Labor's Growing Anger Fuels Its Antiwar Plan
March 19, 2005 --
On the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, A.N.S.W.E.R (Act
Now to Stop War and Racism) and combined forces from the San Francisco and
Alameda County Labor Councils organized parallel rallies in San Francisco's
Delores Park and a unified march on City Hall protesting the war.
People gathered at the park near Mission Delores at
11 AM on a wet and windy morning. They heard speakers explain why the war
is wasteful, brutal, illegal, and an attack on working people in the United
States. Labor leaders vowed to organize a stop to the shipment of war
materials. 
Leaders from the Gray Panthers and other civic groups tied the
administration's threat to eat into Social Security funds to a Federal
deficit grossly inflated by military expenditures. Rally information
explained how the war tears the fabric of civic society by draining funds
that could be used for education, housing, health care, and retirement
security. Many pointed out the ruination of ordinary lives by the lack of
social support systems worn thin by military demands for money that goes to
profit engineering and oil corporations favored by the administration.
Click here to see more coverage of the Saturday protest in San Francisco. Demonstrators marched in more than 700 cities in the U.S. Democracy Now (www.democracy.now, March 21, 2005) reported on Monday, 21 March, "A protest near Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina was the largest protest of any kind there since a 1970 protest against the Vietnam War."
Many thousands more protested across Europe. (See Worldwide protests mark Iraq war on the BBC news.) Between 45,000 and 100,000 marched in London. 15,000 marched in Istanbul, some carrying signs reading, "Murderer Bush, get out!" (See Thousands Protest Iraq War Across Europe in the online edition of the SF Chronicle, www.sfgate.com.) Thousands turned out in Australia and Japan to oppose the war, the BBC reported.
