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Modest Turnout For SF Rally on Iraq War’s 2nd Anniversary By JUDITH SCHERR

Special to the Planet
Tuesday March 22, 2005

Thousands marched in San Francisco Saturday on the second anniversary of the war in Iraq, beating drums, chanting slogans and carrying signs to deliver a message to the Bush administration that U.S. aggression and occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Haiti destabilizes the world and wastes tax dollars that should serve human needs. 

“Bring the troops home,” San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano called to the crowd in Dolores Park, before the march to Civic Center. “Bring them home to healthcare, bring them home to jobs.” 

Students from UC Berkeley and San Francisco State not only want to bring the troops home, they want to keep military recruiters off of high school and college campuses. Holding signs that read “Military recruiters lie/our children die” and “College not combat,” students organizing against military recruiters held a pre-march rally at the 16th Street BART Station.  

“We have 1,000 signatures to get the recruiters off campus,” said Kelly Osmundson, a second-year history and peace and conflict major at UC Berkeley and a member of the campus Stop the War Coalition. The students say that because the university doesn’t allow discrimination against gays and lesbians—and the military does not permit open homosexuals within its ranks—recruiters are violating university nondiscrimination policy by recruiting on campus. 

Catherine Siskron, a Berkeley resident, teaches Russian at San Francisco State and supports the students. “Funds are being spent on war and killing, not on education,” she said. 

Fewer people showed up to Saturday’s march sponsored by the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition—between 6,000 and 7,000 according to KPFA’s Larry Benksy—than at the one-year anniversary march, where an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 protesters came out. Similar rallies around the world, including one in London that drew 45,000 to100,000, were smaller this year than last.  

While some attributed the poor San Francisco showing to drizzly weather, others said it was because people are demoralized by the re-election of George W. Bush. 

“I think there’s a general feeling of helplessness,” said James Vann, an Oakland peace and housing activist, noting that only “hard-core” protesters like himself tend to demonstrate when political conditions are so adverse. “I can’t acquiesce quietly to what’s being carried out.” 

Labor activists were visible at Saturday’s event, with the San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, South Bay and Monterey Bay labor councils, the Million Worker March, and the California Nurses’ Association supporting the demonstration. 

Trent Willis, of ILWU Local 10, among the labor speakers at the Civic Center rally, touted his union for having opposed the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, refusing to unload cargo from ships from apartheid South Africa and opposing the war and occupation of Iraq. In recognition of the war anniversary, he said, “Local 10 is not working the port of Oakland or the Port of San Francisco today.” 

Protesters with religious ties came out to preach the message that the right wing doesn’t have a monopoly on moral values. 

“It’s important to bring an alternative faith perspective,” said Sara Steen, who marched with about two dozen fellow students from the Pacific School of Religion. Letters on her bright green shirt spelled out her belief: “Walking with Jesus/Working for Peace.” 

While the event was marked by contemplation of the more than 1,500 U.S. soldiers dead and an unknown number of Iraqi fighters and civilians killed, humor was not absent: street theater featured Rice, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al, portrayed as members in the Abu-Ghraib Fraternity from Torture University. Signs and banners targeted the president: “Bush’s third term, 25 years to life”; “Practice Compassionate Impeachment.” And one protester asked the question: “Who would Jesus Bomb?” 

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party marched, including the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club and the Progressive Democrats of America. Despite Democrats voting with Republicans last week for the House bill that will give another $81 billion to the war, Judy Bertlesen, a Berkeley resident and Wellstone co-chair, pointed to the ascendancy of anti-war candidate Howard Dean to head the Democratic National Committee, indicating a shift towards a peace perspective within the party. (One hundred sixty-two Democrats, including House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, voted for the war funding; Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, and Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, joined 39 Democrats in opposition.) 

Many of the rally speakers looked beyond Iraq to condemn U.S. foreign policy more broadly. Eyad Kishawi from the Free Palestine Alliance criticized the U.S. role in the attempted overthrow of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, the “kidnapping” of Haiti’s democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, “two years of carnage in Iraq” and “57 years of apartheid in Palestine.” 

Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti Action Committee said the Bush administration was trying to impose a new colonialism on Haiti as in Palestine and Iraq. 

“At stake is (the U.S.) global hegemony,” he said. 

Counter-demonstrators, carrying Israeli and American flags and signs that read “Free Israel” and “What if Blaming Israel was not an Option,” gathered across the street from the Civic Center rally platform. According to their spokesperson, Dan Kliman, of San Francisco Voice for Israel, some members of his organization support the war and others oppose it. The group came to the rally, he said, to oppose ANSWER’s “co-optation” of the anti-war movement, turning it into an anti-Israel platform.  

On the rally stage nearby, Barbara Lubin, of the Berkeley-based Middle East Children’s Alliance, praised ANSWER for including speakers who addressed conditions in the many parts of the world where people suffer from U.S. support of occupation and war. 

“We are not going to stand for the fact that we are laying off teachers and closing schools, while funds are sent to Israel to kill Palestinian children,” Lubin said.o