Activists Confront War, Speak Peace

Hundreds of Orange County anti-war protesters Thursday demonstrated peacefully at UC Irvine and near South Coast Plaza but blocked auto traffic at the Santa Ana Civic Center, vowing to speak out until war in the Middle East is brought to an end.

A noon rally at UC Irvine drew 400 to 500 people to the campus student center, where opponents of the war spoke out and others dressed up in mock body bags in a “die-in.”

At the intersection of Bristol Street and Anton Boulevard near South Coast Plaza, about 50 people gathered in the evening with candles, homemade banners and signs to sing peace songs and voice their anti-war sentiments. Passing motorists, including an Orange County Transit District bus, honked in support.

Lorry Lup of Costa Mesa, who joined the rally with her husband, Ron, as they were passing by, said, “People need to know that it’s OK to be for peace. This whole thing has been sounding like a football game, like we’re all cheering in a football game.”

Protester Caroline Faith of Huntington Beach said that when Congress voted last week to approve the use of force against Iraq, “I said, ‘I’ve got to do more than write letters now.’ I’m not terribly sophisticated about foreign policy, but I know what’s right and wrong.”

In Santa Ana earlier in the day, police and U.S. marshals arrested 12 anti-war demonstrators who attempted to enter the Federal Building in the Civic Center. Protesters then resorted to blocking traffic by standing hand-in-hand in a crosswalk while chanting peace slogans.

There was no violence, but shortly after noon about 900 government workers were evacuated from the Federal Building after someone telephoned a bomb threat.

The Sheriff’s Department bomb squad conducted a sweep of the nine-story building while crowds of federal workers waited in the Civic Center quad. Workers were allowed to return to their offices after about two hours.

Demonstrators were met with occasional jeering and counterdemonstrations by supporters of the U.S.-led air attacks on Iraqi forces. About 22 Santa Ana police officers clad in riot gear barred the protesters from entering the Federal Building.

The arrests began about 9:30 a.m. when nine of the protesters walked to the entrance of the Civic Center parking lot and held hands to block the entrance.

“We’re not going to abandon the door,” Santa Ana Police Lt. Robert Helton said as additional officers were summoned. “As soon as we leave the door, I’m sure the attempt will be made to get inside the buildings.”

“They won’t let us in the Federal Building,” said Tim Carpenter of the Alliance for Survival anti-war group, moments before he was arrested. “We have business to conduct. . . . We have a war to stop today.”

Arrested with Carpenter for failure to leave government property were Guy Jaaskelainen and Jonathan Parfrey of the Catholic Worker House, a Santa Ana homeless food shelter. All three were cited and released, a U.S. marshal’s spokesman said.

The nine other protesters arrested by Santa Ana police were taken to Orange County Jail on charges of obstruction of thoroughfares and public places, then cited and released, a sheriff’s spokesman said.

Santa Ana police identified the nine as Timothy Adam, 24, Santa Ana; Paul DuNard, 47, Buena Park; Ben Miles, 36, Huntington Beach; Dennis Moynahan, 26, Buena Park; Paco Marmolejo, 39, Fullerton; Jeanie Bernstein, 67, Laguna Beach; Linda Schatzman, 34, Anaheim; Melissa Morrow, 25, Costa Mesa, and Marion Pack, 44, Norco.

A few motorists were temporarily prevented from entering the parking lot from Santa Ana Boulevard.

“I’ve got to be in court in two minutes,” said Mike Weiner, a Los Angeles lawyer, who sat in his car while the demonstrators held hands and sang, blocking the driveway. “There has to be a better way to express yourself.”

Moments later, the demonstrators blocked westbound traffic on Santa Ana Boulevard.

When more police arrived, the protesters were told to disperse. They held their ground, and each person was arrested to the cheers of about 20 anti-war demonstrators on the sidewalk.

The demonstration, held when most Civic Center workers were already at their jobs, attracted only small crowds of curious passersby.

An occasional heckler shouted at the protesters, including one man who yelled: “Why don’t you people get a gun?”

Pack, another of the Alliance for Survival organizers, said the group plans to organize protests at the Federal Building “every day, until the war is stopped.”

Later in the day, about 60 protesters lined Santa Ana Boulevard, while about 20 vocal supporters of the military action stood across the street. The two sides yelled at each other as federal and local police looked on.

“I think the TV coverage has been too much on the protesters,” said Jessie James, 21, an office worker who waved a placard that read: “Bomb Hussein Until He Screams Uncle.”

On the other side of the street, Mark Eisele, 26, a commercial real estate broker, said he was protesting because “I feel war is wrong.”

“I really think that as . . . we get more casualties, a lot of people’s minds will change,” Eisele said.

At a hastily organized UCI rally, Linda Nelson, a 33-year-old teacher and wife of a UCI philosophy professor, said she is opposed to the war “because I think this is a matter of shedding blood for oil . . . and I want to make a statement to my 9-year-old son that I’m willing to do something about it.”

UCI history professor Jon Wiener was met with loud applause when he exhorted listeners not to believe news about “glorious victories.”

The news, he cautioned, is being censored by the U.S. military. The early aerial assaults are the “easy part,” he added. “It’s the ground war that is going to be bloody.”

Unimpeded by UCI’s reputation as a conservative campus, rally organizer Joshua Nave, 20, of San Pedro encouraged fellow students to join a boycott of classes, rallies in Santa Ana and other efforts to draw attention to their anti-war sentiments.

“We’ve got enough people--we can do it,” Nave said.

Across the student center nearly an equal number of students were oblivious or deliberately avoided the anti-war rally.

But later, after word that Iraqi missiles hit the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, more than 75 UCI students huddled around a student center television, stone-faced. Students of Arab descent expressed horror at this new turn.

“No war is good, and this shouldn’t have gotten this big,” said Khaldoun Baghdadi, 17, a U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent now living in Mission Viejo. “I promise you a squad of Israel F-16s are on their way to Iraq right now. Which means this war is going to be a lot bigger than anyone expected.”

Times staff writers Nancy Wride and Eric Lichtblau contributed to this report.