"However, it's an administration that can't admit its mistakes, that can't admit the truth, and consequently that can't change. So there is no hope."

Why bother to come then, I ask.

"It's important," he says firmly, "to express your views, to protest."

Grandfather and Daughter: Only moments later, another man with a little girl on his shoulders catches my eye. I approach him, introduce myself, and mention that he's the second father I've seen this way in so many minutes. Joe Stone promptly corrects me: "I'm her grandfather. Her father's in Iraq." He lifts MacKenzie down from his shoulders, tired and ready for her nap, and puts her in a stroller pushed by his actual daughter Cindy. Then he turns back to me. "I haven't done this in thirty years. I was here in 1970. I was tear-gassed at the University of Maryland. Same kind of war, different time."

From Virginia, he's the assistant controller at a dairy ("an accountant basically"). Like a lot of people at this demonstration, he speaks calmly, even quietly, but with a deep-seated disgust. "I'm just sick of it. I think Bush is immoral. You have to say something. We're proud to be here. I'd slam the door in George Bush's face if he came knocking."

His daughter, like most of the demonstrators, is dressed casually -- sweat shirt, blue jeans, sneakers. She tells me her husband, a combat engineer who joined the military in 2002, is back for his second tour of duty in Iraq. He was gone for his daughter's birth, home for nine months, returned in the winter and now is stop-lossed. They're not certain when he'll be back.

I ask whether he knows she's at the demonstration -- her first, it turns out, other than a small "free Tibet" one.

"He wouldn't say not to," she replies in almost a whisper. "But I haven't had a chance to tell him yet. I just feel the same as my dad, though. I'd had it. I can't believe there are so many people in this country who still think the President's so great, especially after his first term. I couldn't get a single one of my friends to come. I work at a government contracting company and my co-workers thought it was strange to do this because I might not have a job if the war ended. One of them even said, ‘You know, there's video cameras down there.' So what!"

Her father chimes in: "Defense contractors don't need a war to keep going."

She adds, "I don't really know what to do about Iraq now. They can't just leave, but I don't see a plan of action for how we're going to get out. I wish George Bush could get out of office. I just don't see how, though."

The Farmer: His sign reads, "U.S. Farmers Say No to War" and we bump into him just as we turn the corner and head for the White House, the march slowing into gridlock, the roaring of the crowd ahead rising to a din. But Michael O'Gorman's voice carries well. "I'm a real farmer," he says in response to my query. "I farm a thousand acres of organic vegetables for sale to the U.S. market in Baja, California [Mexico]. I've been farming for 35 years. I've earned all these wrinkles." And indeed his face is deeply creased.

"When I began in 1970, U.S. farmers were feeding the world. This is the first year, possibly in our history, when we're importing more than we're exporting, when we're not feeding ourselves. China will feed itself. India will feed itself. We won't. When I began farming, there were 2 million farmers in the U.S. Three hundred thousand of us remain; average age, sixty-two. I'm almost there." He laughs.

He tells me that he sits on the steering committee of United for Peace and Justice, which helped organize this demonstration. He flew in from Baja. "I was supposed to be in the lead contingent." He shows me a badge that indicates exactly that. "But we were swamped by the crowd and so I'm here. I remember joining protests back on July 4, 1987 in my community. We were supposed to speak about local issues, but I was protesting that the U.S. was arming Saddam Hussein's Iraq and [Ronald Reagan aide] Oliver North was arming Iran in a war between those two countries where two million young men would die. I warned that it would come back to haunt us.

"On 9/11, my oldest daughter was at Ground Zero, right across the street, and she survived. My son volunteered after that because his sister had been there. Now, he's at Guantánamo, so that war is haunting not just our society, but my own family.

"My son joined the Coast Guard Reserves. He thought it was a peaceable way to serve. Then they shipped him off to Cuba. I support him. We don't argue about it too much. I'm waiting for him to make his peace with it. He had a week off recently and -- can you believe it -- they didn't even fly him to Florida. We had to pay $750 to get him home.

"It's a horrible situation. People say it'll be a total mess if we pull out, but it's a mess and we're there. I don't see any argument for the United States staying. If, in pulling out, we could create an alternative to the U.S. military that would, of course, be best."

He shakes hands and invites us to visit his farm in Baja. "I believe," he says in parting, "that this is a very American movement. We're reclaiming our country."

