A Few Thousand Protesters Brave the Rain (WaPo)

[Catchawave]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020401128_pf.html

Damp in Numbers but Not in Fervor
A Few Thousand Protesters Brave the Rain to Deliver an Antiwar, Anti-Bush Message

By Theresa Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 5, 2006; C06



As he waited for a 30-foot-high effigy of President George W. Bush to fall, Freddy Taiefero told the story of how he ended up here. Homeless in Atlanta a day ago, he now was amid a few thousand protesters on the soggy ground by the Washington Monument.

"They were passing out these leaflets, and I picked one up at the homeless shelter," said the 56-year-old unemployed caterer. "Bush's administration causes joblessness. . . . When he got in, it was like the world was snatched up from under us."

So, Taiefero said, he boarded a bus, slept the night in his seat and yesterday bore the sticker reciting the message of all those around him: "Bush step down."

Yesterday's demonstration, which stretched through five hours of rain and ended with a march around the White House, was organized by a group called World Can't Wait -- Drive Out the Bush Regime. The organization helped lead a smaller rally near the Capitol during Bush's State of the Union address last week.

Yesterday's demonstrators came from as far away as Hawaii. New York alone sent 12 buses. Still, the crowd was significantly smaller than the 30,000 protesters organizers had anticipated. The actual numbers were in the low thousands and varied depending upon how hard it was raining. If antiwar T-shirts were in abundance, they were hidden by sweaters that were covered by jackets that were shadowed by umbrellas.

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