Thousands Join War Protests Across U.S.

Anti-war protesters in more than a dozen cities across the nation called Saturday for an end to the U.S. military deployment in the Middle East, taking to the streets to demand a diplomatic resolution to the Persian Gulf crisis.

The largest demonstration was in New York, where police said up to 4,000 people rallied at Columbus Circle and then marched down Broadway to Times Square, chanting: “Hell no, we won’t go; we won’t fight for Texaco!” Organizers said that 15,000 participated in the rally.

In Washington, about 200 demonstrators picketed the White House and then sat down across Pennsylvania Avenue, forcing District of Columbia police to close off the street for nearly two hours. The four-hour rally came to an end in the late afternoon as police arrested more than a dozen demonstrators, including veteran peace activist Daniel Ellsberg.

Protest rallies also were held in San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles, as well as in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Honolulu, Albuquerque, Birmingham, Houston, Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle and Olympia, Wash.

The Los Angeles rally drew at least 400 people to Leimert Park, where they sang peace songs and listened to fiery speeches. Vietnam veteran and anti-war activist Ron Kovic called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from the gulf.

The rallies were the first nationally coordinated anti-war demonstrations since President Bush sent more than 200,000 U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf to protect Saudi Arabia after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2.

Many of Saturday’s protesters were young people with long hair, some wearing army fatigues reminiscent of the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of a generation ago. But there also were older people and members of minority groups, who demanded jobs and greater spending on domestic programs at the same time they pressed for peace in the Persian Gulf.

“Money for jobs; money for peace; U.S. out of the Middle East,” they chanted in Washington as curious tourists emerging from tours of the White House looked on, some pausing to take pictures.

“This is about oil,” observed tourist Jim Peterson, a Baltimore car salesman. “There’s plenty of other countries we can get oil from.”

It was the second consecutive day that a noisy crowd picketed in front of the White House. On Friday, several hundred people showed up to urge President Bush to sign the 1990 Civil Rights Act, which he has threatened to veto.

The demonstrators who gathered Saturday were dogged much of the afternoon by a dozen young people who ardently supported the President’s gulf policies. One carried a sign that read: “Kill Peaceniks/Hippies, Not Kuwaitis.” A second wore a Saddam Hussein mask and carried a sign reading: “Thank You American Leftists.” A third youth wore a “Nuke Iraq” T-shirt.

District of Columbia and U.S. park police kept the two groups away from each another.

Ellsberg told the anti-war protesters not to be disheartened by their relatively small numbers. “This is larger than at a comparable point in the Vietnam War,” he said. “And it will get a lot larger as we continue to organize--and especially if the body bags start coming home.”

Ellsberg urged the demonstrators to demand that Congress convene after the November elections for a special session devoted solely to examining the Bush Administration’s policies in the Middle East stalemate.

“We’re out to stop this war before it starts,” he said.

The demonstrators later created a line of sand and oil across Pennsylvania Avenue, and then sat down in the street--defying several dozen police officers to cross the line.

After standing back during nearly two hours of speech-making, singing and chanting, the police finally moved in.

As they led Ellsberg and about a dozen others away in plastic handcuffs, the crowd lining both sides of the street chanted: “Arrest Neil Bush. Arrest Neil Bush,” a reference to the President’s son who was a member of the board of directors of a savings-and-loan institution that failed in Denver.

In Massachusetts, about 200 people gathered in the Boston Common. “We’re doing it because we don’t want to see another war, another Vietnam in the Middle East,” said organizer Maureen Skehan, a 29-year-old mental health worker. “We feel the money being used to sustain the troops, the planes, the ships, is desperately needed here at home.”

Such sentiments were echoed in Cleveland, where more than 200 people rallied outside the headquarters of Cleveland-based British Petroleum America to condemn U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf.

“There is no reason for this country to be involved in that war,” said Jerry Gordon of the Committee Against the U.S. War in the Persian Gulf.

“It’s for big oil and profits and control of the oil interests in Kuwait and to restore the emir, a dictator, to his throne in Kuwait,” Gordon said. “We say let the people of that region determine their own destiny.”

Staff writer Josh Meyer in Los Angeles contributed to this report.