Bothell Times:
Nancy Stratton, a retired elementary-school teacher from Enumclaw, was a college student during the Vietnam War but was never an anti-war demonstrator until Monday.Seattle P-I (with a great photo gallery, like this one involving a cellphone):
"I went through Vietnam and I didn't do anything and I've felt guilty my entire life," said Stratton, 59, as she stood in the drizzle with 400 or 500 other people who'd gathered at Westlake Park in downtown Seattle on the fourth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.
"For me, it was a buildup over time," she said of her opposition to the war. "But it's so obvious — any educated person can see we've made a terrible mistake."
While Stratton was a protest neophyte, fellow demonstrator Rob Moitoza, a 61-year-old carpenter and musician, is a veteran of Seattle's anti-war movement.
"I've been to [almost] every protest ... to try and stop this war," said Moitoza, who said he was a radioman on a U.S. Navy destroyer but never saw action during the Vietnam War.
"Those kids are honorable people," he said of U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq, "but they're being used as pawns by this administration, which only cares about money and power."
The 3 p.m. Westlake rally was organized by the Troops Home Now Coalition, which brings together military veterans and high-school and college students.
A rally at the same time at the U.S. District Courthouse on Stewart Street was organized by a coalition of social-justice activists. Outside the courthouse, King County Executive Ron Sims invigorated the crowd of several hundred with an impassioned speech, saying the United States is great when it defeats hunger, illness and hatred.
"I want us to be a great nation once again ... . We are a greater people when we wage peace, not war," Sims said. He declared Monday "End the War Day" in King County.
advertising
Another speaker, Army veteran Joe Colgan, whose son Benjamin was killed in action in Iraq in 2003, said his son died a hero, but his death had nothing to do with promoting peace or democracy.
"From the start, it's been an abuse of our troops by this administration," Colgan said.
Protesters who gathered at the courthouse marched south along Fifth Avenue, merging with the Westlake protesters at Fifth Avenue and Pine Street.
From there, marchers circled Seattle City Hall — where a couple of hours earlier the Seattle City Council, which has no authority over international relations, had approved a resolution urging the president to bring the troops home. Demonstrators ended up in front of the Henry Jackson Federal Building at Second Avenue between Madison and Marion streets.
In all, at least 1,000 people marched through downtown Seattle on Monday, the second day of anti-war protests and marches across the country. On Sunday, roughly 3,000 people participated in marches and demonstrations here.
One man, who sat down in the middle of Second Avenue at Madison Street just as the intersection was being reopened to motorists Monday afternoon, was handcuffed and taken away by Seattle police officers. He was arrested on suspicion of pedestrian interference, said police spokesman Jeff Kappel, adding that there were "no significant incidents or problems of any kind" during Monday's march.
Elsewhere, things weren't so peaceful: On Sunday, a rally involving as many as 15,000 people in Portland ended with scuffles and police using pepper spray, The Associated Press reported. And while there was no such trouble at smaller demonstrations around the country on Monday, San Francisco police arrested 57 people who blocked a streetcar line in the heart of the financial district by lying in the street, draped in white sheets, to symbolize Iraq's war dead.
Also on Monday, 44 people were arrested outside the New York Stock Exchange on disorderly-conduct charges, according to The AP.
In Seattle, the peaceful protests brought out an intergenerational crowd, with representatives from a variety of student, social-justice and religious organizations.
This was the second Iraq war event in as many days for Ruth Yarrow, 67, a Quaker with the University Friends Meeting. She also attended a Sunday evening peace service organized by the Church Council of Greater Seattle.
"We're one of the historic peace churches. We believe that war is wrong," she said.
Though Jason Farbman, a 29-year-old Seattleite who is a senior at Chicago's DePaul University, is too young to remember the Vietnam War, he said "we're seeing history totally repeat itself" with the war in Iraq. And he worries about a potential war with Iran.
"Talk about déjà vu — we're now hearing the same rhetoric about Iran that we heard about Iraq," he said.
Though a troop withdrawal wouldn't result in "sunshine and lollipops overnight," said Farbman's friend, Liz Fawthrop, 20, it is "American foreign policy and the presence of American troops that continues to feed sectarian violence" in Iraq.
