get all that across.’ Glick paused. ‘So what are we saying? Are we saying this is it? Are we saying we’re with Bill? We organize a march to commemorate the victims?’
‘And defend our constitutional freedoms,’ said Rikheim. ‘The best way we can commemorate those people is to defend our freedoms.’
‘Right. So that’s what we’re saying?’
‘We should talk to our lawyers,’ said Mike Sweetman.
‘Sure, we talk to our lawyers, but apart from that … is it a yes?’
Someone nodded. Then someone else.
‘Andrei,’ said Glick, ‘what about you?’
Andrei nodded. ‘Fishbowl’s in. We’ll help organize. We’ll do anything.’
‘Mike?’
‘I’ve got to talk to my lawyers.’
‘Sure, but … yes or no?’
Everyone in the room waited on Sweetman’s answer. His network alone had more than double the number of users of all the others combined. Homeplace’s involvement would be critical both to give credibility to the marches and to stimulate turnout. He was, by some measure, the most important person in the room.
And Sweetman, who knew it, didn’t want to have anything to do with Andrei Koss or anything in which he was involved. Just allowing Koss to be associated with him, he felt, gave Koss a status he didn’t deserve. But Sweetman also had a very clear understanding of the needs of his business, and he felt that his network, in the current fevered environment, faced a genuine existential threat from Diane McKenrick. Even if the full extent of her absurd proposals wasn’t implemented, Congress might compromise on constraints that would severely impede his growth and profitability. And the idea they had just come up with to counter her, he had to acknowledge, was smart. There was almost a touch of genius to it.
At length he turned to Jerry and nodded.
Glick gave a smile of relief. ‘So what do we call it?’
‘Just what you said, Jerry,’ said Rosenstein. ‘We’re defending freedom. July 4. Let’s call it the Defence of Freedom marches.’
Rikheim smiled. ‘Let’s see McKenrick oppose that. Let’s see her stand up and say she’s opposed to defending freedom.’
‘You know, there is a risk,’ said Sweetman. ‘There is a way this could actually work against us.’
‘Which is?’
‘We’re sitting here all excited in this room, we think it’s going to be another Selma, and then we do it, we organize it, we hype it, we build it up – and no one turns out.’
There was silence.
‘We’ll look like idiots.’
‘People will turn out,’ said someone.
‘Let’s not kid ourselves, it’s high risk. We’re upping the ante. Just so we’re aware. If the turnout’s low – McKenrick wins.’
25
THREE-QUARTERS OF a million marched in Denver. The city that had lost so many of its sons and daughters two months previously gave itself over to a great sighing catharsis of grief. It wasn’t the biggest rally in the country, but it was by far the most emotional. Denver Honours Its Martyrs proclaimed one banner stretched behind the podium in City Park where the march ended. Denver Says No To Senator McKenrick said a second.
The nation joined with Denver. Over a million wound their way through Central Park in New York, while 800,000 converged on Washington, bussing in from all over the country. Los Angeles saw an estimated 600,000; San Francisco a similar number. In Chicago, a million descended on Grant Park. Houston saw 400,000. In Oklahoma City, where the wounds of Timothy McVeigh’s bombing were never far from the surface, it was estimated that 40 per cent of the city’s population thronged the area around the Oklahoma City National Memorial. In cities and towns across the country, Fourth of July celebrations were transformed into Defence of Freedom gatherings. Speaker after speaker on podium after podium, in parks, in stadiums, in fairgrounds, in front of town halls, said that the only fitting memorial for those who had died in Denver – people whose basic and most fundamental constitutional right, the right to life, had been snatched away by Buckett and Hodgkin – was a reaffirmation of the constitutional freedoms guaranteed to all Americans.
Around 300,000 turned out in Papago Park, in Diane McKenrick’s home town of Phoenix, to affirm that message. Combatively having accepted an invitation to speak, she was listened to in stony silence until a wave of slow handclapping built up and drowned her out.
That day marked the turning point of public opinion. The sight of 20 million or more Americans marching in avenues, malls and parks across the country had an impact, and not only on soccer moms and judo dads. Politicians from the left who hadn’t distinguished themselves for