Yesterday ten thousand Iraqis took to the streets in a demonstration against terrorism and for Democracy. With Iraqi police protecting the event, the people found voices that they have never had before.
The blog
Healing Iraq has a massive gallery of photos of the demonstration, and much commentary on what the demonstration meant to the author, Alaa, an ordinary Iraqi.
At one point it struck me that our many differences as an Iraqi people meant nothing. Here we were all together shouting in different languages the same slogans "NO NO to terrorism, YES YES for peace".
I spent most of the time taking pictures. heh, I really enjoyed playing the role of a journalist. Everyone was tugging at my sleeves asking me to take their photos mistaking me for a foreign reporter. Some people recognized a reporter from Al-Arabiyah station and they started taunting him. One old man shouted to him "For once, speak the truth".
What was interesting, a group of Al-Sadr supporters showed up and started shouting "NO NO to occupiers" obviously in an attempt to hijack the demonstration. They drowned in the rest of the crowd.
Unfortunately, the march did not fit the narrative of most of the foreign media and so they pretty much saw fit to ignore it. Here are some of the shots from Healing Iraq. These shots were taken by a digicam sent to Alaa by a blogger in the US. Together two "regular people", with websites and a little cash, told the story better than the New York Times. So there are two revolutions in these pictures. I include Alaa's captions.
A tribal leader
"Terrorism is humanity's shame"
Iraqi reds
"Our people are for the reconstruction"
"To bribed Arab stations:Killing Iraqis and destroying their civil facilities is NOT resistance"
And then Chris Muir of
Day By Day put his two cents in:
