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November 2005

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September 24: Largest Protest Since the Beginning of the Iraq War

By Anne Petermann
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November 2005
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In the largest U.S. protest since the beginning of the Iraq war, 200,000 people took to the streets of Washington, DC on September 24 to demand an end to the war and the safe return of U.S. troops. 

There were also four days of numerous colorful and diverse events that included guerrilla theater, rallies, an Operation Ceasefire concert, a peace and justice festival, congressional visits, a tribunal on Haiti, an Interfaith Religious service, direct action, and civil disobedience in front of the White House where 370 were arrested, including Gold Star Mother Cindy Sheehan. Sheehan captured the media’s attention in August when she set up Camp Casey outside President Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch demanding to know why the U.S. was at war with Iraq. Named after her son who was killed in Iraq, Camp Casey helped rejuvenate an antiwar movement experiencing growing pains. 

The antiwar events occurred at the same time as the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Global justice activists used this overlap to point out the connections between the Iraq War, U.S. imperialism, and economic globalization. On September 22, the DC-based Mobilization for Global Justice staged guerrilla theater in front of the World Bank. The media stunt enacted the wedding of the World Bank to the Pentagon, with World Bank President and Iraq War architect Paul Wolfowitz (Church of Market Fundamentalism) presiding over the ceremony.

Another item on the World Bank agenda was global warming. This led to a call for global warming activists to converge at Saturday’s march to draw the connections between the Iraq war for oil, the World Bank, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Climatologists overwhelmingly agree warmer Gulf waters, the result of global warming, significantly strengthened these hurricanes. The World Bank has helped exacerbate global warming by investing over $28 billion in fossil fuels since 1992. Another link between the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina was the accusation that the lack of National Guardspeople and their equipment—deployed to Iraq—was part of the reason for the disastrously slow response to the hurricane victims. 

While the major antiwar rally was taking place at the Ellipse Saturday, a smaller 3,000 person global justice rally organized by the Mobilization for Global Justice was held at Dupont Circle. Speakers at the global justice rally included South African anti-apartheid activist and poet Dennis Brutus, as well as global justice activists from the Dominican Republic, India, and around the world, who made the connections between military and economic domination and ecological destruction. The global justice rally culminated with an un-permitted “feeder” march with the chants of “Whose streets? Our streets,” passing the World Bank before it joined the anti-war march. 

The major antiwar rally included such speakers as the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Cindy Sheehan, South African anti-privatization activist Virginia Setshedi, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, among many others. The crowd was energized with chants including, “Bring the troops home now” and “Free Free Palestine.”  Afterwards hundreds of thousands took to the streets. In other cities across the U.S., as well as in London and Rome, thousands of people came out against the war in solidarity with the Washington, DC march and rally.

Following the march, participants gathered on the Mall adjacent to the Washington Monument for the Operation Ceasefire free concert featuring such performers as Joan Baez who moved the crowd with her rendition of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall.” Steve Earle and dozens more also performed. Next to Operation Ceasefire, a peace and justice festival brought antiwar, global justice, and global warming organizations together under circus tents to distribute information, buttons, and T-shirts to participants. Also present were a giant inflatable Pinocchio George Bush and a huge earth being sucked dry by a mosquito, with a sign on it pointing out the rise in deadly diseases transmitted by mosquitoes that is predicted to accompany the global warming trend. 

The following day affinity groups blockaded intersections and traffic around a hotel where World Bank and IMF delegates were staying, effectively delaying the start of their meetings for over 30 minutes. While the action was small, it was notable as the first direct action to blockade the World Bank and IMF meetings in DC since the massive A-16 (April 16) protests of 2000 where tens of thousands of activists converged on the city to block strategic intersections and impede the movement of delegates. 

On Monday, September 26, thousands of antiwar protesters remaining in DC marched to Lafayette Park across from the White House for mass non-violent civil disobedience. In the symbolic protest, 370 people sat down on the sidewalk in front of the White House in protest of the Iraq War, refused police orders to move, and were arrested. Among those arrested were members of United for Peace and Justice and Code Pink, and Cindy Sheehan.

The mass action began with Sheehan approaching the guard shack at the entrance to the White House where she demanded once more to have a meeting with the president. When she was refused, she and her supporters marched 50 yards or so to the front of the White House. There she attached a photo of her son Casey to the White House gates. She spent a few moments with the photo, tenderly touching it before turning around to stage a sit in on the sidewalk. The police signaled their intention to make arrests by pushing all non-arrestees behind a metal barricade and bringing in paddy wagons to block the view of onlookers. This sent the media into a flurry of competition for the best view of the impending arrest of Sheehan, who was the first to be carried off. 

The area across from the White House was jammed with diverse supporters of the mass civil disobedience. From Breasts Not Bombs and anti-depleted uranium activists to Buddhist Monks, the protest took on an empowered atmosphere. One woman, however, broke down, grief stricken over the war, and was comforted by others. 

Earlier in the day, in a separate pre-dawn civil disobedience action, 41 people were arrested at a pedestrian entrance to the Pentagon. After arrestees were released some showed up later at the White House event where a few were arrested for the second time that day. Also on Monday, more than 800 people visited over 300 Congressional offices in a Lobby Day organized by UFPJ.

Leslie Cagan, National Coordinator for UFPJ, stated after the DC protests, “The September mobilization sent a strong message to policymakers and helped take this movement into a new phase of mass action, using diverse tactics, as we plan for the work still to be done to end the war and bring our troops home.”

Orin Langelle and Anne Petermann are photojournalists and activists with the Global Justice Ecology Project. 
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