anti-war demonstrators descend on the Pentagon

They came in droves. On a cold and windy morning in Washington, D.C., anti-war demonstrators arrived by the busload and gathered near the Lincoln Memorial. Equipped with signs, costumes and megaphones, they came to make their voices heard. Because the president has refused to listen to their qualms, and the Democratic Congress has cowered from taking a stand, and a war they view as unjust and criminal drags on, protesters came to march.

The demonstration on Saturday, March 17, marked the fourth anniversary of the March 19, 2003, invasion of Iraq. This year also marks the 40th anniversary of the Oct. 21, 1967, march on the Pentagon in opposition to the Vietnam War. Hoping to rekindle the spirit of activism that reigned in the late 1960s, organizers of the 2007 march called on concerned citizens from across the nation to converge on the Pentagon.

Somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 protesters crossed the Arlington Memorial Bridge around 1 p.m. on Saturday. Undeterred by frigid winds that whipped through their clothes and rattled their signs, marchers sang, chanted and shouted all the way to the Pentagon.

But equal vitality came from thousands of counter-demonstrators who disparaged the protesters as traitors. And although the event remained mostly peaceful, small skirmishes erupted between groups of protesters with sympathetic views but differing tactics. A large percentage of the demonstrators represented an older generation, signaling a shifting demographic in the protest population.

A recent poll conducted by CNN indicated 67 percent of U.S. citizens think the Iraq war is going moderately badly or very badly, and 61 percent felt the United States was not winning the war. But mass demonstrations like the march on Saturday have been rare. Has passivity muffled the nation’s spirit of protest? In the 1960s, young people of draft age mobilized the anti-war movement on college campuses and city streets. That public mobilization is largely absent today, and the war remains a distant phenomenon in the minds and lives of most Americans. Many college campuses have been devoid of anti-war activities, and in local communities, middle-aged activists are organizing much of the actions that have taken place.

Organizers of the March 17 event hoped the large demonstration would turn the tides, boosting the anti-war movement from apathetic grumbling to active resistance.

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Delayed by a late-winter blizzard, the three buses scheduled to pick up protesters at Market Square in Portsmouth on Friday night, March 16, arrived an hour late from Portland, Maine. Jamilla El-Shafei, who organized and sponsored the buses, had spent the past 24 hours assuring ticket holders in New Hampshire and Maine that the trip would go on regardless of the weather. Not everyone matched El-Shafei’s determination. Organizers in Washington reported that more than 60 buses canceled their trips due to the weather. Similarly, many of the reserved seats on the Seacoast buses would go unfilled.

With wind and snow swirling in the dark night outside, dozens of anxious protesters waited in Starbucks until the buses arrived around 10 p.m. Some in the group were elderly, while others were in their mid-teens. A group of 19 students from Plymouth State University drove more than three hours through the storm to reach Portsmouth in time to catch the buses.

Sophomore Zach Strayer, an adventure education major, organized the Plymouth State contingent, which consisted of a group of like-minded friends. Strayer said most students are opinionated about the war, but they are daunted by the task of attempting to make their voices heard. “‘What can we do?’ is a really common saying on our campus,” Strayer said. “’Yeah, I hate Bush, but what can I do?’”

Plymouth students said the level of activism surrounding the war has been minimal on campus. “On a scale from one to 10, I would say two,” said freshman Paul Hordan.

“I think they care, but they just are not going to bother because they don’t think it’ll make a difference,” added junior Jessica Walter, a communications major.

Strayer said he attended a protest in New York last year, as well as a large demonstration in Washington, D.C., in January. Most of the protesters at both events were over 30, he said, but there was a strong showing of college students from the United States and Canada.

The Plymouth State students let out whoops of excitement and relief when the buses pulled into the otherwise deserted square on Friday night. With each filled to about two-thirds of its capacity, the buses plowed through heavy snow and sleet as they barreled southbound across state lines.

Despite the grueling overnight hours, spirits remained high. Cherie Hoyt and her 15-year-old son, Sam Sawyer, looked forward to participating in the protest. Hoyt attended a much smaller demonstration at the State House in Concord on March 15, 2003, days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. “I can hardly believe it’s four years later, and here we are going to Washington,” she said.

