Talk:February 15, 2003 anti-war protest/Archive 1

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Rationale for Existence

This article is a merge between February 15th Protest (London) and the February 15, 2003 section of Protests against the invasion of Iraq. The merge was completed on September 11, 2005. Schuminweb 04:15, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

ICM Poll (London section)

Moved from Talk:February 15th Protest (London)
Refers to the London section

The stop the war book (Stop the War:The story of Britain's biggest mass movement) claims that the ICM poll translates into around 1.25 million househoods and that since many households would have more then one person going this backs up the 2mill mark. I'm not sure if this is correct interpretation of the data. The book also wroungly assumes that some of those servayed might have ment they were going to scotland protest, however question is spesific in saying London demo. What do people think? I think the servay is claiming that 6% of people (rather then households) had a person from their household go on march. Population of England says that in 2001 (latest figgers avalible) there were 49,138,831 people in England, 6% of which is 2,948,330. So almost 3 million people (extraporlated) would have either gone or had some one else from their house hold go. However, what if some people survayed lived in the same house? I'm in a statistical tissy. Prehaps this is straying to far into orriginal research--JK the unwise 11:04, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Another problem is that the questio was "Do you intend to/did anyone from your household go..." so
  • People's intentions may not have matched reality.
  • People lie to pollsters to project their POV.
  • Becasue 1 person in a household went, you can't assume that they all went.
  • The higher figures were ABC1s who are more likely to have a land-line.
  • The higher figures were 18-24 year olds who are less likely to have a land line.
  • 18-24/ABC1s year olds may live in smaller or larger households than the rest.
  • With samll percentages "noise" beomes a problem. For example in over 65s 2% said yes, in several grps 2% didn't know.
  • Your figures jump straight from no of household where one r more intended to go to 6% of population, i.e. everyone oin those households, regardless of health, age, mobility and inclination.
To get some idea of how weak polls are, in 2 councillor local election, the highest count usueally goes to "no second vote cast", while the first name on the poll has a 3% advantage. In Kinsey's survey on sexuality, when people were re-questioned (a year or more later) one of the control questions was about the numer of siblings they had - a small but non negligable number gave a different answer.
What I have heard asked elsewhere was "How many underground tickets (etc) were sold?" Which I think would go a long way to informing the debate on the number of demonstrators. Rich Farmbrough 19:44, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Were would one find out such info as how many Underground tickets were sold on Febuary 15th London demo? Maybe we'll never know.--JK the unwise 15:16, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

You might want to try contacting London Underground directly. I know that Metro in Washington DC lists daily ridership, and so you might be able to get it out of London Underground. Also, I don't think "tickets sold" is the best measure, as much as how many riders were carried. Underground tickets, as with Metro farecards and such, could very easily be bought ahead of time, after all. SchuminWeb (Talk) 23:35, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

BBC trawl for references

In orrder to improve the referancing of the protests against the Iraq war I have been doing a trawl through BBC articles. Here are the ones for feb 15:
(article crossed out when used)

--JK the unwise 17:33, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

comment

BBC News Online political correspondent

15 - 16

Most protests took place on the Saturday but their were demonstrations that took place on the Sunday (Feb 16th), for example 250,000 people took part in a demo in San Francisco on Sunday. I think it would make sence to put these demonstrations in the same article as they are part of the same global mobalisation.--JK the unwise 11:18, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Global co-ordination

One of the most amazining things about the day was that across the world people had all managed to agree to have the demonstration on the same day. I've been digging about to try and discover exactly how this came about. I couldn't find any thing totally concusive but I did discover that the ESF called for there to be europe wide demonstrations on Feb 15th at finnal rally in Florance November 2002 and that on the Cairo Anti-war Conference said it would organise demonstrations in Eygpt, also I discovered that the ICAAI played some kind of role in co-ordinating the demo's gloabaly, though I'm not sure exactly what they did. Does any one know any more about organisation on the global scale?--JK the unwise 17:35, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I found some more info here [2] under the Coordinating global movements section. but I think there is till mroe info to be found.--JK the unwise 15:10, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

French Academic

I have read and herd about a paper writtern by a 'French academic' which is on the Feb 15 demo. Apparently in it he estimated that 35 million people marched on the day. However now I come to look for it I can't find any referances. Does anyone know who this academic is and were the paper can be found?--JK the unwise 15:16, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I think that what I might have been remembering is reference to a paper by French academic Dominique Reynié according to an article in Socialist Worker he estimated that between the 3rd of January and 12th of April 2003, 36 million people accross the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the Iraq war.[3] I still can't find the orginal paper though, maybe 'cus its in French.--JK the unwise 15:24, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Why the page move

