Across the US, war opposition grows

Compiled by Shawn Gaynor

Jan. 21(AGR)—This past weekend from sea to shining sea Americans took to the streets to lend their voices to a cacophony of dissent against President George W. Bush, and his plans for a renewed full scale war on Iraq. The protests, scheduled to coincide with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, draw in to question American’s willingness to pressure a new war in the Middle East.

In Washington, DC, hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered on the National Mall to hear speakers. The protest was called by the ANSWER coalition, though protesters came representing dozens, if not hundreds of groups—or no group at all. A sea of signs were raised above the crowd, with slogans like "Bomb Texas, they have oil too," and "Grandmothers against the War." Others read "Rogue Nation," and "Disarm Bush."

Over 30 speakers addressed the crowd including Rev. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Ramsey Clark, former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and congressman John Conyers of the Congressional Black Caucus.

McKinney spoke to the crowd saying "it was cold last night, Mr. President, and all across our country it was especially cold for the quarter-of-a-million veterans who sleep on our streets every night." She continued by pointing out that "in no other rich democracy on this planet does so many people have so little. Yet the proposed stimulus package will only give billions more to the wealthy. What about us Mr. President?"

Award-winning actress Jessica Lange spoke to the crowd stating that "the path that this administration is on is wrong and we object, we object in our hearts and in our minds, it is an immoral war that they are beginning and we must not be silenced, we have to be able to stand up and say no. We are the people, you are not speaking for us."

A march to the Naval Shipyard followed the rally with the intent of conducting "weapons inspections" to find "weapons of mass destruction," though the widely circulated reports that civil disobedience would take place never materialized.

On the way to the Naval Shipyard, as protesters marcher down M street, through Aurther-Capper public housing complex, residents began to join the march. They chanted, "No war for Oil," and "Down with Bush." Seeing the local community beginning to join in, police set up a road block to stop the march from proceeding down M street.

Some people demanded the police let them continue marching. The police stood firm, only allowing people to go down an alley to a side street.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson was standing at the front of the march. Jackson told the police he had a constitutional right to continue walking forward, and that there were hundreds of thousands of people behind him who planned to do the same.

For a moment, it looked like a truly historical moment was in the works: Jackson was standing at the front-line of a massive antiwar march, face to face with mainly African-American cops who had arbitrarily set up a police line to stop people from expressing their dissent.

After about 15 minutes, though, the scene was diffused. Jackson pleaded again to be let through the police line, saying he had to get to the airport and that he would walk on the sidewalk until he could flag down a taxi.

While Jackson was making his case, an elderly woman walked up next to him and told police she had an emergency and needed to pass in order to get to a nearby metro station. The woman lost her balance at one point and almost fell down, repeating that she was having an emergency.

The police refused to let the woman pass, but opened their line for Jackson to walk through. Jackson silently slipped through the line and walked away from the crowd, where the elderly women remained in peril and public housing residents looked on in confusion.

When asked, Jackson didn’t express remorse for leaving the march behind. "I had to use the toilet and catch a taxi to the airport," he said.

Meanwhile in San Francisco roughly two hundred thousand people gathered to speak out against plans for war, at an ANSWER organized rally at the San Francisco Civic Center. "If war is inevitable... Start drafting SUV drivers now!" read one placard. Over 50 Bay Area unions joined the march, including teachers, nurses, letter carriers, and longshoremen.

Perhaps the most popular speaker at the San Francisco rally was the man who isn’t president, but plays one on TV: Martin Sheen. He orated with the vim and vigor of a religious revivalist, greeting the throng with the words, "Peace be with you."

"We want to end our long and shameful silence here today and say ‘No’ to death and war," Sheen shouted. "From this time forth, may all our thoughts, words and deeds be a nonviolent resistance to all violence. Let my country awake."