At the time of the 1967 march on the Pentagon, Hoyt was a 16-year-old student at Spaulding High School in Rochester. She did not get involved in the Vietnam War protests, but she encourages her teenaged son to be active. “My son is 15, and I don’t want him to grow up in a world of war,” she said.

Hoyt was a student at the University of New Hampshire during the latter years of the Vietnam War. She remembers attending campus vigils during which students read the names of those killed in Vietnam, but the major protests still seemed very distant.

“UNH in those days was not a big hotbed of protest,” she said.

Saturday’s march would be Hoyt’s first large-scale demonstration, and it would be her son’s first visit to the nation’s capital. She said Sawyer was enthusiastic about making the trip. He often writes poems and songs rife with anger over current political issues. “Kids at that age are very sensitive to adult hypocrisy,” Hoyt said, adding “I get my hypocrisies pointed out to me all the time.”

About 12 hours after leaving Portsmouth, passengers disembarked at the intersection of 23rd Street and Constitution Avenue, instantly enveloped in a frenzied atmosphere of noisy protest. A man with a megaphone encouraged exiting passengers to pick up signs that read “U.S. Out of Iraq.” He also led a continual chant expressing the three predominant sentiments of the protest: “Stop the Iraq war! No Iran war! Impeach, impeach, impeach!”

Moving along the sidewalk toward the Lincoln Memorial, thousands of protesters bobbed a multitude of signs, some bearing simple anti-war slogans, others painted with bloody images and vulgarities. A handful of chained people wore orange jumpsuits and black bags over their heads, adopting various positions in imitation of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib detention center in Baghdad. Some people carried large papier-mâché caricatures of George Bush and Dick Cheney, some clad in devil’s robes and others tattooed with swastikas.  

Speakers adamantly addressed the crowd from a stage in front of the Lincoln Memorial as demonstrators beat hand drums and buckets. After a particularly heartfelt speech, a James Brown song blasted from the amplifiers spurred eager protesters to dance across the soggy lawn.

Across the street, separated from the main throng by police officers on horseback and SWAT team members in riot gear, thousands of war supporters heckled the protesters, waving American flags and chanting “U-S-A!” Their boos reached a frenzied pitch as someone on the stage introduced Cindy Sheehan, a vocal anti-war activist whose son was killed while serving in Iraq. “The Cindy Sheehan Peace Brigade Supports Terrorist Killers of Innocent Children,” a large banner read.

Other counter-demonstrators, many wearing leather jackets embroidered with the names of Vietnam veteran groups, loitered around the lawn. The veterans felt protesters dishonored the memory of soldiers killed while serving their country. Most were reluctant to speak to the media. “Beat feet, man. Split,” said a leather-clad and bearded veteran when approached by a reporter. But a fellow “Vietnam Vets” member was more willing to talk. “We will not allow our Vietnam wall and all the other war memorials, fallen brothers and sisters, to be desecrated by these dingbats,” he said, gesturing toward the crowd. He declined to identify himself.

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Reports in the Oct. 22, 1967, issue of the New York Times tell of rampant violence and disorder outside the Pentagon. Front-page photographs show anti-war demonstrators shouting at military police and deputy federal marshals clubbing protesters with nightsticks. Police arrested close to 650 demonstrators over the course of the two-day event, including journalist and novelist Norman Mailer.

According to news reports, the 1967 protest began with some 50,000 demonstrators gathered around the Lincoln Memorial. About 35,000 later marched to the Pentagon, where they occupied a spacious lawn and parking lot in front of the Pentagon Mall. A line of more than 2,500 federal marshals and soldiers armed with bayonet-tipped rifles stood guard in front of the building.

Although no serious injuries were reported, unsettling violence erupted when demonstrators attempted to breach the lines of armed guards. They were met with nightsticks and rifle butts, sending some of them sprawling down the bloodstained steps. Demonstrators shouted obscenities and hurled sticks and cans at soldiers as they made repeated attempts to enter the Pentagon.