This page has been moved from February 15, 2003 global anti-war protest to February 15, 2003 anti-war protest, I imagine to make it more in line with Protests against the Iraq war which was moved from "global protests against the Iraq war". However while the change of the protests page seems correct, the Feb15 demo was undoubtably a global affair. Why move it?--JK the unwise 11:28, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I moved it for the reason you cited, plus to bring it in line with September 24 and March 20. Both of these had participants spanning the globe, but we don't put "global" in the title there. (BTW, anyone who can fill out "Worldwide" for S24 is strongly encouraged to do so.) So that's my rationale for it. In addition, while many groups coordinate their efforts in many cities, it's still a bunch of individual protests in different cities. When I go to protests in DC, I'm really not concerned at the time whether or not people are protesting in other cities as well. SchuminWeb (Talk) 02:05, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

--JK the unwise 11:31, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Its an interesting philosical debate whether it was just a bunch of differnt/individual protests taking place on the same day or one protest that took place spread over differnt locations. Personaly I think that enough coordination took place to make it the later. Counter to your rationale for changing the tilte the current one indicates the second because it makes referance to only one protest (as it also did when it refered to a global protest).--JK the unwise 13:30, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
I like your take there. I agree with you that it was coordinated enough to be one unified voice. However, I was thinking more in an operational sense when I wrote the above comment. In actually putting on one of these things, you're dealing with a whole bunch of individual protest actions - obtaining permits, setting up speakers' stages, and so on. In addition, once it's moving, each demonstration does its own thing. If demonstrators in DC are getting chased by motorcycle cops, that's not going to have much bearing on what San Francisco does. Hopefully that makes sense. In other words, yes, they coordinated the planning and the general concepts, but then once the demonstrations are in motion, each is its own animal. SchuminWeb (Talk) 23:28, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Does that mean that you whant to change the title? Because at the moment it refers to a singualar protest ("February 15, 2003 anti-war protest"). Do you think it should be changed to "February 15, 2003 anti-war protests?--JK the unwise 11:31, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
I think that the name is fine as it is, because it matches other days with coordinated actions such as M20 and S24. SchuminWeb (Talk) 11:47, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I wonder if the discusion we have had here (in rather more plain language) is related to the question raised in a paper I have just found:

"...[were] the Feb 15 protests a result of an optimal transnational opportunity climate, and thus to be considered as more than a simple addition sum of different national protests, or are they, in the first place, to be explained by the different national contexts, and thus a sum of separable (though interrelated) protest events?"
Stefaan Walgrave, University of Antwerp
Joris Verhulst, University of Antwerp [4]

?--JK the unwise 15:23, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Why isn't London at the top anymore?

Why isn't London at the top anymore in this article? It seems that London was the "main" location for this protest, like DC was on September 24. We have the most information on London, plus it seems that they spearheaded the effort, and so it would make sense for it to go first in this case.

Thus in my opinion, we should structure the article as "International Coordination", then the section on the UK, then a section about elsewhere in Europe, and then a "Worldwide" section to cover North America, etc. It structures it to where we go from most coverage to least coverage. Thus that would put big stories near the top of the article, and then get less "stories" and more "statistics" as we go further down the article.

SchuminWeb (Talk) 02:14, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I disagree, such a structure would seem to implie that the London demonstration was more important then other demonstrations. Also it would discorage people from finding more information on the other demonstrations acrross the world. I do not think it is true to say that the London demonstration was the main demonstration. The fact that it was U.K activists who spearheaded the idea for a european wide demo (which would evolve into a world wide one) does not prove it was. The largest demonstration was in Spain. It is only our lack of access to non-english texts that limmits the "stories" about non-european/american demos and means we are left merly with statistics.--JK the unwise 14:07, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I tend to disagree a bit here, and I actually think you put it best in your response, where you said that the organizers for London spearheaded the idea of a European demonstration that then evolved into a worldwide demonstration. That's reflective of my thought process on it, and why it should go up first. I do agree we want to fill out the other sections, but putting the section with the most information in the middle doesn't make good reading sense to me. My thought is we put our big part first and then proceed to smaller sections. The way it sits now is good, but I just don't think we have enough information on a lot of areas to go that way yet. SchuminWeb (Talk) 18:40, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm still not convinced. I don't think that "amount of information we have been able to find out" equates to "importance of the demo". I think that it is most democratic to list the regions alfabetically. That said I would not be devistated if you changed it and I would not change it back. At least not for a while. I would love this article to become a featured article, yet I dispare that it is a very big job to find enough information.--JK the unwise 19:19, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Featured article... now you're talking! I think that this article's definitely got it in it to be a featured article with a lot of TLC. Also, yes - alphabetically sets everyone on equal footing, but to me, having a number of one-line sections, a huge section with subsections of its own, and then more one-liners makes it come off as disorganized. Lemme fiddle with the organization some, and if we don't like it, we can always change it back. SchuminWeb (Talk) 19:28, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

