Posted on 23-10-2003
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Anti War
19 October 2003
Protesters from more than 135 cities in 38 states are expected
to
converge on Washington on Saturday, as busloads of antiwar demonstrators
return to the capital for the first time since the fall of Baghdad
in
April.
Organizers said the rally and march will draw tens of thousands
from
across the United States and Canada. It is the first event of
its kind
co-sponsored by two major antiwar coalitions, International
ANSWER and
United for Peace and Justice, both of which coordinated some
of the
country's biggest peace marches this year. The demonstration
will
coincide with a rally and march in downtown San Francisco. "The
antiwar
movement is becoming ascendant again; it's rising once more,"
ANSWER
organizer Brian Becker said. "Our demonstration against the
occupation
on April 12 drew 30,000 people. We will draw substantially more
than
that for this demonstration."
The gathering represents a resurgence of sorts of the antiwar
movement,
which had put its large-scale protests on hold in recent months
as
activists emphasized education over direct action. No major
antiwar
rally has been held in Washington since ANSWER's April protest.
ANSWER held a national conference in New York in May that drew
more than
850 activists, and United for Peace and Justice sponsored a
strategy
session in suburban Chicago in June that attracted more than
550. The
meetings were designed to focus the movement on charting its
future, but
the period of relative quiet also allowed some to find new strength
to
carry on. "People marched and demonstrated a whole lot to try
to stop
the war, and we weren't able to," said Leslie Cagan, 56, national
coordinator of the United coalition. "That had, I think, for
some
segments of the activist community, a little bit of a demoralizing
effect."
But as the number of U.S. casualties increases and as support
for Bush's
Iraq policy slips in polls, antiwar activists say the time is
right to
return to the streets. "Where are those weapons of mass destruction?"
Cagan asked. "It turned out to be lies. As strongly as we felt
we were
right a year ago, we're even stronger in that conviction now."
Activists say they expect several veterans and family members
of U.S.
soldiers in Iraq to participate. Last October, Wilson "Woody"
Powell, a
71-year-old Korean War veteran, filled his scratched 1997 Dodge
Caravan
with three other veterans -- one each from the first Persian
Gulf War,
World War II and the Korean War -- for a 14-hour trip from St.
Louis to
Washington. They headed to a peace rally, stirred by what they
felt
would be an unjust war in Iraq and hopeful that they and scores
of
others could make enough noise to stop it before it started.
One year later, with the war fought and declared over, Powell
hasn't
given up. He and more than 500 members of Veterans for Peace
are
expected to head to Washington next weekend to call for an end
to the
U.S. occupation of Iraq. "Is this how to cohabit on the globe,
by just
being bigger and badder than everybody else? Or are we much
more
comfortable being good neighbors?" asked Powell, executive director
of
the St. Louis-based group.
Nancy Lessin with Military Families Speak Out said spouses,
parents and
siblings of military personnel stationed in Iraq or recently
returned
home are planning to attend. She expects 40 or more families.
"None of
us want our loved ones to be misused in the way that this administration
is misusing them, in a war for oil markets and empire building,"
said
Lessin, a co-founder of the group that started with two military
families in November and has grown to more than 1,000 members.
Lessin's
son is a Marine who returned recently from Iraq.
A listing of cities organizing bus and car caravans posted on
ANSWER's
Web site reads like a map of much of the United States: Wilmington,
Del.; Harrisburg, Pa.; Savannah, Ga.; Asheville, N.C.; Kalamazoo,
Mich.;
Cedar Falls, Iowa; and Milwaukee.
New York's union representing 200,000 health and human services
employees, 1199 SEIU, is providing free bus transportation to
Washington
for its members and their families. And ANSWER has reserved
65 buses for
the New York area alone. "I think that people want the occupation
to
end," said Mike Shaw, 35, a restaurant supervisor with the ANSWER
chapter in Providence, R.I. "I think they feel the war was pursued
under
false pretenses."
D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said that his force, U.S.
Park
Police and U.S. Capitol Police will provide security. Ramsey
said it was
unclear how large the gathering will be. "We don't expect it
to be
anything but peaceful," Ramsey said. The organizers' permit
application
estimates the crowd at 10,000, but activists have told National
Park
Service officials they expect as many as 30,000.
Organizers have characterized the war in Iraq as "Bush's Vietnam,"
describing the invasion and occupation as a bloody, costly political
quagmire justified by White House lies and deception. But protesters
say
they hope to illuminate other issues stemming from the administration's
policies, including deep cuts in social programs, increases
in military
spending and America's emergence as a global empire.
They also are using the event to mark the second anniversary
of the 2001
USA Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law that activists and some
lawmakers have condemned as an infringement of civil liberties.
The protest is scheduled to begin with an 11 a.m. rally on the
Washington Monument grounds at 17th Street and Constitution
Avenue NW. A
march starting at 2 p.m. will pass the White House and the Justice
Department.
Organizers initially had intended to march to the Pentagon but
decided
against it for logistical reasons and to focus attention on
the Bush
administration. Separate feeder marches are planned in conjunction
with
the demonstration, including those organized by Muslim Americans
and
anti-capitalists.
Black Voices for Peace, a national network of antiwar and civil
rights
advocates, is holding a feeder march that will begin with a
9 a.m. rally
at Meridian Hill Park in Columbia Heights. Damu Smith, 51, the
group's
founder, said hundreds of activists from the East Coast will
take part.
"We think it's important to make a very visible statement by
blacks in
this effort," he said.
The D.C. chapter of a grass-roots conservative group, Free Republic,
is
holding an 11 a.m. counter-demonstration at the West Front of
the
Capitol, near the reflecting pool on Third Street. About 1,000
people
are expected.
Kristinn Taylor, 41, local co-leader of the group, said the
rally will
show support for troops overseas. "The biggest thing we want
to do is
give voice to the good things that have been happening over
in Iraq,
which we think are not getting out," Taylor said.
Among the many antiwar groups, ANSWER, which stands for Act
Now to Stop
War and End Racism, is one of the most controversial, enraging
critics
such as Taylor, who say it is a bastion of communists and anti-Semites.
Among hundreds of ANSWER's coalition co-signers, including historian
Howard Zinn and city council members from Boston and Berkeley,
Calif.,
are the socialist Workers World Party, the New Communist Party
of the
Netherlands and the German Communist Party.
ANSWER organizers say the group is made up of activists of all
political
and religious stripes, and they view attempts to paint the group
as
anti-American or anti-Semitic as groundless accusations aimed
at
dividing the movement. "We would never consider excluding organizations
or individuals who share our opposition to this war," Becker
said.
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