Elements of the ’67 protest seemed almost surreal. A group of “yippies” under the guidance of Abby Hoffman sang and chanted in an attempt to levitate the Pentagon and exorcise its evil spirits. Canisters of teargas exploded, but military personnel and demonstrators disagreed over who deployed the weapons. Outspoken protesters claimed that President Lyndon Johnson, and not Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh, was the real enemy. 

The reports merit some obvious comparisons to the current anti-war movement. Signs and banners waved in both the 1967 protest and the 2007 march demanded the immediate return of U.S. troops, and modern protesters unfailingly point to President Bush as the true enemy in our current struggle.

But the differences between the two demonstrations are equally salient. The New York Times reported that most of the demonstrators in 1967 were in their late teens or early 20s. One headline read: “Youths Dominate Capital Throng, Only a Minority at Protest Are Older Than 30.”

Although a strong showing of young demonstrators appeared at the 2007 march, at least half of the protesters were well over 30. So why the shifting demographic?

“One of the obvious differences is the draft,” said Linda Fowler, professor of government at Dartmouth College. “Young people were mobilized because they were looking at the threat of the rice paddies in Vietnam, and young people today are quite immune from those concerns.”

Many young demonstrators lit bonfires and waved burning draft cards during an overnight vigil in 1967, expressing their displeasure at being forced to join the war effort. Today that threat is not so direct, although financial circumstances today leave many high school graduates who aspire to a career outside their community with few alternatives to the military.

Fowler noted that self-interest—and not altruism or compassion—drives most large-scale political movements. “That’s typically true of mass movements,” she said. “There’s been a lot of work (studying) why people protest, and typically the people who protest are people who are somehow systematically losing in the system and where the conventional avenues of redress are closed to them.”

While the draft age was 18, the voting age in 1967 was 21 in all but 10 states, and Fowler said there was little public discussion about the war in Congress and President Johnson’s administration. Many young people began protesting as a way of making their voices heard at a time when few other outlets existed. The 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 in 1971.

Today, many young people use the Internet to disperse their opinions without public display. Although Fowler has not observed much anti-war activism on the Dartmouth campus, she believes students do have strong feelings about the war. “The Internet has become another way that students are expressing their dismay about what’s happening with the war.”

Another factor that may have riled citizens during the Vietnam-era protests was the number of casualties and U.S. troops deployed during the war. By the time the 1967 march on the Pentagon occurred, about 13,000 U.S. troops had died in Vietnam, and the number of troops deployed rose from 389,000 to 486,000 that year.

About 3,200 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since the U.S. invasion four years ago, and more than 23,000 have been wounded. In January, Bush announced the pending deployment of more than 20,000 additional troops, bringing the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq to more than 150,000.

The numbers are alarming, but the death toll in Iraq still does not approach the level of carnage experience in the Vietnam War, which ultimately claimed the lives of about 58,000 U.S. troops. The number of troops deployed to Vietnam peaked at about 537,000 late in 1968.

“There’s a lot of actual research about how much tolerance Americans have for casualties,” Fowler said. Tolerance levels were high during World War II, she said, because most people believed soldiers were dying for a worthy cause. The public was much less supportive of the Vietnam War, and the occupation of Iraq has become increasingly unpopular.

“The tolerance of casualties is directly proportional to the sense that people have that this conflict is worth it,” Fowler said. “My sense is that as public opposition shows increasing numbers of people believe we shouldn’t have gotten into this war, tolerance will go down.”

A large percentage of the people actively protesting the war in Iraq are literally the same demonstrators who protested the Vietnam War 40 years ago. Fowler noted that the Vietnam War protests came on the heels of other successful activist movements such as the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement and the environmental movement. The public atmosphere in the late 1960s was one of general mistrust of the government and other institutions, such as schools, churches, corporations and the military. “There’s probably as much mistrust of government now; mistrust of government is generally pretty high. But other institutions are more trusted than they were in the ’60s,” Fowler said.

The success of various movements in the ’60s also empowered protesters and made them feel like they were genuinely making a difference. Public opposition to the Vietnam War helped provoke the withdrawal of troops in the early 1970s.

