Transcript:

I took this photograph 18 days after the September the 11th, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in in New York City. This photograph was taken in Washington, D.C. It basically was the first protest against
the impending war – invasion – of Afghanistan.

It refers to a quote by Howard Zinn, who’s a noted historian. And he’s most famous (I think) for writing the book The People’s History of the United States. He developed his anti war feelings because he was a bombardier in World War 2, a lead bombardier, I think. On many missions and he saw the destruction or heard about the destruction the planes caused after they, when the bombs hit, and how many people get killed and all of this. And it did, it made him, turned him into an anti war person. So that’s where the quote came from. And I tend to agree.

I just really, I don’t like war. I’ve been against war all my life, seems like, especially when Vietnam rolled around and I was kind of young then. But I do believe that war is very – it’s been besides being very dangerous, it also commits all kind of atrocities to the Earth, to the people to animals, the whole ecosystems. And people rarely talk about that. They talk about the human cost, the human cost. I found the war is usually driven by profit. It’s driven by profit, the profit of the weapons manufacturers. The profit of being able to control land.

And there’s a backstory to this photo. First of all, when the photo was taken, there were 20,000 people that hit the streets of Washington, D.C. There were, I guess, two major marches and this photo was taken during one of them. There’s a backstory to this that I find was interesting, as many of my photos have a backstory.

Backstory to this is in the late summer, I guess, of 2001, prior to the September the 11th attacks, there were 400 people gathered in Washington, D.C. for a meeting called by “50 years is enough,” which is a anti globalization movement group. They fought against the World Bank and IMF and I was one of the people there along with religious, labor, many other, many other groups activists, anarchists. And we decided that there would be protest at the World Bank meeting. Even the AFL CIO where the meeting was held were going to participate in the actions and possibly get arrested, etcetera, etcetera. Well when the September the 11th happened, all kind of groups dropped out, including the AFL CIO. But those of us that did attend we were part of a very historic beginning of the post-September the 11th anti-war movement.

So there’s a lot more to this, but for now I think that’s enough. Thank you.

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Field Notes is a new video series featuring award-winning photojournalist and documentary photographer Orin Langelle, co-founder of Global Justice Ecology Project and author of Portraits of Struggle.