Thousands of protesters, including some AU students, marched on the Pentagon and defense corporations in Arlington, Va., Saturday afternoon to protest U.S. aid to Israel the continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The demonstrators chanted and shouted as they marched from a starting location near the Lincoln Memorial to the Crystal City headquarters of companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Juan Hernandez was one of the protesters who came from across the country to participate in the march, which the Act Now to Stop the War and End Racism Coalition organized.
"I just want to show what America does," said Hernandez, who came to D.C. from New Jersey. "We just murdered a million people for oil. This is an evil country, evil. The most evil country in the world."
Other protesters said they came to send a message to the new administration that they want all the troops brought home.
"We're basically here to show that we are sick of it and we want it to end," said Margaret Barlow, a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y., and one of seven students who held a banner reading "Hey Obama Take A Stand, U.S. Out Of Afghanistan." "Obama's been saying that he wants us to stand up and speak, so that's what we're doing."
Drew Veysey, a junior in the School of Public Affairs and the College of Arts and Sciences, was one of the AU students who participated in the protest. He said he was at the protest as a member of the AU Community Action and Social Justice Coalition.
"I'm here to protest the war profiteers," Veysey said. "I've been against the war from the start."
He said he had attended protests in the past.
Elliot Fehr, a freshman in SPA, and Hayley Andrews, a freshman in the School of International Service, also attended the protest.
"We believe in the cause," Andrews said. "It's been too long."
Although the protesters had varying opinions on the Obama administration's policies, many remained optimistic that Obama would try his hardest to bring home the troops.
"There hasn't been really much change, but I think that [Obama] is going to listen to us, so hopefully all of this will start something," Barlow said.
"I know Obama's trying, but the president is basically a puppet," Hernandez said. "Obama's not as much a puppet as the ones you usually get, but he's still a puppet."
Between 2,500 and 3,000 people attended the march, according to Detective Crystal Nosal, a staffer in the Arlington County Police Department's media relations office. The ANSWER Coalition disagreed, claiming that far more people attended.
"The Arlington County Police also put out an absurdly low count of the demonstration, which was more than 10,000 people," ANSWER said on its Web site.
One to two dozen counterprotesters met the anti-war protesters after they marched across the Memorial Bridge. Several of the marchers entered into arguments with the counterprotesters and a marcher threw at least one sign, but no serious altercations occurred.
"[I'm here because of] the fact that they had the audacity to march past our sacred ground," said Ruth Russell, a South Carolina resident who came with Free Republic to counterprotest near the Arlington National Cemetery. "I'm sorry, I have friends buried there, I have husbands and sons of friends buried there, and I'll be damned if they're going to defame this ground."
Many of the marchers passed the counterprotesters while carrying cardboard coffins draped in flags from the United States, Iraq and Afghanistan as well as other countries. The coffins were deposited in front of the headquarters of companies such as Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, where more than 200 Arlington and Virginia State Police officers in riot gear met them.
About 350 officers from various agencies were involved with the protest, Nosal said. However, no arrests were made, although protesters broke several windows and left graffiti on an underpass.
You can reach this staff writer at crice@theeagleonline.com.