“In the end, the protests actually accomplished something,” Fowler said. “That diffused a lot of the public anxiety and anger about the war. I think people from that generation came away thinking protest works.”

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The protests of March 17 were thinner and tamer than the historic 1967 march, but the demand for change was clear. Many marchers engaged in verbal sparring matches with counter-demonstrators who lined the Memorial Bridge, but violence was kept to a minimum. Most confrontations, in fact, occurred between different factions of anti-war protesters.

Motley groups of demonstrators, most of them entirely peaceful, gathered in clusters as organizers prepared for the march shortly after noon. There were the Students for Democratic Society, Code Pink: Women for Peace, and a group of anarchists with a sign that said “Destroy all Government.”

Volunteer security workers clad in yellow vests struggled to maintain some semblance of order as the march began, forming a human chain across the street to prevent marchers from starting early. A group of overanxious protesters trampled a section of fencing to get around the chain, and young demonstrators screamed at security members when they attempted to stop the leak. Indeed, some of the younger demonstrators seemed eager for conflict, and some security members bickered with unruly protesters, questioning what they were trying to accomplish by ripping down the fencing.

A group of Iraq veterans opposed to the war led the march across the bridge as it stepped off around 1 p.m., guided by an escort of police motorcycles. A counter-demonstrator with his face and hair painted red white and blue screamed at protesters through a megaphone until police moved him along. Helicopters chopped through the cold air, keeping watch over the activities.

The march proceeded into a vast parking lot outside the Pentagon, where an enormous stage had been assembled. Marchers arrived to the tune of Edwin Starr’s “War (What is it good for?),” which blasted through towers of amplifiers. A parade of speakers followed, including former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who spoke of the need to impeach Bush and Cheney, and Sheehan, who encouraged citizens not to pay their taxes.

Several of the Iraq veterans gathered behind the stage as the march concluded. Most of the protesting veterans said they initially supported the war, but changed their minds as the carnage amassed.

William Reyes served in the Navy off the coast of Iraq when the 2003 invasion occurred. “I was more or less neutral at that point, but before that I was pretty much for it, I have to admit that,” Reyes said. But as the war progressed, he began to question its value. “It didn’t seem to make sense that we were going after the Iraqis when we were told that our enemy was Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan and there was no proof that al Qaeda was with Iraq or that they were in any way associated with the attacks of 9/11,” he said. “That’s what motivated me wanting to do something about that, not wanting to do something to get oil or keep the military machine wealthy and whatnot. What brought me out here is just my desire to get the troops home and stop American troops from getting killed for nothing that has to do with the security of the United States of America, nothing that has to do with protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States.”

As speakers paraded to the microphone, demonstrators branched off into groups, some huddling close to the stage while others assembled on a grassy hill by the road leading to the Pentagon. Some groups played lighthearted music and danced or played games of Hacky Sack. Others ranted against the Bush administration through bullhorns.

Virginia State Police and Pentagon security personnel armed with nightsticks, batons and plastic shields guarded the road, preventing demonstrators from approaching the Pentagon building. They slowly advanced on the crowd, pushing them back to the sidewalk. Police arrested a handful of uncooperative protesters who refused to move from the road. The officers clutched their weapons but remained veiled in stoic silence as protesters heckled them and called them fascists.

“This is starting to look too much like 1967,” a middle-aged man muttered as he retreated from the crowd. 

Overall, the protest was peaceful and orderly. The crowd thinned as the afternoon progressed, and many chilly demonstrators retreated to their buses. The Maine and New Hampshire buses departed around 5 p.m. Stopping for dinner in New Jersey, weary protesters reflected on the day’s events. Estimates on the crowd size ranged from 10,000 to 75,000, although the lower end proved more accurate.

The buses pulled onto the snow-crusted streets of Portsmouth around 3:30 a.m., and the demonstrators quickly dispersed into the night, carrying their packs and pillows. El-Shafei and the Kennebunk Peace Department are organizing another anti-war rally and protest in Kennebunkport, Maine, scheduled for Aug. 25. Organizers hope to maintain the spirit of protest that emerged on March 17 as they call for an end to the war.