As a permitted march to the Civic Center concluded, a break away march led by Black Bloc anarchists, and a radical queer "Pink Bloc", chanting "what do we want? PEACE! How we gonna get it? REVOLUTION!" began snaking its way throughout the streets of the city. The march stopped briefly at the San Francisco Chronicle where one activist sprayed "weapons of mass distraction" on the building. Windows were broken at the British Consulate, the Citicorp Building, and graffiti was spray painted though out the march. One protester phrased her message as a question to passers-by: "Who profits from war?"

Police, frustrated and out maneuvered, were unable to stop the protest, and resorted to driving motorcycles at high speeds through the crowd, to no reported affect.

Energy remained high as the crowd redecorated the imposing INS building with images of a world without oppression. This building had recently been the target of angry protests over the mandatory "registration" of many Arab and middle-Eastern men. Marchers chanted "no borders, no nations, fuck deportations" as protesters smashed the windows of the INS and redecorated its façade. One protester said he was "outraged at the way our friends and neighbors are being humiliated and dehumanized. No person should be hauled away to a secret detention, abused, and denied access to their family or lawyer."

Victoria’s Secret and StarBucks also had windows broke, though march organizers said that they were not planned stops for the march.

Organizers of the breakaway march said, "the march was meant to send a powerful message to both private and governmental institutions they see implicated in the war effort." Two arrests were reported.

Perhaps hundreds of other smaller protests took place in big cities and small towns across the nation.

Elsewhere in California, 1,200 gathered in San Diego, 800 in Yorba Linda, 1,200 in San Luis Obispo. In Los Angeles 17 activists where arrested when they staged a "Die-in" in front of the federal building there. One onlooker Carly Wong, a student who is from Hong Kong and was seeking to extend a student visa, said "Well, it’s better than China, at least they had the chance to say something before they were arrested."

A protest in Portland, OR drew tens of thousands, who beat drums and sang peace hymns. A march of several hundred radicals went to a nearby Army recruiting center as the main rally was winding down. The center had its window broken, and was covered with anti-war slogans. A critical Mass Bike ride, circled the rally with signs reading "honk if you’re part of the problem," and "Who would Jesus Bomb". 400 people undertook a twelve mile march from Ashland to Medford, OR, where they joined a rally of 600 more. 400 others rallied in Grants Pass.

In Lincoln, NE over 1,000 people braved bitter cold to march against the war.

Margaret Merryweather, 70, said "If we believe in something, we can’t leave it up to other people to do our complaining for us. We have to show our faces." She joined over 500 gathered outside McDill Air Base in Florida over 500 to protest the war. Elsewhere in Florida about 400 people assembled in Venice, with several hundred more in Tallahassee and Miami. In St. Agustine 200 people rallied. "It is great to see an army for peace" said activist David Thundershield Queen.

Hundreds gathered across North Carolina, with a 300 person protest in downtown Durham, and 100 gathering at the Martin Luther King Junior monument in Charlotte.

800 protested in an Albuquerque, NM march that ended in a rally at an Army recruiting office.

In Indianapolis, IN 600 people huddled in the cold for two hours at the Soldier’s and Sailors Monument, with temperatures in the low teens.

Montpelier, VT, that state’s capitol, had a protest of over 3,000. Local sources said this was the largest anti-war protest in that city’s history. Both of Vermont’s Senators, and their one congressman, sent letters of support to the rally. One sign in the crowd read "Regime change starts at home."

In Arizona, over 5,000 people rallied in Tucson, where cops targeted anarchists in black, as the crowd attempted to march in the streets. Several people where violently arrested.

In Seattle, Washington 10,000-15,000 rallied against the war. One sign read "support the poor, No WAR!". in Vancouver, Washington, 400 rallied, 2,000 turned out in Spokane, and 600 in Bellingham.

600 rallied in Reno, NV, 1,000 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and 800 at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Nine were arrested in Chicopee, MA for blocking the entrances to Westover Air Reserve Base.

In New York City sixteen people were arrested on Thursday for a sit in at the Times Square recruiting station, while 70 demonstrated outside.

1,300 rallied in Honolulu, HI, the largest anti-war protest in that states history.

The list could go on.

