Crowds+pack+Iraqi+CP+celebrations,+Indymedia+San+Francisco+Bay

//Indymedia San Francisco Bay, Monday Apr 16th, 2007 8:21 AM//
=Crowds pack Iraqi Communist Party celebrations=


 * by PWW (reposted)**

Some 10,000 Baghdad residents packed a sports stadium March 31 to celebrate the 73rd anniversary of the Iraqi Communist Party. It was the first mass event in Baghdad in years by any secular democratic group.

Similar events took place around the country. In Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, 2,000 overflowed a cultural center for a celebration featuring music, poetry and dance.

The response in Baghdad was so great that the party issued an apology to those who could not get into the filled stadium. The throng, including many families, children and youth, was mobilized on three days’ notice due to security precautions. The party, seasoned in organizing through decades of repression, distributed invitations carefully via e-mail, printed notices and word of mouth.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who heads one of the main Kurdish parties, and Speaker of Parliament Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, of the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front, sent representatives who read greetings. Representatives of a wide spectrum of political parties and civil society organizations also participated. Well-known poets and singers performed, including the head of the Iraqi Writers Union.

As crowds arrived outside the stadium, a jubilant atmosphere prevailed, with traffic policemen helping participants snap photos of each other. The event “had a tremendous uplifting impact on the political mood,” said ICP spokesman Salam Ali.

The huge turnouts in Baghdad and elsewhere point to a “change of mood among the people, especially the young, towards the Islamic parties,” Ali said. “People are just fed up” with sectarianism and violence. “The Communist Party appeals to people because it is not tainted with corruption and does not have blood on its hands from sectarian killings. People are seeing the party as hope, as a potential alternative, something different.”

Read more, with photos at: http://pww.org/article/articleview/10885/1/367/


 * From: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/04/16/18399483.php**

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