest leader. Did she conduct the massive effort of coordinating with the hundreds of regional and national groups that attended? Of course not. The march was organized by [United for Peace and Justice]. All Jane Fonda had to do to “lead” the news story was show up, being notorious for posing with a Vietnamese tank and all. I’m very glad she came, but she was just one of forty speakers in a throng of protesters with strong shouting voices. The day wasn’t about Hanoi Jane.

You reporters who wrote the articles, you photographers who set up cameras pointing at the dais during the rally, were you were really there, in person? Yoo-hoo! Didn’t you see us? Didn’t you hear us? Didn’t you feel us? Us in the huge, pulsing middle of the crowd? An incredible variety of people came from all over the U.S. of A. to demand peace from our politicians, hundreds of thousands of people squeezed together from all walks of life and ways of thinking, including even republicans and pro-lifers. On other matters, many of us disagree; but on this, we were united: We do not want a surge. We want out of Iraq.

But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, either, that the top headlines today downplayed the numbers in the crowd as only thousands or tens of thousands. That’s what the Associated Press said that the police privately said, even though the police don’t officially say such things, and then all the other reporters who didn’t do their own research said the same. Based on the number of elbows jabbing ribs and the number of signposts nearly poking eyes out for as far as I could see from the midst of the mall—and based on how long I had to wait to inch into the street, where I could never glimpse the beginning or end of people even from high on the hill—I trust the official estimate of the organizers at 400,000.

For a couple of hours before the crowd took to foot, we pacifist activist patriots stood on the mall listening to a long list of speakers. We heard prayers from religious leaders who gave voice to the popular sign,“Who would Jesus bomb?” We heard appeals from families of the fallen, “Why did they die for Bush’s lie?” We heard from enlisted soldiers who shared the crowd’s popular message, “I voted for peace.” Not for escalation! We heard from a range of other anti-war activists including a sixth-grader from Massachusetts who led a protest at her school. And we heard some very welcome words from several elected representatives who promised, “We will stop the war.” The Hollywood celebrities came near the end, almost like an afterthought.

The media had some appealing pictures of the celebrities “leading” the march. One that really jumped out at me, as I searched for myself unsuccessfully, was [a photo ] captioned “Actor Sean Penn, center, joins fellow anti-war activists as they march past the U.S. Supreme Court during a march to protest the war in Iraq, Saturday Jan. 27, 2007, in Washington. (AP Photo/Chris Greenberg)” The the real star of that photo, the woman with the microphone, is Medea Benjamin, cofounder of the feminist anti-war group CodePink. As activism goes, she is the really famous one in that picture.

During the march, CodePink chanted over and over, “War is not what we’re about, women say pull out!” Wouldn’t that have made a catchy headline?

Ah, mainstream media. If only you had gone out of paparazzi range for a few minutes, you’d have found better stories in the crowd. Did any of you happen to turn around and notice the beautiful young adults “Dancing for Peace” off to the right beyond Fourth Street before the rally got hopping? Under the trees? They were delightful, and effective by juxtaposition. When I saw the dancers, I’d just finished speaking with a father who had lost his only son to a bullet in the head—a boy who signed up for the National Guard at age 17 thinking he’d be doing public works in Illinois rather than being deployed into an elective foreign war. Young people are dying over there when they ought to be dancing here.

The real story that I experienced in DC Saturday, and that didn’t come across in most media reports, is this: Massive numbers of Americans have had it with war lies, had it with war politics, and above all had it with war costs in blood and soul, to say nothing of dollars. We’ve had it with insults to our patriotism and our intelligence, too. We’re smart enough to know when our country has made a bad mistake. We support our troops and want them out of Iraq. We support freedom for Iraqis, and they should be free to claim it for themselves without our guns naming the terms. The majority of Americans voted for peace in the November elections, yet the government and the enabling media are giving us a surge. Oh, yes, we’ve had it right up to here.

A surge in the scourge, that’s what we’re getting. My homemade sign said “Stop the Scourge,” with the letters of “surge” in blood red.

We’re so disgusted about our tax dollars going to death and destruction and corporate war profits, so disgusted at America’s reputation being sullied internationally by leaders who don’t truly represent us, so damned disgusted with this scourge that we’re willing to cram our epidemically overweight American bodies into tiny mass transportation seats and travel by car or bus, by train or by plane, by every possible conveyance from all corners of the country, spending time and money we don’t really have, to go in great numbers to our nation’s Capitol and shout in unison, “Hell no, we won’t go along with this.”

Nobody went to see Jane Fonda. From the middle of the crowd we couldn’t even see the stage. Sure, it was great hearing her voice. But we weren’t there to hear her, nor to hear the brilliant speech of Susan Sarandon, and not even to hear the encouraging promises of politicians such as Maxine Waters, John Conyers, and Dennis Kucinich (a presidential candidate who for some reason didn’t make the headlines yesterday). Though we enjoyed their rallying cries, we weren’t there to listen. We were there to be heard.

And we were the story.

Got that, media? If not, you’ll have another chance. The lesson will be repeated until it is learned.

Lisa Rowe Fraustino teaches English at Eastern Connecticut State University and writes children's books, most recently I Walk in Dread: The Diary of Deliverance Trembley, Witness to the Salem Witch Trials (Scholastic/Dear America 2004).

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