From Coast to Coast, a Cry for Peace

As part of antiwar protests across the country, hundreds of activists rallied outside the United Nations on Tuesday, urging President Bush not to invade Iraq.

Police arrested at least 150 people nationwide for highly choreographed acts of civil disobedience, including 99 demonstrators who blocked the entrance to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

In cities from coast to coast, groups sponsored candlelight vigils, marches, teach-ins, food drives and interfaith prayer services to mark International Human Rights Day.

The goal, organizers explained, was to show the breadth of what they said is a burgeoning movement against the Bush administration’s threats of war.

Sponsors said the events were intended as a smaller follow-up to massive demonstrations held in October in Washington and San Francisco.

At the White House, a spokesman said the demonstrations were a “time-honored tradition” of democracy.

“We held over 120 events across the country ... to express our dismay at the prospect of a war,” said David Levy, an organizer with United for Peace, a loose-knit coalition that coordinated the antiwar activity.

In Anchorage, a memorial celebrated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights while in Vero Beach, Fla., marchers gathered by candlelight to press for peace for Iraq.

Protesters also were arrested in Chicago on charges of criminal trespass in the lobby of a federal office building, in Sacramento on charges of blocking the entrance to a U.S. courthouse and in Washington on charges of refusing to leave a military recruiting station.

“It shows you opposition to the war is not just a marginal opinion of a few activists,” said Jen Carr, a spokeswoman for Peace Action, a principal member of the coalition that organized the events.

In Washington, activists held a lunch-hour march near the White House; in the early evening, about 100 people gathered outside the offices of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

“No war for oil,” the picketers chanted, charging that the committee serves as a front for the pro-war lobby.

Many of the roughly 500 people who gathered in New York sang protest songs from the Vietnam War era and recalled massive and sometimes violent rallies during the 1960s and ‘70s.

“I went to my first demonstration in Washington, D.C., Nov. 15, 1969, and that kind of convinced me to be a peace activist and work for social justice,” said Bill Steyert, who is a retired worker for a public interest organization.

At the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, protesters and police engaged in a polite, well-practiced political ballet.

Each person who refused to get up from in front of the building was photographed and courteously helped by officers into vans for the trip to court to face disorderly conduct charges of blocking the doors of the government property.

In Oakland, more than 500 people gathered at the federal building carrying about 200 small mock coffins bearing images of Iraqi children.

“Iraqi children are not collateral damage,” proclaimed a large banner held above the coffins. Another banner showed a large oil tanker with the slogan, “USS War for Oil.”

The death theme was repeated in Providence, R.I., where about 100 Brown University students and faculty held a “die-in” at the federal building.

In Los Angeles, more than 100 entertainers, including Matt Damon, David Duchovny, Laurence Fishburne, Martin Sheen, Diahann Carroll, Janeane Garofalo and Samuel L. Jackson, signed a letter to Bush voicing their opposition to a war.

“War is a reflection of despair, and I refuse to accept despair....We are called to be peacemakers,” said Sheen, who plays a U.S. president on NBC’s “The West Wing.”

Sheen appeared at a news conference with a group of other actors.

“We support rigorous U.N. weapons inspections to assure Iraq’s effective disarmament. However, a preemptive military invasion of Iraq will harm American national interests,” the letter said.

“It will make us less, not more, secure.”

Later in Los Angeles, a group of perhaps a dozen protesters exhorted motorists to honk their horns for peace in Hollywood. Many obliged in the rush-hour darkness.

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Times staff writers Randy Trick in Washington and Hector Becerra in Los Angeles contributed to this report.