Sunday, March 20, 2005

how many people were at M19 Demo?

The Chicago Tribune (Aamer Madhani; with Gary Gibula, Jody Paige & Sean D. Hamill contributing) makes the convoluted statement:
With protest and prayer, hundreds of Chicago-area residents marked the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and called on the White House to quickly find an endgame to the war.

In the city, about 1,000 peace activists gathered in Federal Plaza for an afternoon rally sponsored by the Chicago Coalition Against War and Racism. A scheduled march before the rally, which put anti-war demonstrators and police at loggerheads, went off without serious incident.
Let's leave aside the clumsy wording where the group described in the first paragraph (everyone in the Chicago area) is described as "hundreds" and a subset group described in the second paragraph (the Chicago area people that were at the Federal Plaza) were described as about 1,000. (Is it a pre-requisite for mainstream journalism that people be bad with numbers?)

I was at the Federal Plaza. My friend, Barry Romo, a national coordinator of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, asked me to help with security. So I was in front of the stage and got all the privileges that go along with that (getting my ears blasted by the speakers, sorting out who's camera was in front of whom's, keeping radicals from pushing their way on stage, etc.)

There was not just over 1,000 people in the Federal Plaza. There was way over 1,000 people there. There were so many over the 1,000 figure warrants a correction.

So I propose a little online activism. To show that there were way over 1,000 people at the demostration, people should email George de Lama, Deputy Managing Editor, News, gdelama@tribune.com and Don Wycliff, the public editor, PublicEditor@tribune.com. In your email provide the names of at least one person who can verify you were at the demostration and a phone number for the person if you know it.

BTW, the Sun-Times used the 1,000 figure too. What are the appropriate email addresses to contact at the Sun-Times?

4 Comments:

Blogger Carl Nyberg said...

BTW Veterans for Peace-Chicago Chapter is having our annual dinner at Szechwan Beijing in Oak Park on Saturday, April 30. All veterans are invited to attend.

12:29 PM  
Blogger Carl Nyberg said...

Down Left and Dan Johnson-Weinberger have coverage of the demo too.

VFP-Chicago has pictures.

4:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Charlie Madigan is NOT the metro editor...he is the Rambling Gleaner blogger and the Trib's Perspective Section editor. This url: http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/site/chi-newspaperemail.story is a good bookmark for Trib e-mail addresses, titles, etc.
----Eric Zorn, not signing in.

7:45 PM  
Blogger Carl Nyberg said...

Thanks for the web page.

I tried looking around the website for who was responsible for what, but it's not exactly user friendly.

Who should we be contacting?

12:43 AM  

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