BY SEAN HEALY
Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Washington, DC, on September 29-30 weekend in opposition to President George Bush's plans to launch a war in the Middle East in retaliation for the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US.
Initially, the weekend was to be the culmination of months of organising against the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the institutional machinery of corporate globalisation — police were estimating 100,000 would descend on Washington to protest during the two bodies' annual meetings.
The terrorist attacks forced a change in plans, with the institutions postponing their meetings and protest groups cancelling planned actions and instead refocusing on street marches to oppose the war drive.
The largest protest during the two days, of some 10,000-15,000 people on September 29, marched from Freedom Plaza down the city's central boulevard, Pennsylvania Avenue, to rally outside the Capitol building, seat of the US Congress.
The event was organised by a new coalition, International ANSWER, whose acronym stands for "Act Now to Stop War and End Racism".
Demonstrators chanted "War is not the answer" and held up signs saying "Our grief is not a cry for war", "Justice, not revenge" and "An eye for an eye and we're all blind".
"War is not the answer because the events on September 11 were not the first battle in the war. This has been an escalating cycle of violence", protest organiser Brian Becker of the International Action Center, one of the coalition's founding groups, said.
"The US has tens of thousands of troops in the Middle East. They occupy Saudi Arabia, they bomb Iraq every week, they impose economic sanctions in Iraq so [dreadful] that the United Nations say 1.5 million Iraqi people have died", he added.
Many of the demonstrators had come from across the country to protest — including even rescue workers sifting through the rubble of the World Trade Center in New York searching for bodies and survivors.
"Like the people here I want justice done, but I don't want to see the destruction of more innocent lives", rescue worker James Creedon told Reuters. "Many people at Ground Zero want international justice, but we don't want to see a hundred or a thousand more World Trade Centers in this country or abroad."
Despite small groups of counter-demonstrators yelling abuse at the crowds and a heavy presence of hundreds of police in full riot gear, the march was almost entirely peaceful.
Earlier that day, 2000 mainly young people had gathered for a march to the headquarters of the World Bank, in a protest organised by the Anti-Capitalist Convergence, a coalition of anarchist and other radical left groups.
The protesters marched behind a giant banner saying "Anti-capitalists against war, racism, terrorism, property", and carried Palestinian and red-and-black flags.
At one point, DC police moved in on the demonstration, surrounding it, attacking some with capsicum spray (including, by accident, an assistant chief of police) and arresting three, but the march passed off with few other incidents.
The following day, on September 30, several thousand again gathered for an anti-war action, this time taking their message to the people by marching through some of Washington's outlying communities.
The march was organised by the Washington Peace Center and the American Friends Service Committee, the social service branch of the Quakers.
The protests were the largest in a wave of anti-war activism across the United States which is seeking to prevent the Bush administration using terrorism as a pretext for militarily enforcing US interests in the Middle East.
While tens of thousands have demonstrated, they are swimming against the current, however.
More than eight in 10 respondents — 83% — back military action against those responsible even if it leads to war, according to a September 25-27 Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The peace campaigners who took to the streets of Washington are undaunted, however, and remain committed to further community organising and street marches against the threat of war. "You need street demonstrations to break through what is essentially a TV blackout on dissent", said Adam Eidinger, one of the protest organisers.