The San Francisco Chronicle
Monday 19 March 2007
4th anniversary brings out protesters; 45 booked as "die-in" blocks traffic at busy city intersection.
San Francisco police arrested 57 anti-war activists in the city Monday as demonstrations were held throughout the Bay Area to mark the four-year anniversary of the U.S. war in Iraq.
The bulk of the arrests - 45 - were made shortly before 1 p.m. at the intersection of Montgomery and Market Streets, when protesters moved their sidewalk "die-in" to the middle of Market Street.
Blocking noontime traffic, activists sprawled out like war casualties. Some shrouded themselves under sheets with fake blood, and others chose a pose more befitting of a coffin, on their backs with closed eyes and clasping flowers to their chests. None resisted arrest.
Among those escorted to three police vans was a woman in a wheelchair, a woman in a nun's habit and former Department of Defense official Daniel Ellsberg.
Ellsberg became famous for leaking the classified Pentagon Papers documents to the New York Times in 1971 that revealed the U.S. government had engaged in a pattern of deceiving the public about the number of Vietnam war casualties and the nation's ability to win the conflict.
"I spent this same day in jail in D.C. during 'shock and awe' four years ago, and I'm sorry to say that I did expect the war would still be going on this long," said Ellsberg, 75, moments after his release from San Francisco County Jail, where activists were cited and released.
Protesters were arrested for failing to obey a traffic officer, a misdemeanor, and blocking a traffic lane, an infraction, said San Francisco police Sgt. Steve Mannina.
Several other protests were held Monday around the Bay Area.
Activists at Chevron Corp. in San Ramon said they were protesting "Chevron's role in driving the Iraqi war for oil, polluting communities worldwide and contributing to global climate chaos."
Code Pink Women for Peace held a march from the Civic Center to the Pacific Heights home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The organization, which is demanding that Pelosi and Congress stop funding the war, began camping out in front of the Democrat's Broadway house last week.
At the Powell Street cable car turnaround, curious tourists took video and cell phone pictures of another 25 people lying on the ground in another "die-in."
Many of the arrested protesters spent their time in jail discussing plans to join evening candlelight vigils, Ellsberg said.
While in custody they were treated well by police, he said, and the arresting officer who put zip-ties around Ellsberg's wrists said he'd read the Pentagon Papers in college and his father would be excited to know he'd handcuffed the leaker.
Ellsberg has been protesting the war since its beginning. He was among a dozen people arrested while camping on a roadside near President Bush's ranch in November 2005.
He also testified in 2004 at the conscientious objector hearing of former Florida National Guard Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, who served six months in Iraq and refused to return during a two-week furlough. Mejia was convicted of desertion and jailed for a year.
"I think when people are willing to do something out of the ordinary," Ellsberg said, "like getting arrested for lying in the street, it raises the question in other people, 'Am I doing as much as I could be doing to stop this war?' "
As the sun set, about 230 people, including many Financial District workers, gathered at Justin Herman Plaza to punctuate the day of protests at a candlelight vigil organized by Moveon.org. Holding candles and small flashlights, they sat in chalk outlines of the letters O-U-T followed by an exclamation point.
After all the anti-war protests over the weekend and Monday, said Lee Goodin, a retired Air Force major who helped organize the vigil, said: "We thought, as a culminating event, this would be a good place to come and put in the final word - OUT! - out of Iraq."
More Than 100 Arrested in Iraq Protests
By Adam Tanner
Reuters
Monday 19 March 2007
Police arrested more than 100 Iraq war protesters in San Francisco and New York City on Monday as the nation marked the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Uniformed police outnumbered the fewer than 100 protesters outside the stock exchange building at the corner of Broad and Wall streets in New York's historic financial district.
"Stop the money, stop the war," demonstrators chanted as police hauled away limp-bodied protesters.
A police spokesman said 44 were arrested.
Demonstrators said they were directing their protest at major defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Halliburton, General Electric and others. The protest had no impact on the stock exchange's trading.
"U.S. service members and Iraqi civilians are dying so that an elite few can profit," said Fabian Bouthillette, 26, a high school teacher who served for two years in the U.S. Navy.
In San Francisco, dozens of demonstrators, many of them old enough to have once protested the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early 1970s, conducted a "Die In" by lying on the sidewalk and pretending to be dead. Some wore fake blood to recall the more than 3,200 U.S. military personnel killed in the Iraq War.
Many later moved to obstruct Market Street, running through the city's central business district.
"As soon as they went out there we started making arrests," police spokesman Neville Gittens said. "They were warned."
Another spokesman said police arrested 57 people in two separate San Francisco locations.
Polls show most Americans now oppose the war in Iraq, yet without a military draft like that which helped focus public opposition to the Vietnam War, public protests have been far smaller than they were in that era.
Thousands have, however, rallied against the war in recent days nationwide, including in the Washington D.C. area, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
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Additional reporting by Edith Honan in New York.
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