It might help if we could attract a few more editors to the article, not sure how we could do that though maybe put it up for per review or som'in'?--JK the unwise 12:00, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

FA has come up with some good suggestions, but it hasn't lead to any more editors working on the article any idea about how we can get more ed's?--JK the unwise 19:12, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Overuse of sub-headings

According to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Headings one should "avoid overuse of sub-headings". In the current version of the page I think we are very guilty of this sin. The solution? I'm not sure, prehaps we could bunch together all the headings that contain less then 3 or 4 lines (depending on browser size) under catch all sub headings such as Other demonstrations in Europe or such like.--JK the unwise 13:23, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I fiddled with it to eliminate much of the little sub-headings in Europe. What do you think? SchuminWeb (Talk) 11:47, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
Better, but I think we need to do more consolidating. Also it would be good if we could do it in such a way that the text flows better then it currently does.--JK the unwise 13:54, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Odd wording

"The biggest protests took place in Europe were approximately one fifth of the total demonstrators protested." As against the four fifths of demonstrators who did not protest? -- Jmabel | Talk 00:05, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I edited that bit to make it more along the lines of what the original author likely intended. Does that sound better? SchuminWeb (Talk) 02:04, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Marginally. "Where" was undoubtedly intended, not "were" but, again, what does it mean to say that "one fifth of the … demonstrators protested?" Does this mean to say that one fifth of the total number of demonstrators were in Europe? That sits oddly with a claim that these were the biggest protests. Or is it just that in Europe, people were in large, concentrated demonstrations, and elsewhere demonstrations were more local, but constituted four fifths of the total. If it's the latter, why does this belong in the lead paragraph, and why single out Europe? -- Jmabel | Talk 02:52, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I wrote the line. It was ment to mean that 1/5 of the people who took part in the protests took part in protests in Europe. I think I got this from one of the articles I was reading but unfortunatly I seem not to have referanced it. Prehaps it doesn't belong in the lead paragraph. --JK the unwise 13:52, 5 December 2005 (UTC) (who is knarkarded from spending over an hour changing the refs)

That is mildly (but not dramatically) out of proportion to Europe's percentage of the world's population (and even less dramatically when you consider that there were no significant protests in China). It's hard to see why it is notable at all. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:43, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Section organisation

After some thought I have organised the page in to the 7 6 regions of the world; Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Eurasia, Oceania and Polar. Annoyingly this has slightly messed up the numbering in the referances I have just spent ages doing!--JK the unwise 14:29, 5 December 2005 (UTC)(Woops -- I haven't included a Eurasia section as Eurasia just seems to be the Europian countires plus the Asian ones--JK the unwise 12:09, 6 December 2005 (UTC))

I started trying to clump stuff together according to geograthical location to avoid the critism that "there is no narrative created by the text" (as voiced by nixie on the peer review[5]). Unfortunatly I have to go, this has left the article a bit messy, but in my oppinion still better then it was. Feel free to further "clump" and "Narative-ize" I will be back to do some more work soon.--JK the unwise 15:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Let me just say you've done a great job, and it looks a lot better. SchuminWeb (Talk) 22:15, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I have sorted the Europe section into Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Other Europe, my goegraphy is not great but I can't find a region name that covers the European countries left over when you take out Western and Eastern Europe, <shrug>. --JK the unwise 12:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Greece and European Turkey are certainly in The Balkans (which some people have recently taken to calling Southeastern Europe instead. The latter term might be better, since Cyprus is tecnically not in The Balkans. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:01, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Cool, I have replaced Other Euorope with Southeastern Europe.--JK the unwise 11:13, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

An Empirical Test of Transnational Opportunities

I have come accross an interesting article relating to the day called "The February 15 Worldwide Protests against a War in Iraq: An Empirical Test of Transnational Opportunities" at nicomedia.math.upatras.gr/conf/CAWM2003/Papers/Verhulst.pdf (PDF file). In a note at the top of the article it states that there is to be "NO QUOTING/CITING WITHOUT AUTHORS’ PERMISSION" so I emailed the authors asking permission and had a positive responce. Please find bellow the my email and the responce.--JK the unwise 10:28, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Email