Both lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars that have so far been spent fighting the war, when education, health-care, affordable-housing and other social programs have suffered here at home.
"All these things are being robbed from us because we're fighting a war no one wants," said Fawthrop, a University of Washington student and a member of the Troops Home Now Coalition.
The Beatles' song "Revolution" blared from the stage Monday at Westlake Plaza as hundreds began to march against the conflict in Iraq.
To some the song was a memory. There was Frank Bell, 68, of Seattle, a U.S. Merchant Marine Academy graduate newly retired from a 42-year-career.
To others such as Aimee Khuu, Katrina Hale, both 22, and Alex LaCasse, 18, all Seattle University students, the song was an artifact of a long-gone era.
Yet the song rallied them all as they gathered to march for peace and against war.
About 1,500 people took part Monday in separate marches from Westlake Plaza and from the Federal Courthouse that converged on the Federal Building. It was the second day of peace protests in Seattle to mark the fourth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Seattle police spokesman Jeff Kappel said one man was arrested during Monday's protests. "He laid down on Second Avenue and refused to get up," Kappel said. "Officers told him he was going to be arrested. He refused and said he wanted to be arrested, so he was, for pedestrian interference, blocking traffic."
Seattle police shut down intersections at rush hour to let the marchers pass. Most people trying to scurry to buses, leave parking garages or cross intersections took it in stride, waiting patiently. Some flashed peace signs to marchers, others politely turned down anti-war handouts.
But the rush-hour delays upset some commuters.
John Hoss of Issaquah, a mortgage broker, said his office closed an hour early so people could get through the clogged downtown to make such important deadlines as meeting their children's school buses. Still, he was stuck for about 10 minutes watching the march. "They have the right to protest, but they shouldn't block the streets," he said.
The marches may have been annoying to some, but the marchers were peaceful.
When protesters raised their arms as they marched, it wasn't to shake a fist but to hold cell-phone cameras to snap keepsakes of the event. Their signs, however, were pointed: "Liars!" "Bush Lied!" "Impeach Bush," "Not my government," "Enough lives wasted" and "Stop this damn war."
Khuu, from of Kenmore, and Hale, from Shelton, said that four years ago on March 19 they participated in student walkouts in high school, concerned about the world they are inheriting. "They said the war would be three months long," Khuu said. It all seems like hubris now, she and her fellow Seattle U students said.
The Seattle City Council joined in the protest Monday, voting to pass a non-binding resolution calling for "an orderly withdrawal" from Iraq.
"This resolution by itself certainly is but a small voice in the greater voices that are going to be heard today across the country," said council President Nick Licata, who sponsored the resolution.
Both the young and the old gathered at the Federal Courthouse for the protest.
Jon Bailey, 22, of Puyallup said young people are becoming more aware of the war's casualties and more opposed to U.S. involvement.
"People our age are starting to realize that this is a battle we have to fight because it's our lives on the line and our children's lives," said Bailey, who walked with a "declare peace" sign in his right hand and made the peace symbol with his left.
Rita Shaw, 76, of Seattle carried a pink and white umbrella emblazoned with the words "get out of Iraq now" in black.
"I'm opposed to the war because I don't want young people to pay for our stupid mistakes," said Shaw, who used to carry the umbrella at her grandson's soccer games. "I'm worried about my four grandkids."
At Third Avenue and Marion Street, the crowd was held up to let stragglers catch up before the final one-block surge to the Federal Building.
Among the marchers was Deborah Moffit of Queen Anne, who said her dad is a Navy admiral and that she hails from a longtime military family. She carried a sign reading "Mothers and Others for Peace" accompanied by one of them, Maria Ruano of Ballard.
Ruano said she had also protested the Vietnam War. "It seems like history is repeating itself, and that's how history is," she said. "We must stop being apathetic."
Bell, the retired merchant mariner, said he shuttled cargo for the military to and from Vietnam until 1975.
He joined the protest, he said, "because I never thought I would see it again."
Moffit said she was motivated to form "Mothers and Others for Peace" during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
The idea was born at a coffee klatch with other moms in a "babysitting cooperative," she said.
"I'm still a mother, and there's still warring," she said.