Though some administration officials have suggested that the protest does not represent the will of the American people, and represents a vocal minority of special interests, recent polls suggest otherwise. A Newsweek survey released Saturday found that 60 percent of Americans want to take more time to explore non-military solutions. A Time-CNN poll released this week shows the President’s approval rating has dropped to a post-Sept. 11 low of 53 percent.

Sources: Associated Press, DC Indymedia, Indymedia, IPS, LA Times, NYC IMC, Reuters, Pan-African Newswire, Portland IMC, Tucson Citizen, Washington Post

back to top

J18: A global call for peace

Compiled by Nicholas Holt

Jan. 22 (AGR)-- In the biggest day of protest the world has yet seen against a war on Iraq, from Washington to Tokyo, Liverpool to Damascus, Rome to Antarctica, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators across four continents took to the streets last Saturday, joining in a common aim, across cultural divides and language barriers to say "No."

As around 100,000 troops from Britain and the US made their way to the Gulf, their numbers were dwarfed by the ranks of ordinary men and women who took to the streets in cities around the world to protest the war drive of US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

As the day began, 5,000 people in Tokyo, Japan marched into the glitzy Ginza shopping distrcits, including a group of students wearing Bush face masks and toting toy guns with flowers potruding from the barrels. Some of the demonstrators played island folk songs on traditional string instruments from Okinawa, where more than half of the 47,000 US troops in Japan are stationed.

In Christchurch, New Zealand more than 400 people attended a rally organized by the Green Party.

A small group of demonstrators marched to the US and British consulates in Hong Kong, China.

In Manama, Bahrain, as many as 3,000 people took part in a march against a possible war, as well as the presence of US military bases in the Middle East, shouting "The American is a colonizer who has come to cause destruction."

Bahrain, a key Washington ally in the Persian Gulf and home to the American Fifth fleet, hosts about 1,000 US military personnel.

Bahraini officials had urged the marchers not to burn the US flag during the protest, prompting one protester to carry a placard reading: "It is a crime to set the USA flag on fire, but it is not a crime for the USA to set the whole world on fire."

More than 15,000 people in Damascus, Syria marched to the parliament building carrying Syrian and Palestinian flags and shouting, "Down with the United States!"

They carried banners that read: "No, to war, yes to a just peace," "Iraq: A history and a civilization, not an oil well," and "Israel is the one that has weapons of mass destruction."

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has been the most outspoken Arab leader in his condemnation of the US campaign against Iraq.

In Beirut, Lebanon, more than 8,000 protesters marched to the United Nations offices where visiting British Minister of Parliament (MP) George Galloway took part.

"A peaceful solution must be found, or we are all going over the cliff in the Middle East and all of us will be damaged in the fall," said Galloway.

In Gaza City more than 3,000 Palestinians marched, filling the streets with Iraqi flags and pictures of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "Our beloved Saddam, strike Tel Aviv," some of the demonstrators shouted, reviving a slogan from the 1991 Gulf War.

1,000 marched in Cairo, Egypt against a war, calling on the government to prevent US and British warships from using the Suez Canal for an assault on Iraq.

In Ahman, Jordan, in the predominantly Palestinian district of Nuzha, 300 protesters burned Israeli and US flags.

On Sunday, thousands demonstrated against a war both in Istanbul and in Ankara, Turkey, as chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers arrived for talks with Turkish officials in hopes that Ankara will allow Washington to use military bases in any conflict.

Mass protests are unusual in Turkey due to stringent laws requiring prior approval by the state.

On Saturday in Pakistan, hundreds marched in several cities. About 200 students and human rights activists in Lahore tried to march to the US Consulate, but were stopped by police who allowed a half dozen to deliver a resolution to US officials.

People from McMurdo Station in Antarctica joined the protests by creating a human peace sign on the ice, uniting all seven continents in a call for no war.

American and Iraqi citizens living in Florence, Italy were joined by nearly 5,000 Italians as they marched from the central train statrion in Florence to the US Consulate along the Arno River. From there, a human chain was formed that stretched into a circle surrounding the consulate. A US child together with an Iraqi child and their parents presented Consular officers with a rainbow-colored peace flag.