Dear Joris,

I am writing to you because I have been, with the help of some others, creating an article on the global anti-war demonstration that occured on Febuary 15th 2003 for the online encycopedia, www.wikipedia.co.uk and whilst searching for information I came accross your article "The February 15 Worldwide Protests against a War in Iraq: An Empirical Test of Transnational Opportunities" at http://nicomedia.math.upatras.gr/conf/CAWM2003/Papers/Verhulst.pdf

Your article states that it is not be be qouted with out permission so firstly I request permission to quote your article. Secondly, I invite you to examine the article and help us make it accurate and comprehensive.

Wikipedia is a multilingual Web-based fee-content encycopedia. It is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing articles to be changed by anyone with access to a web browser. The project began on Ja! nuary 15, 2001 and is operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia has more than 910,000 articles in the English-language version; and has more than 770,000 registered users.

You can read and edit the article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15%2C_2003_anti-war_protest the discusion page for which can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:February_15%2C_2003_anti-war_protest

Yours sinserly,
Joseph Kisolos-Ssonko
(I edit on wikipeida as JK the Unwise)

P.S: for more information on Wikipeida see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction

Reply

Dear Joseph,

I have talked about it with my co-author, and we both see no problem in you quoting us. In the course of 2006 we will publish a reader specifically on F15, but I am not allowed to send you (part of) its content. As soon as it is in the course of publication I can...
All the best & good luck
joris

Wording of JK's email

  • "fee-content"? -- Jmabel | Talk 05:59, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
My understanding is that they are not declering their paper to be free content, rather they are just giving us permission to quote limited sections of it in the same way we can qoute any copyrighted work.--JK the unwise 11:14, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I was referring to your oddly worded "Wikipedia is a multilingual Web-based fee-content encycopedia." "Encycopedia" is probably harmless, but "fee-content" is misleading. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:22, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
I be honest I copy-pasted that stuff from the article Wikipedia (which currently opens with the line "Wikipedia is a multilingual Web-based free-content encyclopedia") without much examination. You might want to take it up with them.--JK the unwise 13:14, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
I have just realised what you are getting at. D'oh! I will be more carefull with my spelling in future. For the record they are typo's. By "Fee content" I ment "Free content" and by "Encycopedia" I ment "Encyclopedia".--JK the unwise 14:04, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

No problem; we didn't expect any fees ;). Joris

So...

  • What was the range of views about Iraq and about the US/UK (as the major Coalition partners) among those actively involved in organizing the demonstrations?
The article notes that the vast majority of demonstrations opposed the war but were not in favour of the Iraqi regieme noting that an exeception was the demonstration that took place in Baghdad.--JK the unwise 16:44, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
  • To what degree was there an infrastructure (organizational, or even just things like web sites) connecting demonstrations in different cities and countries, beyond simply responding to a common "call"? (This is hinted at by mentioning WSF and Porto Alegre, but only hinted at.) Did that infrastructure have an interesting history? Did it leave behind a remnants that survived beyond the day of the demo?
There is now some more information on how the demonstrations were organised. There is now information on; the group that orginated the idea, the debate at the ESF, the role of the ESF planning meetings, the email network etc.--JK the unwise 16:44, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I have also added that some claim that the demonstrations represent "Grassroots Globalisation".--JK the unwise 16:40, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Were there interesting similarities or differences compared to other large peace demonstrations?
Main differnce which is well covered in the article is that this was much bigger then anything else.--JK the unwise 16:44, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Were there any principles, other than opposition to this particular war, on which the demonstrators worldwide, or even within a particular country or region, were agreed?
The demonstration in London was also under the title "Freedom for Palestine". I'll add this info to the article.--JK the unwise 16:44, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Did the character of the various demonstrations have any relationship to the politics of the governments of the particular countries in which they occurred?
  • Were there significant anti-war groups who declined to take part in these particular demonstrations? Were there complex negotiations to keep certain groups on board?
I have not found evidence of this in any of the ref's.--JK the unwise 16:44, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Were there any interesting critiques from within the peace movement of peaceful mass demonstration as a tactic?
This is now addressed to some extent in the effect section. It is noted that the faliour of the demonstrations lead some to argue that there is no point to demonstrating and that others argued in preferance for dirrect action.--JK the unwise 16:44, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[bullet points above]-- Jmabel | Talk 06:17, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

