Organizers Oppose Increase in Troops and Plan to Seek Withdrawal Deadline
By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Tens of thousands of peace advocates from across the country are expected in Washington on Saturday for an anti-war rally that could be among the biggest since the war in Iraq began, organizers said yesterday.
They said the rally on the Mall, followed by a march near the Capitol, will target President Bush's intention to send more troops to the Iraq war.
The president's policy is "fight, war, occupation, death, destruction, spend our tax dollars," Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, the umbrella group that is one of the main organizers of Saturday's events, said at a media briefing.
Citing what she called "this devastating debacle of lies and horror," Cagan said: "The people of this country have had it. This Saturday, January 27, on the heels of the Bush administration's decision to send another 21,000 U.S. troops into Iraq, hundreds of thousands of people from all across this country will come to this capital city to make it clear."
The marchers are calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq and the beginning of "an orderly, speedy and safe" withdrawal of troops, said Hani Khalil, a spokesman for the group. They want dates announced for the start of troop withdrawal as well as a specific deadline for its completion, he added.
United for Peace and Justice describes itself as a coalition of 1,400 local and national organizations. Among them are the National Organization for Women, United Church of Christ, the American Friends Service Committee, True Majority, Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, CodePink, MoveOn.org, and September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.
Among the featured speakers will be Vietnam War-era protester Jane Fonda, according to the organizers. Others include actors Danny Glover, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, and Carlos Arredondo, who in 2004 set himself on fire after learning of the death in Iraq of his Marine Corps son, Alexander.
The rally is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. at the east end of the Mall, at Third Street and Madison Drive NW, the organizers said. The march is to kick off at 1 p.m.
The route and march permits were being finalized yesterday, the National Park Service said. Cagan said organizers want to march from the Mall north on Louisiana Avenue to Union Station, then south on Delaware Avenue to the Capitol.
The march comes after several large Iraq war protests, which date to before the March 2003 invasion. One of the biggest was held Sept. 25, 2005, and was billed as the largest since the war's start. Organizers at the time claimed a turnout of 300,000, while police pegged the number at about half that.
Cagan declined yesterday to predict a Saturday turnout. "We learned a long time ago not to put out numbers," she said. "There are many variables, especially in the winter."
An anti-war protest described as the largest since the Vietnam War drew several hundred thousand Jan. 18, 2003, on the eve of the Iraq war, in subfreezing Washington weather. The high temperature reported that day was in the mid-20s.
Saturday's weather should be sunny, with highs in the low 50s, according to the National Weather Service.
Fonda, 69, an actress, author and peace activist who was vilified during the Vietnam War for making an appearance in Hanoi on a North Vietnamese gun emplacement, has previously avoided attending anti-Iraq war functions.
"I realized that I would provide too much of a distraction for the right-wing media," she told the San Jose Mercury News last year. "I didn't want to take away from what's happening in the movement."
Cagan, the protest organizer, said Fonda was traveling yesterday and was unavailable for an interview, but "Jane Fonda is definitely coming. She is speaking at the rally and marching in the lead contingent."
Fonda is scheduled to be joined at the rally podium by Bob Watada, 67, of Honolulu, a retired executive with the state of Hawaii whose Army officer son, Ehren, is to be court-martialed next month for refusing to deploy to Iraq.
"There is no doubt in my mind that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is wholly unwarranted," Bob Watada said in a telephone interview. "The Iraqi people have done absolutely nothing to the United States. They've done nothing to deserve the massacre and the pummeling they're getting . . . the plunder, the torture, the rape, the murder of innocent people. It's got to stop."
Watada's son, a 28-year-old Army lieutenant based at Fort Lewis, Wash., "refused to deploy to Iraq after he found out that the president had lied to the country, lied to the military, about there being weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," the elder Watada said.
Watada said his son refused to get on a deployment plane in June and spoke out against the war. The younger Watada has been charged with "missing a movement" and conduct unbecoming an officer, his father said.
Watada said he plans to participate fully in Saturday's rally and march. "I got my plane tickets and hotel reservations, and I'll be there," he said.
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