New Hampshire Residents Protest in Washington
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 – Not even a Park Service official asking them to remove their antiwar signs from the Commodore John Paul Jones Memorial was enough to upset the New Hampshire residents who traveled to Washington this weekend to protest the war in Iraq.
Toting signs that read “No U.S. Empire,” “Military Brats for Peace,” and “Bush lies, who dies?” among others, about 200 residents from all over New Hampshire publicly displayed their discontent for the war at the United for Peace and Justice rally and march.
“I feel it’s an unjust war,” said Steve Kowal, 56, of Portsmouth, N.H. “This war was built on lies about weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.”
Kowal, a second-year graduate student at Antioch New England Graduate School in Keene, N.H., made the eight-hour trip to Washington Friday night with a professor and six other students.
“We live in a democracy and we’re here to express our rights,” he added. “People need to realize that everything [they] do makes a difference.”
Steve Chase, director of the Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program at Antioch New England Graduate School, said he was glad to share the protest experience with his students, including a foreign exchange student from Palestine.
“I just think people need to come together and do what they can,” he said.
Chase said he hopes to “help America live up to its incredible promise,” by voicing his concerns at rallies such as this one.
Throughout the rally, which took place on the grounds between the Washington Monument and the White House, numerous speakers addressed the thousands of participants.
Among the speakers was Cindy Sheehan who gained national attention by demonstrating outside of President George W. Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch this summer after her son, Casey, died in Iraq.
“We need a people’s movement to end this war,” Sheehan said. “We have to do our jobs as Americans.”
“We are here in massive amounts of people to show our government and our media that we mean business,” Sheehan said before declaring that she would not give up her fight to end the war in Iraq until the last troops have returned home.
The Reverend Jesse Jackson also addressed the crowd Saturday.
“It’s a long road but keep marching,” he said. “March on, fight on,” he added before he and the crowd began chanting “bring the troops home now.”
Hancock, N.H., resident Polly Curran, who attended the rally with her husband, a U.S veteran, said she hopes her participation will help convince the Bush Administration to bring troops home and show other Americans that they should be willing to stand for what they believe in.
“You’ve got to communicate with the White House,” she said. “It doesn’t matter where we are in this country, we are all Americans.”
Courtney Westbrook, 17, of Dunbarton, N.H., said she hoped her participation in the march would show other teenagers that their opinions do matter, even if they are not old enough to vote.
Westbrook, a senior at Bishop Brady High School in Concord, traveled to Washington by bus with New Hampshire Peace Action, which chartered three buses to the event from various locations in New Hampshire.
Jessica Ellis, the coordinator of New Hampshire Peace Action, said she hoped the massive amount of people at the march would provide President Bush and the nation with a “visual message” and “in that way create a change.”
“The reasons we were given by our government were not true and that makes this an illegal and unsupportable war,” Ellis said.
Another New Hampshire group that attended this weekend’s rally was “The Testygoyls.”
The Testygoyls, a group of six women, was formed specifically to oppose the war in Iraq.
“We decided we wanted to stop just complaining about it,” said Laurie Sargent of Hopkinton, N.H.
Sargent added that the rally was important for people who are “on the fence” about voicing their beliefs about the war in Iraq or those who feel alienated because of their beliefs because it allowed them to “be around people that are so wildly different but with a unified cause.”
“We may be small, but we’re loud,” said Sargent before she and the other Testygoyls again began chanting “we’re too testy for this war, we can’t take it anymore.”