"set a precedent"

If the demonstrations "set a precedent not only in terms of the size of the demonstrations but also in terms of the international co-ordination involved," what did they set a precedent for? What subsequent demonstrations followed this precedent? Or do you merely mean to say that they were themselves unprecedented? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:58, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Prehaps I misunderstand the correct use of the phraze "set a presedent". Examining en.wiktionary.org/wiki/precedent it would seem I had silightly misunderstood it. The key to what I wanted to say is that they set a new bench mark for size and co-ordination. Prehaps it would be better just to say that they were unprecendented.--JK the unwise 13:11, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
Precisely. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:11, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive

One thing this article lacks is lots of editors working on it. While some of the needed information (pointed to by Jmabel in "So..." section above) will only be found by searching for more ref's, I think other issules to do with the layout of the article, removing some of the stat's type information into tables, spelling, punctuation, grama etc. could easly be improved by editors with skills in those areas. To this end I am putting the article up to be the Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive of the week. Please vote for it at Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive#February 15, 2003 anti-war protest--JK the unwise 12:49, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

:-(. It gathered quite a few votes but fell at the finnal hurddle. I'll have to think of another way to try to improve the article. I may send it to peer review again soon.--JK the unwise 14:29, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Article name

I plan to move this to Global day of protests against the invasion of Iraq, unless there are any objections. We should try and avoid dates in titles, and this is how the article identifies itself in the lead. violet/riga (t) 15:55, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

The only problem i have with the proposed move is that there have been other global days of protest against the Iraq war, for example March 20, 2003 anti-war protest, September 24, 2005 anti-war protest and March 19, 2005 anti-war protest. There is also one planed for the 18 March which has been backed my Hugo Chavez and the World Social Forum Assembly so should be pretty global. No doubt none other the other demo's has a good a claim the title "global day of protests" as Feb15 as none have been as big or covered so many places however I still feel the proposed name change would be confusing.--JK the unwise 17:36, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Fair points. Shame but it looks like we're forced into it. violet/riga (t) 17:41, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Removed from the article

I removed the following from the article.

Also, on March 24, the yearly protest against the 1974 Coup d'etat yielded an estimate of 100,000 attendees according to a Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo spokesperson, when in 2003 edition's "No a la guerra en Irak" (Spanish: No to war in Irak) was added to the slogan of the protest that year (usual numbers are around 30,000 people).

it is not about febuary 15th demo.--JK the unwise 11:39, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Template:Anti-war topics

On Friday, March 17, 2006, JK the unwise removed the Anti-war topics template from this article. The template seems very relevant to me, so I'd like to know why it has been removed. Thanks. —GrantNeufeld 20:03, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm kind of curious, too... SchuminWeb (Talk) 01:31, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Sorry i removed so I could get a nicer print out of the page ... then I forgot to replace it. <Hangs head in shame>.--JK the unwise 12:01, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Copyedit

I am currently in the process of copyediting this article, mainly concentrating on grammatical and stylistic concerns and trying to break up the heavily statistical nature of the current content. However, I did remove this bit:

According to one protester though the demonstration was chaotic, with police blocks in seemingly random places, it was "... for the most part, a very peaceful sort of chaos. The crowd was generally on the old end of young to middle-aged." [37]

No offence to the author, but some random blogger is really not a useful source. Unless we're going to quote every single person who opened their mouth on this topic, this sort of thing ought to be left out. If a more authoritative source can be found expressing the same sentiment (which, FWIW, is probably accurate in my opinion) then by all means restore it. Soo 19:06, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

fair enough the CNN comment on diversity of the march is probally enough.--JK the unwise 17:13, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

The role of the internet

Not quite sure how to work this stuff in to the article but it seems interesting;

Contains discution of the effectiveness of using the net to mobalise. Talks about how UFPJ used the net to mobalise for Feb 15 and some crit's of net but how they also say that it "can't replace old-fashioned face-to-face organizing".
Talks about how the internet has made it quicker to mobalise a "movement". And how the demo's were organised by "decentralized networks" rather then old fasioned hierarchies.

Personaly, though I find this very interesting, my own experience of organising for the Feb 15 demo in London was that it involved lots of old fasioned slog work, leafleting face-to-face conversations etc. I think the internet played a part but that these articles over estimate it. Unfortunatly I doubt I'll be able to find an article that states the opinion that the internet didn't play such a big role. Oh well.--JK the unwise 17:11, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

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