Marking the one-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, crowds of sign-waving, slogan-chanting demonstrators marched through Midtown Manhattan and scores of cities from Alaska to Australia yesterday in a largely peaceful global rebuke to the war. Coming 13 months after millions took to the streets in the weeks before the war last year, yesterday’s demonstrations were markedly tamer and smaller as they sought to send a message that the troops fighting in Iraq should be recalled.
On a springlike day in New York, throngs of marchers, restricted by metal barricades, stepped off from Madison Square Park on East 23rd Street under the watchful gaze of thousands of police officers, surveillance cameras and at least one police helicopter.
The protesters were middle-aged mothers, tongue-pierced students, veterans and bearded professional dissenters, who all came together in what organizers described as a broad-based protest of the Bush administration’s foreign policy not just in Iraq, but in Haiti and Israel.
“The World Still Says No to War,” announced a sprawling banner hung above the stage at Madison Avenue and 24th Street, where the speakers included Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio who is running for president, and Tony Benn, a former member of the British Parliament. The stage also served as an outdoor arena for a host of singers, poets and rappers, who gave the masses lines like: “Bush! Bin-Laden! They been plottin’!”
It is virtually impossible to guess the size of crowds without wading into a swamp of politics. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said there were about 3,000 demonstrators on each city block. Since Madison Avenue from roughly 23rd to 34th Street was filled before the march, that would mean some 33,000 people. The march’s organizers, on the other hand, said there were more than 100,000 people.
Across the country, there were similar marches in San Francisco, Fayetteville, N.C., and 250 other cities, organizers said. Groups also took to the streets in many capitals in South America and Europe and in places as far-flung as Quetta, Pakistan, and Dhaka, Bangladesh.
In San Francisco, a group of several hundred protestors broke away from the main rally in the Civic Center Plaza and headed toward Fifth and Market Streets, a busy intersection. After they tried to block traffic, the police surrounded them and arrested some 60 people. Skirmishes broke out, and some officers were assaulted, the police said. Part of the group broke through the police lines and marched to the Tenderloin section. In all, 81 people were arrested.
At a park in Fayetteville, about five miles from Fort Bragg, where the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division is based, some 700 demonstrators dotted a grassy slope under the pines.
“You can feel very isolated and alone,” opposing the war in a military town, said Beth Pratt, whose husband drives a truck for the military in Iraq. “Ending this war and bringing them all home safely would be the best form of support that I can see.”
In London, two protesters scaled Big Ben and unfurled a banner reading “Time for Truth,” in a reference to the suspicions some Europeans have that the United States and Britain exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq. In Madrid, thousands marched in memory of the 202 killed on March 11 in a series of coordinated bombings along commuter train lines.
In New York, the police reported four arrests, for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, and organizers said the march had been remarkably peaceful. There were a few tense moments at one point at Madison and 38th Street, where a small core of counter-demonstrators chanted, “Hey hey! Ho ho! Terrorist appeasement has got to go!”
The demonstrations came during the opening phase of a presidential campaign in which the war, weapons of mass destruction and America’s role as a global superpower have already played an issue.
All of these issues were touched upon yesterday as the speakers in New York railed against the war and demonstrators hoisted signs saying “World: Don’t Fight!” and, in one case, held a toilet seat with Mr. Bush’s photo strategically placed.
There were sober moments, too. Fred D’Amato walked through the crowd holding a photo of his son, Christopher, 24, who was sent to Iraq last April with the Army Reserves. Mr. D’Amato, a Vietnam veteran, was showing everyone he met another photo – of a sign he had placed on his front lawn in Mount Pocono, Pa. The sign read: “Support Our Troops – Impeach Bush.”
At one point, Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly walked several blocks along the route of the march, which went west from Madison and 23rd Street to the Avenue of the Americas, then north to 40th Street, and then back south on Madison to where the march had started.
The speeches ended around 5 p.m., and the crowd, which stretched up Madison to at least 34th Street, dispersed quickly and peacefully. One group of about 120 participants continued to bang drums, chant and dance, and began marching downtown around 6 p.m., initially causing a tense standoff with the police. Officers confronted the group and distributed plastic handcuffs, but then accompanied them downtown, with many officers videotaping and photographing demonstrators.
The group marched to the World Trade Center PATH station and broke up.
Even with the rallies planned well in advance, at least one protester got a little lost.
In Washington, one person found out too late that there would be no protest in that city. A woman in a baseball cap and sunglasses stood in front of the White House with a sign reading, “U.S. Out. U.N. In.”
“It’s always nice to do a protest with other people,” said the woman, Linda Wilscam, 43, of Vernon, Conn. “It feels lonely today, to be honest.”