Hundreds from state at anti-war rally
9:57 PM 1/18/03
David Enrich States News Service

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Several hundred UW-Madison students and other Wisconsinites participated Saturday in a massive anti-war rally in the nation's capital.

"I wanted to send a message to the world that not all Americans are OK with Bush's war-mongering," said Reannon Peterson, a 21-year-old UW senior from Dousman. "America is not the democracy that everybody claims that it is."

Students from Madison crammed into five charter buses for the 18-hour overnight trek to Washington. Another 10 buses carried protesters from elsewhere in the state. Wire services reported that tens of thousands of protesters attended Saturday's event.

"I didn't want to ride on a bus for 18 hours. It's miserable," said Eric Chow, a 24-year-old civil engineering graduate student, said. "But I feel like we have to."

Chow and other UW-Madison protesters were driven by their view that a war in Iraq would be unnecessary and immoral.

Other Madisonians were motivated by more pragmatic concerns.

Jenny Carpenter, 24, a researcher at the UW Comprehensive Cancer Center, said she was worried that the war would drain funding from medical research.

Carol Weidel, a 51-year-old Madisonian who works for the state Department of Health and Family Services, shared those concerns. "We don't have the resources to do the things we need to do," Weidel said. "We can't afford a war."

After listening to hours of anti-war speeches and music on the National Mall outside the U.S. Capitol, the protesters started marching toward the Navy Yard, where they planned to hold mock "weapons inspections."

Several members of the UW-Madison Stop the War! group carried a large banner quoting Martin Luther King Jr.: "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world is my own government."

Banging drums, singing songs, and burning incense, the procession inched around the Capitol and up Pennsylvania Avenue. Despite the cold temperatures, some were energized by a sign hung from a balcony that read, "Hippies, go home."

At Saturday's rally, the protesters the protesters ranged in age from infants to octogenarians. Many had protested the Vietnam War.

"We're way ahead of the game now," said Dan Roberts, a 56-year-old Madisonian who recently retired from his job at the state Department of Transportation. "There's much more opposition now than there was at a comparable time" in the Vietnam era.

Recalling the peace movement 30 years ago, Roberts said, "We have to have the courage to say, 'I recognize this war is morally wrong.' "