March for Life 2009
Note and update (January 24)
My first video uploads, reduced in size and resolution to wmv then .mpg4, looked horrible and low-quality, and I have been trying to fix it ever since. My best solution, it seemed, was to upload the entire original .avi file - 1.7 gigabytes! — but to divide it into 3 parts, so it wouldn’t go beyond YouTube’s 1 gigabyte limit. For some reason, the results don’t seem to be any improvement at all in picture quality — but it at least allows me to put video at different places throughout this long post.
The day started at 5:30 when I got up, grabbed my sack lunch / dinner and went to St. Barnabas Church in the Bronx, where I attended the 6:30 Mass.There was a commemoration of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and they also prayed for those who would be leaving for the March for Life from the church — and for the first time in the 35 years of the existence of the March, I was one of them. Why had I never gone? Well, for many years I was in college, and involved in classes, also I was poor . . . But after the Obama election, nothing could hold me back.
We got into the bus at around 7:15, and by 7:30 we had set out on the five-hour trip to Washington. There were 50 of us in all, from St. Barnabas and several other parishes, including mine, St. Nicolas of Tolentine. Several were young teens.
When Jackie Nagle, the co-ordinator, first told me that the bus cost only $10 per person, I thought they must have hired an old, broken-down school bus for the occasion. But the bus was something else — it was an elegant, fully-equipped motor coach. On the side window was stenciled a saying of Mother Teresa of Calcutta: “It is a poverty that a child must die so that you might live as you wish.” I was surprised to see TV screens coming from the ceiling as they would in a plane. I expect the parish (or the diocese) was being very generous here.
The showed us a Power-Point type presentation from the New York State Catholic Conference on the New York State RHAP bill and FOCA, with an array of facts about what these bills would do to eliminate all restrictions on abortion. There was also a special message for the marchers from Edward Cardinal Egan, the Archbishop of New York. Then we watched a video on the Eucharist and prayed the Rosary. All this was terrific and made the time fly by, but put an end to my hope of doing some interviews on the bus.
We had started out late, and so we didn’t arrive at the Mall until the rally and speeches were almost over. We had to wait a while before the march started, which gave me some time to interview. My thanks to Gerry Voelkel and Carmel Cassidy (the minister of my SFO fraternity) for their comments here. The roar of the crowd and the bus motor was so great I had to put in subtitles:
The police kept asking us to stand up off the curb to keep the street clear. The right-to-life leaders were going to march down the street first, and we needed to keep the way clear for them, and the follow them. We kept saying to the police “there isn’t enough room.” There were far too many people to stand on the sidewalks. They just kept acting like we weren’t a large crowd at all — which is typical of the perception of us. I already knew there was going to be little mainstream media coverage (As I’m writing this, I’m watching a replay of the speeches I missed on EWTN, and what wouldn’t I give to see these broadcast on every news network — America would be completely changed!)
While we were waiting, I got Fr. Chris Salvatori’s comments on FOCA and what its impact would be. He was extremely eloquent, and my hearty thanks to him:
Then it was off down Pennsylvania and then Constitution Avenue, with me taking video all the way. An enormous number of people and an amazing variety of signs. “Building a Culture of Life” was especially beautiful. Many who identified themselves were proudly specific — including Orthodox Teens for Life. I definitely saw several rabbis. I saw an enormous number of signs from the Archdiocese of New York, including St. Joseph’s Seminary. Then there were Catholic University of America, from right in D.C., St. John Cantius Parish in Chicago, and many more, including Lutherans, evangelicals, and Right to Life groups from every state. Spain, Malta, Ireland and Italy sent pro-life representatives.
I got separated from the others from our bus because I stopped so often to get video of the marchers going by. (But I knew our rallying point, so I wasn’t worried). We arrived at the Supreme Court, but the crowd was so huge that I couldn’t get close enough to hear or see what was going on there — it was testimony by women who had gone through abortions, and men who were involved as well. The first estimates of the crowd were as high as 180,000. Here’s what some of the marching crowd looked like:
From the Supreme Court we went to St. Joseph’s Church near Union Station at 4:30, where I met up again with our group, and where coffee, hot chocolate and steaming apple cider were waiting for tired, cold and thirsty marchers. Then it was back into the bus and we headed for home.
I was so busy I completely forgot to take any still pictures to put here. But here is some of the video, choppily edited, I’m afraid. I hope to do a better job later.