Elsewhere in Italy, 4,000 demonstrated in Rome, and more in Milan and Naples and in Bologna, some of the 2,000 protesting there tried to break through a police line around an unrelated right-wing demonstration and police responded with teargas.

On Thurs., Jan. 17, four days after Pope John Paul II said war on Iraq would be a "defeat for humanity," the Jesuit-run journal Civilta Cattolica attacked the US’s stated justification for the war, saying it was motivated by economics and oil interests and would spark a wave of terrorism and more trouble for the Middle East.

The views of the journal are significant because its articles are approved by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and reflect Vatican opinion.

In Moscow, Russia, demonstrators chanted "US, hands off Iraq!" and "Yankee, go home!" in a march outside the US Embassy. One banner read: "Iraq isn’t your ranch, Mr. Bush.

A few hundred demonstrators gathered in Oslo, Norway, and in the Netherlands, hundreds marched through the streets of Rotterdam, Nijmegen, and Leiden and police detained 90 activists for trying to enter an airbase in Uden where US and Dutch forces are stationed.

5,000 marched in Goteborg, Sweden and others in Rejavik and Uppsala.

In France, in the third nationwide anti-war demonstration since October, 6,000 demonstrators in Paris shouted in English "Stop Bush! Stop war!" and set off fire crackers while 2,000 rallied in Montpeiller and 1,500 in Nice.

"You can see people are waking up when they see us marching," said Flore Boudet, a 21-year-old demonstrating with her classmates from Sorbonne University.

Hundreds of protesters rallied outside the US Army’s European headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany.

In London, England, where last September hundreds of thousands marched against military action against Iraq, 400 people gathered outside the permanent joint headquarters of Britain’s armed forces at Northwood. The groups was removed by police and later a much larger group attempted to blockade the gates of the base. Around 50 who held a sit-down protest in front of the gates were carried away by police.

Elsewhere in Britain, 2,500 gathered in Liverpool, more than 2,000 in Bradford, and 1,500 in Cardiff, Wales and 250 in Glasgow, Scotland.

"I am absolutely opposed to a war," Major-General Patrick Cordingly, who commanded British forces during the 1991 Gulf War told the British newspaper the Independent.

"If the US reserves the right to attack any country it doesn’t like the look of, then those who don’t like the look of the US might return the compliment," warned author Salman Rushdie.

2,500, including members of the Irish legislature and airport workers, were in Shannon, Ireland to protest the local airport’s use as a refueling stop for US military aircraft.

Tens of thousands of people joined marches, demonstrations, rallies, and other events in the deep chill of winter across Canada to protest the looming war on Iraq. Events were held in over 30 communities across the country, big and small, from Yellowknife to Fredericton.

In the national captial of Ottawa, about 3,000 demonstrators convened on Parliament hill, the seat of Canadian federal government. They then proceeded to the US Embassy where a die-in was held to represent the Iraqi civilians killed by sanctions and bombings since 1991.

The marchers insisted that Canada provide no support of any kind for military action against the Iraqi people and make a clear statement of opposition to war on Iraq.

About 25,000 people marched in Montreal against Bush and the war and in Fredericton, New Brunswick, over 1000 protested.

Thousands gathered in Vancouver and in Toronto, between 15,000 and 20,000 workers, students, and political, labor, and peace organizations assembled with banners and signs reading: "Housing not war"; "No war between nations/No peace between classes"; and "Exxon, Mobil, BP, Shell, take your war and go to hell!"

"The life of an Iraqi child is no different or any less than the life of a Canadian or an American child," said Mina Sahib, an Iraqi student at York University, who addressed the Toronto demonstrators. "As I stand here in the cold, I say, let’s not leave and return to the comforts of our homes. Let’s get colder, let’s get louder, and let’s tell our government that we will not live in a world where killing for oil is justified."

Sources: Agence France Presse, Associated Press, BBC, CNN, Guardian (UK), Indymedia, IPS, Reuters, San Francisco Indymedia, Times (UK)

back to top