Marking the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, anti-war activists organized marches and demonstrations in over 500 cities across the country Saturday. The Connecticut chapter of United for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee launched a rally and march in Hartford complete with music and multiple speakers. Fourteen Wesleyan students attended the march, which is estimated to have drawn 1,000 protestors, according to the Hartford Courant.
“The march and rally went well,” said Ben Somberg ’05. “It was refreshing to see hundreds of people in the streets demanding an end to the war in Iraq. It was good to be part of something bigger; hundreds of rallies across the country and across the world that same day, demanding that we bring the troops home.”
Somberg organized a carpool to the rally via emails to the Wesleyan community.
The demonstrators gathered at 11a.m. for a pre-march rally with singers and speeches, followed by a march at noon and a final rally at 1p.m. in Barnard Park. As the march proceeded down Park Street, people yelled from windows and cars honked their horns in support, though some reacted less positively to the demonstrators’ tactics.
“Instead of marching through the capital or business districts, which house those institutions responsible for this war, the organizers planned a march route through several impoverished Black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods,” said Brian Brotman ’07. “The organizers continuously referred to their neighborhoods as ‘key minority and disenfranchised communities.’”
According to Brotman, the organizers seemed to be using the communities as political tools, even though the communities were not actively involved in planning the demonstration.
“The crowd kept chanting ‘our streets,’ which is typically a confrontational chant used to signify reclaiming streets from business elites or police,” Brotman said. “Instead, the marchers chanting ‘our streets’ were, although probably unintentionally, confronting the same communities most devastated by this racist war.”
To remember the Americans and Iraqis killed in the war, a group of marchers carried coffins through the city in a mock memorial ceremony. Speakers included delegates from a variety of groups, including Veterans for Peace, Latinos Contra La Guerra, the Green Party and the Campus Antiwar Network.
“One who caught my attentio—Milly Guzman-Young, who founded Latinos Contra La Guerra in the Hartford area,” Somberg said. “[She] spoke about the counter-recruitment work they are doing in Hartford schools.”
Latinos Contra La Guerra are one of many groups who are confronting the war by trying to impede the army’s recruiting efforts. These efforts have gained momentum throughout the U.S. in the last several months.
According to Somberg, many of the speakers connected the war to local issues, criticizing how much the United States spending on the war at a time when so much of Connecticut is struggling economically.
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