Anti-war protesters give sweat, tears, blood

By Jessica Alway

While in Iraq the shooting has subsided, in America the battle between anti-war activists and government officials continues.

War, in general, is no longer the issue, but many activists say that numerous issues remain. The focus is now on the weapons of mass destruction that have yet to be found and the Iraqi civilians who were killed or wounded by U.S. bombs. Various protests have taken place across the country in major cities, such as Chicago, New York and Miami the last official day of the war.

Yet, just as before the war, the Bay Area has seen the greatest number of large-scale acts of civil disobedience. All across the bay, activists have organized protests in front of oil companies, such as Autonomy and ChevronTexaco and weapon manufacturers, like Lockheed Martin.

On Tuesday, nearly 300 anti-war protesters, including some Santa Clara students, marched on the Sunnyvale offices of Lockheed Martin, a leading defense contractor. It marked the first time that the 'direct action' style of protests typical in San Francisco and Oakland in recent weeks took place in the south bay.

Some activists blocked entrances to Lockheed's vast campus by lying on the pavement and locking themselves together with metal or plastic pipes. The demonstration was peaceful, and about 25 people were arrested for blocking intersections or failing to disperse.

"We were trying to shut down the Lockheed facility for the day," said junior Blair Thedinger. "We wanted to stop the production of weapons of mass destruction."

Thedinger was injured when police and fire officials tried to pry him out of a PVC piping, which connected him to fellow protestors, and cut his hand.

Yet these protests fail to produce the manpower of those preceding the war because these demonstrations tend to involve people doing very serious direct action, according to Thedinger. Up to 200,000 people at a time flooded the streets of San Francisco before the first bombing campaign, but on April 12 a rain-soaked protest only attracted about 5,000 people. Like the protest at Lockheed, only 500 gathered in the east bay at the ChevronTexaco headquarters in a public show of civil disobedience. While the longtime activists still find ways to make their voices heard, others, enticed by the excitement of the threat of war, have returned to inactivity after the fighting began.

"Everyone is taking a deep breath right now, but that doesn't mean the movement is going away by any means," Bill Hackwell, a spokesman for A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), said earlier this week. "We know it is going to be a lot of work, but we're very confidant. We want to rely on the tried-and-true method of building a movement. Anything significant that has come about in this country has been the result of mass movements, from civil rights to ending the Vietnam War."

Activists believe there is plenty left to protest. Currently, 159 coalition troops have died and at least 495 U.S. service people have been wounded. U.S. military officials have reported thousands of Iraqi deaths, though the actual count has not been released.Official Iraqi sources reported that 1,252 civilians were killed and 5,103 were wounded last week, while a London-based Web site put the toll between 1,642 and 1,904.

War has devastated the water and power systems within Iraq and the fall of Baghdad led to the loss of priceless artifacts, which were stolen or destroyed by looters.

"Just as people in Iraq are protesting the U.S. occupation, I will protest the occupation and explotation of the Iraqi people," said Thedinger."I never thought of this as a war. To me it was premeditated murder. Thousands and thousands of people have died and our governement seems to be celebrating the massacre."

Most of all, Bay Area activists are angry at what they perceive to be a lack of concern for Iraqi citizens' well-being by the government.

"The overall shooting has stopped but the occupation has just begun, and we feel this is just another form of warfare," said Hackwell. "Just because they won doesn't make it right. All the excuses, all the justifications they came up with are not what the war was really about, and we believe we need the anti-war movement more than ever before."