This weekend, the high was 73 degrees Fahrenheit, the sun was shining and thousands of people, including many AU students, turned out for at least four rallies that occurred across D.C. in what sophomore in the School of International Service Melissa Mahfouz called “the weekend of activism.”
FRIDAY
Friday afternoon, the seven-year anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, a student-organized street party “Funk the War: Bad Romance” protested the War on Terror at Farragut Square on 17th and K Streets.
The AU group Community Action and Social Justice helped organize the rally with other student groups from across the city. Howard University’s Political Equality Action Committee, the George Washington University’s Radical Student Union, University of Maryland’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and D.C. Students for a Democratic Society all helped in coordinating the event, according to Geoff Ramsey, a member of CASJ and an AU graduate student.
In a description sent out in a CASJ e-mail, Funk the War was described as a “roving youth and student power street party, bumping the phattest of beats and reclaiming the streets to stop the war and break off the love affair between our government and the corporate parasites who Obama’s been cheating with.”
The rally involved Lady Gaga-themed costumes and music playing on a mobile sound system. At least six arrests occurred, two of which were of AU students. See adjacent article for story.
SATURDAY
The National March on Washington, a protest against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars organized by the ANSWER Coalition, started at noon in front of the White House Saturday. Clusters of individual AU students turned out to participate.
The ANSWER Coalition, which stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, holds an anti-war march bi-annually, according to Ramsey.
Mahfouz went to the protest “out of curiosity,” and while she did not know the estimated total of people in the crowd, she was convinced that there were “thousands” gathered there, she said.
Several people spoke to the crowd in front of the White House, including Ralph Nader and Cindy Sheehan, an anti-war activist whose son was killed in 2004 while on duty in Iraq.
The crowd marched from the White House to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Halliburton, The Washington Post, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Mortgage Bankers Association of America before returning to the White House, according to the ANSWER Coalition’s Web site.
While Mahfouz did not necessarily agree with the ideologies of the people at the protest, it was a thought-provoking experience, she said.
“I felt like I was being transported into the 1960s,” she said. “Obviously, they were discussing different events, but overall, the activist ideology that they were promoting anti-war issues was very interesting.”
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill Saturday, AU students joined thousands participating in a day-long campaign to oppose the health care bill.
The rally started at noon at Union Station and then moved to the west lawn of the Capitol, according to freshman in the School of International Service Paul Bencivenga. Once at the lawn, the crowd participated in chants and cheers and heard speakers including various members of congress and actor John Voight. After the rally, participants went to their congressional offices to voice their opinions, returned to the lawn at 5 p.m. for another round of speakers and had a candlelight vigil at 7:30 p.m.
The College Republicans, who set up a Facebook event and sent out a message for their members to join the rally, had five members at the protest. President of College Republicans Michael Monrroy, junior in the School of Communication Julie Grace Brufke, sophomore in the SPA, Ariel Judah, freshman in SPA Amy Farina and Bencivenga were at the event with a sign saying, “Listen to us!”
Other signs in the crowd included the messages “Kill the Bill,” “Pelosi or Us?” “Kill Sick Politics,” “Just Say No to Back-Room Deals” and others.
The five from the College Republicans arrived at the protest at noon and left at 8 or 9 p.m., according to Monrroy.
Though they tried to enter offices of the 16 congressmen with key Democratic votes for the bill to voice their opinions, the College Republicans encountered at least five or six locked or closed offices.
“This was very ironic that the one day when people would want to express their opinions, the offices were closed,” Monrroy said.
SUNDAY
Around 100,000 people participated in the March for America rally Sunday advocating for immigrants’ rights.
CASJ organized a group of 15 AU students who attended the rally, according to Andrew Dobbyn, a two-year member of CASJ and a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences and SPA, who attended the protest.
The crowd was largely Latino except for the student section, which had an equal mix of blacks, whites and Latinos, according to Dobbyn.
The event ran from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., starting with a march that ended at the National Mall. A rally on the Mall then went from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., and afterward the crowd embarked on an impromptu march to the Capitol building, according to Dobbyn.
You can reach this writer at mfowler@theeagleonline.com.
