Carrying signs emblazoned with block letters and peace signs, shouting anti-Bush and anti-war rhetoric, community members and UW-Madison students alike marched down State Street Saturday to protest the war in Iraq.
The Madison Area Peace Coalition held the rally, which stretched from Library Mall to the state Capitol, to protest Congress funding the efforts in Iraq.
While the National Anti-War Demonstration was simultaneously taking place in Washington, D.C., 1500 to 2000 people are estimated to have joined the march in Madison, according to Allen Ruff, co-founder of the Coalition.
Ruff spoke at the end of the march about “escalation and coming threat against Iran.”
Coalition member Barbara Smith said Wisconsin U.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold have voted for the previous funding bills, and if more funding is needed, the war is expected to cost the State of Wisconsin alone about $6 billion.
“It’s us,” Vietnam veteran Ron Blascoe said. “It is our kids and cousins who are over there sacrificing. And working people are the ones who are going to bear the economic consequences of this too. If we ever get down to it, we have a lot of power to try and change things.”
Blascoe has been protesting wars since Vietnam and said some of the people who he protested with Saturday were also veterans who know how dangerous war can be.
“There are a lot of people who really get excited about wars,” Blascoe said. “I think George Bush is one of them. And their notion of wars is what they learned from the movies… When somebody you know or a friend just got killed, it gives you a different perspective on it.”
Madison resident Jane Jiumaleh said the people she sees on television from the war remind her of previous students and their families. She also carried a sign with the name of a soldier from Wisconsin who died in Iraq as she marched alongside her son.
“I think: this is somebody’s son who was killed at the age of 21, and I have a nine-year-old son,” Jiumaleh said. “I don’t want him to have to be in a war like this, and I don’t want to lose him the way this family lost their son.”
