October 25 in Washington DC: 100,000 march against the occupation of Iraq

October 25 in Washington DC: 100,000 march against the occupation of Iraq --WASHINGTON POST COVERAGE of OCT. 25, 2003, & other media coverage

The October 25 demonstration to End the Occupation of Iraq and Bring the Troops Home Now demonstration was broadcast live and then rebroadcast several times on C-Span, it received major coverage by CNN over an 18 hour period. It was also picked up by hundreds of local newspapers and received widespread international press attention. The Washington Post carried a photograph of the demonstration on its front page; part of the accompanying article is included below.

Washington DC - - credit: Werner Petrikat, PVN

ORGANIZERS' ESTIMATE 100,000, POLICE ESTIMATE 50,000, NEW YORK TIMES REPORT 10,000

In another shameful example of biased reporting, the New York Times report of Oct. 25 gave a lower crowd estimate than even the Washington DC police by a factor of five. For decent and objective coverage see the Washington Post article.

The October 25 demonstration had a record number of family members of soldiers, veterans and active duty soldiers; contingents from the Arab American and Muslim community; and many others.

100,000 people marched through the streets of Washington, D.C. today in the largest anti-war protest since George W. Bush's May 1 speech on the U.S.S. Lincoln aircraft carrier where he proclaimed "Mission Accomplished."

The demonstration was co-sponsored by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) and United for Peace and Justice. The demonstration continued to grow throughout the day, reaching its peak only around 2:30 p.m., when the last busses arrived in the area of the Washington Monument grounds. By the time the front of the march reached the Justice Department the last demonstrators were only leaving the assembly area. The march stretched more than 20 city blocks filling them curb to curb including Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington's eight lane boulevard.

More than 145 cities participated in organizing transportation, bringing busses and car caravans to the demonstration. March organizers said that the dramatic increase in the turnout, compared to the first demonstration against the occupation of Iraq on April 12 (estimated by the police at 30,000) is evidence that a growing number of people in the U.S. believe that the Bush administration's rationales for the war and occupation have been exposed as lies. The Washington demonstration was also the largest mass mobilization in opposition to the Patriot Act, which was signed into law two years ago this weekend, and the protestors marched to both the White House and the Justice Department. A sister action in San Francisco drew 20,000 people into the streets demanding an end to the occupation

Funds are urgently needed so that this movement can continue its renewed momentum and take the next steps. To donate online through our secure server go to http://www.internationalanswer.org/donate.html

From: WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE IN D.C., A DIVERSE MIX ROUSES WAR PROTEST

By Manny Fernandez Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, October 26, 2003; Page A08

Tens of thousands of antiwar demonstrators marched in Washington yesterday to call for an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, turning out in smaller numbers than for prewar protests but making plain their opposition during a noisy yet peaceful procession.

From a stage on the Mall and along a route that ringed the Washington Monument, the White House and the Justice Department, protesters lodged an array of grievances against the Bush administration's domestic and foreign policies, including the financial and human costs of the occupation and the effect of the Patriot Act on civil liberties. Organizers of the two coalitions that sponsored the demonstration, International ANSWER and United for Peace and Justice, said the morning rally at the Washington Monument and a march through downtown that grew throughout the afternoon signaled a revival of the antiwar movement, which had not staged a major street demonstration in Washington since the fall of Baghdad in April.

"The movement has gotten a very big gust of wind in its sails at the very moment that the Bush administration is slipping in the polls," said Brian Becker, an organizer with ANSWER, which stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.

Yesterday's march coincided with protests in more than two dozen cities across the United States and around the world, including San Francisco, Anchorage and Paris. D.C. police and U.S. Park Police were out in force in vehicles, on motorcycles and bicycles and on horseback in the District. D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey and a Park Police spokesman said no arrests had been made as of late afternoon.

The demonstrators represented a diverse mix of dissent, from suburban high school students to gray-haired retirees, from fathers pushing their children in strollers to Muslim American college students shouting through bullhorns. There were people from D.C. Poets Against the War, the Louisville Peace Action Community, Northern Virginians for Peace and Central Ohioans for Peace, among many others. Banners in Spanish, Korean, Urdu, Hebrew, Arabic and Tagalog decried the war. Smaller marches began at various locations in the city and led to the main rally, including those organized by Muslim American and by African American activists.

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Bill Perry, 56, a construction worker from Levittown, Pa., who served in Vietnam, stood at the edge of the monument grounds in the morning, holding a homemade sign demanding that the United States get out of Iraq and the United Nations get in. "About six blocks up the street, there's a beautiful memorial for 58,000 of our brothers and sisters who died in Vietnam," said Perry, wearing a yellow sweat shirt emblazoned with an "Airborne" eagle insignia. "Already, we've lost about 350 of our own brothers and sisters in this war. One can't help but wonder how big the memorial for this war is going to have to be."

The demonstration, organizers said, signified a new phase in the life of the antiwar movement. It illustrated new cooperation among often-divergent factions, as for the first time, two of the biggest coalitions put their organizational muscle behind one event, sharing expenses and logistical duties. ....

Staff writers Spencer S. Hsu, Sylvia Moreno and Monte Reel contributed to this report.

