In a growing battle against the Bush Administration's drive toward war in Iraq, millions of enlivened marchers converged on the streets of 350 cities worldwide to protest a preemptive U.S.-led attack.
In New York City, a group of over 20 Dartmouth students joined hundreds of thousands of protestors from up and down the East Coast to rally against President Bush's pro-war stance. The students, blocked by tangles of barricades, cited police obstacles in their inability as an entire group to reach the designated demonstration site eight blocks north of the United Nations building on First Avenue, while adding that the march in general was a success.
"I thought the police were way out of line," protester Alex Kirigin '06 said, adding that it took three hours for his portion of the Dartmouth group to maneuver past Second Avenue. "We spent three hours just getting to the rally ... they wouldn't let people through except in small groups."
Clint Hendler '05 said that although he did not witness any instances of police misconduct himself, the New York Police Department's strategy of "funneling people from block to block" to prevent Manhattan traffic from coming to a complete stranglehold "wasn't the best for making the march go smoothly."
"I didn't really see anything get out of line," Hendler said. "It was a peaceful march for peace."
Protestors filled the streets for 20 blocks, running the course of several miles, Graham Roth '04 added.
The NYPD, citing security concerns stemming from the heightened terrorism alert, closed entire blocks, creating dense choke points on Second and Third avenues where protestors had been penned in. Police officers on horseback galloped in at times to restrain the mostly well-behaved and peaceful crowd.
In all, approximately 295 arrests were made during the day, according to the NYPD. They were primarily attributed to disorderly conduct.
"From what I saw, it was amazing that there were only so few arrests, because we were being provoked left and right," Kirigin said. "They even pushed us off the sidewalks."
Kirigin also remarked on the ethnic and ideological range of those persons protesting.
"There was everything you could imagine," he said. "There were people holding up 'Republicans for Peace' signs -- it wasn't just a bunch of crazy college students."
Hendler agreed. "It was a crowd that really represented a lot of slices of American life," he said. "One thing that particularly impressed me was that I saw a lot of older people in the crowds."
And while the frigid temperatures formed a common complaint among the demonstrators, Hendler said, "there was a lot of smiling faces -- a lot of laughter."
Indeed, demonstration organizers United For Peace claimed that the spread of Saturday's events in New York and worldwide comprised the largest, most diverse peace protest since the Vietnam War era. Protestors included college students, middle-aged couples and families, the elderly and those affiliated with labor, environmental and religious groups.
The enormous turnout Saturday will hopefully encourage even more Americans to express their disapproval of Bush's policies and join the antiwar movement, Roth said.
Several celebrities, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, folk singer Pete Seeger and actors Danny Glover, Susan Sarandon and Harry Belafonte, who spoke at the First Avenue demonstration site, have already adopted the cause as their own.
"Peace! Peace! Peace!" Tutu shouted to the crowds over loudspeakers. "Let America listen to the rest of the world -- and the rest of the world is saying, 'Give the inspectors time.'"
Smaller-scale protests took place in Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, San Diego, Miami and elsewhere in the United States.
In London, more than 500,000 people rallied in Hyde Park. Two hundred thousand gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, while hundreds of thousands more protested in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Barcelona, Rome, Melbourne, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Auckland, Seoul, Tokyo and Manila.