Protester with Cane: I approach Camille Hazeur, who works for George Mason University's Office of Equity and Diversity, because of her cane ("arthritic hip"). I say that I thought, in a march like this, the cane indicated real commitment. "Darn right!" she replies. "I'm against this war. It's indescribable that we're even there. It's my small way of saying, no, get out! And it's for our kids over there. To bring them back. And for the Iraqis. You never even hear what's happening to them. And I feel we're just sitting here while atrocities are going on, and I'm afraid our kids will have to suffer the impact of what we're doing there now. Those of us who are reading and thinking people... I'm not naïve about the Middle East or Saddam Hussein, but none of it justifies this.

"I was here in the seventies. I went to college in this town. I remember the demonstrations. I remember them all. They had a distinctive smell, of tear gas and grass, and we haven't smelled either of those today."

Protester with Cane (2): We're past the White House now and Ann Galloway is walking with determination, cane well deployed ("I need a knee replacement"). The gridlock of the march has ended and open space has appeared. She has a blue backpack strapped on. A little sign sticks out: "Support our troops, Bring them home alive."

"I hosted a Cindy Sheehan vigil in Stanford, Connecticut, and have been a leader of one of the MoveOn teams there. This is the first big march I have been in since Doctor Martin Luther King, Doctor Benjamin Spock, and the Reverend William Sloan Coffin demonstrated in maybe 1967 against the Vietnam War. I actually became energized again because everything this administration does is so antithetical to what America is about and I intend to be part of a movement that takes back the Congress in 2006.

"I'm a grandmother and, if anything, I am marching for my grandchild's future. She'll be two in December. I wrote to a friend that I'm going to show up with a cane and a floppy hat [which indeed she's wearing] and become one of those little old ladies we used to joke about. But this -- the abuses, there are just so many -- has to stop. They won't take the tax cuts off the table, but they're willing to squander our precious dollars on the war in Iraq that could be used for a myriad of other things in this country, including" -- she says it emphatically -- "homeland security. These guys don't care about any of it, just those tax cuts for their people who are not sending their children to fight this war."

Flight Attendant: She's standing at the curb in a green shirt with a sticker on the back that reads, "Sex is back in the White House. Bush is screwing us all!" She introduces herself as Liane. "I'm a flight attendant," she says. "I got this sticker from a woman I met at a union rally by the Labor Department. I liked it and she was so interesting. She had a history of coming to protests. She told me, if I gave her my address, she would send one my way. It was at least six months ago. I just haven't had a chance to use it until now."

This is her first antiwar protest. "I don't know what to do," she says. "I just think that the war in Iraq is a big mistake. Especially when I saw New Orleans and thought about the money for the levee system diverted to Iraq. That was upsetting. Even before that, though, I got the impression that the ones pushing the war were really planning for the best-case scenario, that they hadn't planned for anything but the best outcome. I think what they're doing is creating more terrorism."

Toy Soldiers: As we turn the corner, heading up 17th away from the White House, I'm approached by a young man dressed all in black and wearing headgear that looks like a cross between a fedora and a top hat. It's fronted by a yellow piece of cardboard with images of toy soldiers stamped on it. He hands me a little bag of green plastic soldiers of the sort I played with as a child and, strangely enough, in the midst of this antiwar demonstration, my heart takes a leap. I genuinely want them.

Each soldier, whether shooting or throwing a grenade, turns out to have a little piece of paper attached that says, "Bring me home" and includes the Mouths Wide Open website address. There's even a small explanation in the bag that begins, "We're spreading plastic Army Men around the country and around the globe as small, everyday reminders of the ongoing horrors of the war in Iraq -- using them as tools to foster dialogue, action and resistance to the war."

I ask if he'd mind being interviewed, which flusters him. He finally indicates Merry Conway, who is older. "She's better to talk to," he says. And it's true. She's happy to talk. In fact, she's an enthusiast as well as an artist who "creates performance and installation shows with a very large community element."

So I ask about Mouths Wide Open. "We're a little group of friends in New York. Many are artists. We came together after 9/11 to see what we could do. We created the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Crusade. Maybe you've seen it at other demonstrations. It's huge. But we were still thinking about how to create a dialogue, because so many people were acting as if the war wasn't happening if they didn't have a relative involved. It was business as usual. What, we thought, if we left a trace, started that dialogue with a poignant emotional effect. And these little toy soldiers that so many boys have played with are it.