Costa Mesa : Demonstrators Protest Industry-Military Parley

About 100 sign-carrying demonstrators marched in front of the Westin South Coast Plaza Hotel for an hour Thursday evening to protest a scheduled military-industrial conference at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

The peaceful demonstration capped two months of candlelight marches on Thursday evenings at the Costa Mesa hotel. Participants said the demonstrations were held to make Orange County residents aware of the significance of the annual Winter Conference of Aerospace and Electronics Systems (WINCON), a classified, four-day gathering set for next week.

The demonstrators chose the hotel because many of the WINCON participants will stay there. Military officials and representatives of major Pentagon contractors are expected to attend the conference Tuesday through Friday.

At Thursday’s demonstration, many of the signs called for stopping WINCON, but others carried messages such as “Bread, Not Bombs” and “The Arms Race Is a Crime.” One man carried a 2-by-3-foot color picture of a little girl.

Hundreds of motorists passing the busy Bristol Street-Anton Boulevard intersection honked their horns in support, but a few shouted their disapproval at the protesters.

Many of the demonstrators said they plan to return next week to protest at the conference itself. Peaceful civil disobedience is planned for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings, said Tim Carpenter, a spokesman for the Orange County Alliance for Survival.

Protesters said they will try to prevent buses carrying WINCON participants from leaving the hotel.

At last year’s conference, 29 protesters were arrested as they tried to block the buses. Among them was Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the news media during the Vietnam War.