TURNOUT AT WASHINGTON ANTIWAR RALLY -- 318,000
While Washington escalates the war, it seeks to de-escalate the opposition to it, at least in the mass media.
In its account of the October 21-22 antiwar demonstrations World Outlook [October 27] commented: "To minimize their importance, press and police estimates systematically underestimate the size of the demonstrations both in the U.S. and elsewhere. For example, the Washington police would acknowledge no more than 25,000 persons at a rally that obviously numbered seven or eight times that many."
Confirmation of this point in respect to the big October 21 mobilization at Washington has come from Nat Hentoff's widely read "Review of the Press" column im the November 9 New York City Village oice.
Hentoff reports the following: "On the front page of the October 30 New Left Notes, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) weekly, Bob Grove writes: 'The Chief of Washington, D.C., police forces admitted on Saturday evening (October 21) that his