Ahmadinjad Protest in NYC

Along with approximately 140 other Canadian students, I went to New York City to protest the Iranian President - Mahmoud Ahmadinjad's presence at the UN. We left at 10PM on Saturday and returned at 130AM on Tuesday. A trip of about 50 hours, in which 20 of those were spent on the bus. We arrived in NYC at 830AM and we still had the entire day ahead of us. Before we went for brunch and programming I went for a quick tour of Times Square with my sister, as our hotel was right around the corner.

The morning was spent doing some advocacy training and learning about Ahmadinejad and his threat to the world. At 4PM we got back to the hotel and we had the rest of the evening of. For the evening I hung out with my assigned hotel roommate and neighbours. With only the evening available to enjoy New York, we had to make the most of our limited time. We walked around Times Square, past the Empire State Building, and then to dinner at the 2nd Ave. Deli. We ended up sharing a deli platter which was said to serve 3-4 people. LIARS! - there must have been enough food to feed 6-8 people. The platter included pastrami, salami, corned beaf, roast beef, chopped liver, egg salad, tongue, and turkey. Despite the abundance of delicious food, I was determined not to leave any uneaten; Against all odds, I succeeded in my quest to finish the dinner - but barely. After the dinner, bought tickets in Times Square for a comedy show, where we were told Dave Atell, and 2 other known comics were going to be performing - LIARS!!! We got there and found out it was ladies night, and there would only be female comics, and that the people that were advertised to us had performed the previous week. They comped us one drink and since we were already there, we decided to stay. Only one of the comics was funny and on the whole the entire show sucked. After the show it was almost 11 oclock, and we started walking around the area thinking of something to do, as it was still to early to call it a night. We ended up taking a cab to the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, and we walked the bridge to Brooklyn. This took a considerable amount of time, as we stopped to take pictures approximately every 25 feet, not to mention the bridge was long! We ended up subwaying back to our hotel in Times Square at about 1AM.

Amy and I at Times Square

Elana, Me, Dan, Hailey on the Brooklyn Bridge

After heading to bed at 130, we were woken up at 730 in order to get ready for our day. Before we went to the rally, we went to hear from a number of speakers who represented organziations who helped to fund the trip. We then headed out to the rally, where there were over 2000 people there. There was a fairly extensive list of speakers at the rally, however, neither Sarah Palin or Hillary Clinton showed up due to Clinton's stubbornness. The list of speakers included Irwin Cotler, Natan Sharansky, Elie Weisel and Speaker of the Knesset Dalia Itzik. The reason for the protest was to show the world that Ahmadinejad's genociadal statements cannot be tolerated, and that he should be denied a platform to spread his hate speach. After the rally, we walked back to the hotel where we boarded our busses and headed back home. It seemed as though the trip was over before it started.

Elana, Hailey and Me at the rally