The full article can be found at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17636-2003Oct25.html

OTHER NATIONAL MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE OCT. 25 PROTESTS:

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usdemo263510337oct26,0,7539039.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-print

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/10/25/peace_protests031025

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=6&u=/ap/20031025/apon_re_us/war_protests_12

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=7&u=/nm/2001025/ts_nm/iraq_usa_protests_dc

http://dc.indymedia.org/feature/display/83520/index.php

http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/10/1655394.php

The October 25 demonstrations had a record number of family members of soldiers, veterans and active duty soldiers; contingents from the Arab American and Muslim community; and many others. To read the A.N.S.W.E.R. report of October 25 in Washington, DC, go to http://www.internationalanswer.org/news/update/102503report.html

Funds are urgently needed so that this movement can continue its renewed momentum and take the next steps. To donate online through our secure server, click on the "Bring the Troops Home Now" project at: http://www.progressunity.org

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IRAQ: 50,000 protest in Washington
Katherine Stapp
Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct 26 (IPS) - The U.S. capital saw its first massive protest since the George W. Bush administration declared victory in Iraq, as 50,000 people marched to the White House and Justice Department on Saturday to call for withdrawal of the 130,000 U.S. troops stationed in the Middle Eastern nation.

"It's a tremendous turnout," said Larry Holmes of ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), which organized the march with United For Peace and Justice. "This is confirmation that the anti-war movement is alive and well, and that Bush and the war-makers are in trouble."

More than 20,000 people also marched in San Francisco, according to organizers, and thousands turned out for smaller rallies in dozens of U.S. cities. An anti-war protest in Seoul, South Korea resulted in the arrests of 15 student activists.

Bush spent the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. His recent trip to Australia was marked by street protests there, and two Green Party legislators were ejected from Parliament after heckling the U.S. president during a speech on Thursday.

In Washington, the dozens of speakers included civil rights leader and presidential candidate Reverend Al Sharpton, who slammed the expensive military operations and reconstruction package just approved by the U.S. Congress.

Opponents fear that much of the money will be squandered on lucrative sweetheart contracts to companies like Halliburton, of which Vice President Dick Cheney is a former top executive.

"Don't give Bush 87 billion, don't give him 87 cents; give our troops a ride home," Sharpton said.

Marchers also lambasted the administration's failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, carrying signs that read "Bush Lied, Thousands Died", "No War For Empire" and "Occupation is no Liberation". No arrests were reported.

Larry Syverson came to Washington from Richmond, Virginia, where he protests three times a week in front of the federal courthouse with a placard bearing photographs of his two sons -- Branden, stationed with the Fourth Infantry Division in Tikrit, Iraq and Bryce, a gunner with the Bradley First Armoured Division in Baghdad. They will be deployed there for at least another year, he says.

"At first, people were very friendly to them, offering food, juice, homemade bread," Syverson said. "Now children throw rocks at them. From their letters, I've seen a real deterioration in the relationship between the populace and the troops."

His impressions are borne out by a poll released Thursday by the independent Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies in Baghdad, which found that 43 percent of Iraqis viewed the U.S. forces as liberators six months ago but only 14.8 percent feel the same way now.

Lawlessness remains a major problem in the Iraqi capital. Citing statistics from the Baghdad city morgue, a British group called Iraq Body Count has tallied 2,846 violent deaths of Iraqi civilians from Apr. 14 to Aug. 31 of this year. Human Rights Watch says the occupying authority has failed to properly investigate many of these cases.

Resistance to the occupation appears to be unrelenting. The Defence Department has so far confirmed 345 U.S. soldiers have died since the start of the war in April.

"Every day, the news talks about another soldier killed," Syverson said. "I'm afraid people will start to grow complacent. I'm here to put a face on these soldiers. I hope people will think twice about why we're there.

"It took 50,000 dead before we pulled out of Vietnam," he added. "We don't need to wait until we're at 50,000. One is too much."

Michael McPhearson, a member of Veterans for Peace who served in the first Gulf War, angrily criticized the administration for exaggerating intelligence on Iraq's military capabilities.

"The armed forces have our full support," McPhearson told the crowd. "But today I say to George Bush that 'your administration has misled our nation'. We were told that Iraq was a threat to national security, but Iraq is not al-Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein is not Osama bin Laden."

These distinctions seemed lost on many U.S. citizens, with 70 percent saying they thought Saddam was directly involved in the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon. That poll was conducted in September.

As Bush's approval ratings slip, this perception seems to be shifting. A 'Newsweek' poll released Saturday found that 42 percent of respondents now believe the administration "purposely misled the public about evidence that Iraq had banned weapons in order to build support for war".

The Washington march also fell on the second anniversary of the passage of the USA Patriot Act, which greatly expanded the government's domestic spying powers and, rights activists say, created a discriminatory system of religious and racial profiling.

"America's immigration policy is misguided," said Samar Shams of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, citing secret trials, the imprisonment of people indefinitely without charge or conviction, and the forced registration of more than 100,000 people from a list of mostly Arab or Muslim countries.

"If you think this doesn't affect Americans you are misguided," she told the crowd gathered in front of the Washington Monument. "For what have we risked our very constitution? These measures are not counter-terrorism, they're counterproductive."

According to Hallie Joyce, from Pensacola, Florida, the site of a huge naval air base, "I know right from wrong, and this is just wrong -- even evil," she said.

"There are a lot of people in my hometown who are against the war and occupation, but we feel like we've been silenced. It's fundamentalism versus fundamentalism."

Many labour and religious groups were in attendance Saturday. Terri Compton came from Brooklyn, New York on a bus sponsored by her union, District Council 1707.

"How dare Dick Cheney say there have to be a few casualties," she said. There's so much poverty here in this country, people don't have enough to eat, they can't find a place to live."

While bringing the troops home was the major theme of the rally, speakers also called for more domestic spending on healthcare, education and job creation.

"People have to have reasonable expectations," cautioned Bob Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of the book 'Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream'.

"We're not going to end the war tomorrow," he noted in a telephone interview. "But there is a growing visceral disgust with this administration. The question now is how we can channel people's energy into productive activities to make change."

Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy agreed. "A central question is whether the peace movement's sole function is to get Bush out, or crucially, whether it will evolve into an anti-empire movement that is global in perspective," he said