March commemorates Iraq deaths, war’s fifth year

A large group of students joined several hundred community members in a march on Saturday that… A large group of students joined several hundred community members in a march on Saturday that commemorated the fifth anniversary and 4,000th American casualty of the Iraq war.

About 100 to 200 students assembled outside the William Pitt Union and marched down Fifth Avenue, shouting protest chants and holding signs.

The students joined community members at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, which protesters claim has received funding for military projects, to form a group of about 400 to 500 marchers at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Craig Street.

Students from five colleges – Pitt, Carnegie Mellon, Chatham, Point Park and the Community College of Allegheny County – along with local high school students, attended the pre-march student rally at the Union. Student organizers, including leaders from various clubs, fired up the crowd in preparation for the march.

Marc Mancini, a Pitt sociology student, stood on the concrete benches and talked about how protesting is an important part of patriotism.

“If we didn’t question authority, we’d still be English!” Mancini said to a large applause from the crowd.

John Clendaniel, another organizer, compared the anti-war effort at Pitt to the efforts during the Vietnam War.

Clendaniel said that in 1970, students at 500 campuses took over their universities. He said that student protest against Iraq “needs to get to that point.”

A committee of students from different campus organizations such as the Black Action Society, the Rainbow Alliance, Buddhism for World Peace and the Pitt chapter of the International Socialist Organization planned the student contingent. It was the first student rally to take place, even though students have participated in demonstrations since the war began.

Some of the students demonstrating were involved in a class called “peace movements and peace education,” taught by Mike Epitropoulos in the sociology department.

“The left was right. Even conservative Americans against this war were right,” Epitropoulos told students during his speech.

Epitropoulos said that the class has a component requiring students to participate, attend or organize a peace movement, which is one reason why his students attended the march. He said that students must continue to protest by blogging, writing, protesting and engaging in other forms of “civil disobedience.”

“If there was a draft, [Litchfield Towers] would be empty,” he said.

The students joined community members in the city protest organized by the Thomas Merton Center and other Pittsburgh anti-war groups. Many different kinds of groups with different objectives joined together for the protest.

Members of Democracy for Pittsburgh marched behind people carrying black flags, while others from groups like Raging Grannies of Pittsburgh, Pax Christi, Women of Color for Reproductive Justice, the Green Party, Veterans for Peace and Code Pink Pittsburgh led the way down Fifth Avenue.

The area was heavily policed, with about 13 county police officers on horseback, motorcycles, police cars and a hazardous materials truck forming a barricade behind the marchers as they circled around the Pitt campus on their way to a post-march ceremony at Flagstaff Hill in Schenley Park.

American Civil Liberties Union workers in orange shirts stood alongside marchers to make sure that their rights were respected, but one representative, Pamel Irwin, said that everything seemed to be peaceful and orderly.

People dressed as grim reapers, with black shrouds and white-painted faces, carried black coffins to represent the war casualties, which protesters numbered at 4,000 American soldiers and 655,000 Iraqis. One man dressed in army pants with red paint on his body, another in an orange prison suit that read “Close Guantanamo, End Imperialism” and others in sequined costumes, suits or patriot costumes.

Marchers carried signs that read things such as “Bush – you stopped the economy, now stop the war! Pull out, just like your father should have,” and “Blessed are the Peacemakers.”

One sign read “Christ’s Antithesis and Evil Incarnate” underneath a picture of Dick Cheney. Many other signs read “So?” in reference to Cheney’s response to a question about the majority of the American public disagreeing with the war.

Participants carried flags of all colors and kinds, including American flags with peace symbols or corporation logos instead of 50 stars.

One bystander, Pitt student James Craig, said that he agreed that the war was unjust but thought it was disrespectful to the troops to “do that to the American flag.”

Some people walked dogs and pushed strollers while they protested, which upset Brian McGovern, a student from southeast Pennsylvania attending a College Republicans conference. He and a group of other College Republicans, dressed in suits and ties, watched the march from the sidewalk.

“I think it’s really interesting that people are in this who aren’t old enough to vote, but think they’re old enough to understand the consequences of what they’re doing,” he said. “But I think it’s great that people have causes, and they can and should voice their opinions.”

Another Pitt student bystander, Janine Glasson, agreed that they had a right to march.

“If the KKK has a right to be here, so do they,” she said.

Mabvuto Kaela, a CCAC student who plans to transfer to Pitt, said that as a student from Zambia, he has an outsider perspective on the Iraq war and can relate to nations who have been taken over by dictators such as Saddam Hussein.

He said that it seems that people in occupied countries like Iraq begin to think that life was better during the dictatorship.

Kaela cited Cuba as an example, where Fidel Castro’s brother has taken over and already relaxed many strict policies, such as cell phone use.

He also said that if the United States was concerned about human rights, a better country to help would be Sudan, where genocide is occurring in Darfur.

“It gives reasons to think we’re in the war for other reasons than freedom,” said Kaela, who came to America for more independence and better opportunities.

Along with the march, demonstrators held a candlelight vigil, a Zen peace circle and a film screening over the weekend.