Students, Other Activists Plan 'Direct Action' Anti-War Protest

WASHINGTON — Angela Helwig, a secretary from Bogart, Ga., is taking vacation days to join an anti-war protest Wednesday that aims to disrupt the nation's capital on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

"This is the most important issue facing our country," she said. "There never was any connection between Saddam and al-Qaida and no weapons of mass destruction. So we're just continuing an occupation based on an invasion that had no basis."

In an array of "direct actions," organizers said tens of thousands of demonstrators will block commuter traffic and access to buildings as well as march to the Capitol in protests against the role of business, media and the government in the war.

United For Peace and Justice, a coalition of organizations, is sponsoring the actions, which will range from trying to shut down the headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service — since taxes fund the war — to blocking access to the American Petroleum Institute to demonstrating outside The Washington Post and bureaus of CNN, Fox News and other media outlets and the National Press Club.

"The media perpetuated a lot of the administration's lies" at the start of the war, explained Lisa Fithian, a protest organizer from Austin, Texas. Responsibility for the five-year-old war rests "not just with the White House and Congress but with other key institutions that we're calling the 'Pillars of War.' War profiteers. The military. We want people to begin to look at all those institutions and, in a variety of ways, to engage them and to weaken them."

Organizers said they are targeting the Democratic majority of Congress as well as the Republican administration and will even march on the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.

"The Democratic Party has only been aiding the Bush administration and not standing up to them," said Helwig.

"One of the biggest problems with anti-war movement is that we were looking for Democrats to end the war," said Michael Prysner, an Army veteran who will be protesting on the anniversary of the invasion he took part in. "The overall vast majority of Americans believe the war is wrong. The last election shows that. They elected the Democratic Congress to end the war but that hasn't happened."

Prysner said he is running for Congress, the 22nd District of Florida in Palm Beach County, as a candidate from the Party for Socialism and Liberation. He will turn 25 in August, reaching the legal age to serve in the House of Representatives.

Nora Hansel, an 18 year old college freshman, is taking her spring break from Wesleyan University to join the protest. Having spent a week in the District planning for the anti-war campaign, she said she probably would have spent spring break at Austin's South by Southwest music and film festival but believes that too many college students are ignoring the war. She said she even did a research paper comparing this anti-war movement to the often violent campus unrest during the Vietnam War.

There is no military draft now as there was in the 1960s so "people are not necessarily threatened" by the far-away fighting, she explained. "It allows (students) to be disconnected and under the illusion that the war is not affecting them — when in reality it is affecting all of us."

The demonstrators plan a "March of the Dead" from Arlington National Cemetery into the areas of the city where tourists gather, including the war memorials. Grannies for Peace plan to stage a "knit-in" at the State Department and there will be a waterboarding demonstration near the White House and a giant street dance.

The disruptive actions are "a logical next step for our movement," said Fithian. "We're building off the traditions of people who have come before us in this country. The civil rights movement. The women's movement. The earlier anti-war movement. People across this country understand that it's time to work differently and bring new strategies to end this war."

She said it is "outrageous really" that Congress is out of town on a two-week Easter recess and won't see the demonstrators.

"Soldiers can't come home" for the holidays, she said.

Hansel said more college students should get involved. The apathy is due "basically to the fact that it is so easy for many of us to go about our day-to-day life without even thinking there is a war going on," she said. "I think what's lacking is a lot of direct connection and emotional connection."

The disruptive actions are aimed at making people "stop and realize that people are dying," she said.

The cost of the war is beginning to be felt by average Americans as the economy falters, said Fithian. And the human toll — nearing 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead, 40,000 wounded and "millions" of dead Iraqis is beginning to alarm the populace, she said.

"Millions dead, trillions spent and no end in sight," she said. "We believe Wednesday will be an unprecedented day of action. It is a working day. We will be confronting the people who are in the business of death and destruction in downtown Washington."