Anti-war protestors take to streets 2 years on

NEW YORK - Anti-war activists marched in the streets of American cities big and small Saturday, stopping traffic and lying down alongside flag-draped cardboard coffins to mark the second anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq.

Some of the demonstrators were arrested in New York as they demanded that U.S. troops be brought home.

“This country was founded by acts of civil disobedience,” said David McReynolds, 75, of New York, as he marched along 42nd Street. “We have an obligation to make our resistance public and to say as clearly as we can that the war is illegal.”

In San Francisco, hundreds of protesters rallied in Dolores Park in the city’s Mission district, holding up posters with photographs of dead American soldiers. The protesters then marched to San Francisco City Hall for another rally.

Organizers encourage civility
One protester dressed up like the hooded Iraqi prisoner in the famous photo taken of detainee abuse at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. The woman was surrounded by others wearing masks of President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who were dancing to the song “Shout” by the Isley Brothers.

“This is a war of aggression,” said Ed McManus, 54, a Marin County resident who served in the Navy during the Vietnam War. “Bush has admitted by his actions and his deeds that he is a war criminal.”

Organizers encouraged civility at rallies in the city, where protests just after the war began were among the most vocal and angry in the country, with thousands of arrests and frequent conflicts between police and demonstrators.

Police wearing helmets and armed with batons lined the streets Saturday, but they reported no disturbances.

Hundreds in New York listened to anti-war speeches at the United Nations, then marched along 42nd Street across Manhattan to Times Square, where police penned them in on a sidewalk.

A small contingent of protesters then knelt in front of a military recruiting station and lay down on Broadway next to the flag-draped coffins. Traffic was stopped for about five minutes before police moved in and arrested 27 protesters.

“It’s such a small act in light of over 100,000 Iraqis dead and 1,500 American soldiers dead,” Anna Brown, 40, of Jersey City, N.J., said before she was arrested.

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