Enthusiastic Anti-War Protesters Throng Streets of San Francisco
By Charles Proctor
Daily Bruin (U. California-Los Angeles)

They seem to spring up overnight. They travel by train, car, bus, plane, bicycle or foot. They come in ones, twos, threes, small groups or massive armies.

They engage in curbside debates or tabletop discussions, arguing politics, ethics, history, war and peace. They represent one of the loudest and fastest-moving movements in the world, an unparalleled coalition of ethnicities, religions, ages and cultures.

And, for the most part, they never know one another's names.

In a show of solidarity with the international community, more than 100,000 protesters turned out in San Francisco on Sunday in the culmination of two days worth of anti-war protests around the world. As they flooded city sidewalks and flowed down back alleys, the demonstrators adhered to one common cause, and yet their reasons for protesting were as diverse as their faces and the clothes they wore.

For Terresa Gonzalez, a native of Union City, her reason for protesting extended beyond mere politics.

"I have two sons, and both could go to war. And I don't want them to go," she said. "To me, (Bush) doesn't seem to listen to any reasons. It's getting closer to the point when he will say 'Yes' to (war)."

Luis Gonzalez, 25, one of Terresa's sons and a part-time student at Chabot College in Hayward, Calif., shrugged when asked about the draft. He has a friend in the military, he explained, who hasn't been deployed to the Gulf yet.

"I don't feel scared -- anything like that," he said.

Parental concern did play a factor in determining the turnout of protesters, and entire families were much in evidence Sunday. For some, though, the question was not so much of protection as it was of lead-by-example.

Edgar Perez, a native of Oakland, Calif., had his 9-year-old son Marcealo join him in a self-composed anti-war rap, much to the astonishment and delight of onlookers.

"I figure I have to put something together so my children can see me express myself and learn to express themselves," he said as his son paraded about behind him with a microphone.

Other children found different, although equally artistic ways of expressing themselves. Under the guidance of parents, dozens of kids carved out peace signs across Embarcadero Plaza with chalk and decorated the cement with murals. One picture of a crudely drawn tank was punctuated by a child's handwriting: "No Tanks."

As the rally dwindled into the late afternoon and protesters made their way back through the city streets, many could be found enjoying coffee or an early dinner in one of San Francisco's countless cafes. Here, too, the diversity of opinions was expansive.

At Cafe Venue on Market Street, Brian Twitchell of Oakland, Calif., sat underneath an awning with his sister as protesters trickled away. A four-year veteran of the Marine Corps, Twitchell says his knowledge of military history was what ultimately disillusioned him.

"I felt the military was being used for economic gain, not for upholding democracy," he said, citing repeated military incursions "to protect national interests abroad."

"It's all in the history," he said.

Twitchell said he never experienced combat, having served in the period between Beirut and the Gulf War, but that doesn't dissuade him.

"I don't feel I have to experience that aspect to know it's not a good thing," he said.

Bethany Twitchell, sitting at the adjacent table, says she joined the anti-war movement out of ideology.

"To me, (war) just contradicts the whole purpose of why the United States is here," she said, adding that for the United States to endorse democracy and yet pursue unilateral action was immoral.

"I've always felt that if it was going to happen, it should be a U.N. initiative. It's not for the United States to decide."

Most of the protesters seemed generally determined to make a difference by joining the anti-war movement, although some acknowledged such a difference would be hard to measure.

"I'm here just as another body," said Jeff Johnson, a Berkeley native, shrugging indifferently near Cafe Venue's front door. "They can't silence us. We're too obvious."

Johnson said the lack of debate about war was what disturbed him the most.

"I feel the administration is allowed to control the debate," he said, adding that the media often do not ask tough enough questions.

At another table, Sara Leimbach and Summer Pendle said they drove all the way from Southern California to join the protest.

"There's a sense of helplessness, a sense of inevitability about the war, and I want to feel like I've done something to make a difference," said Leimbach, a resident of Rancho Santa Margarita.

Pendle, a third-year political science student at Irvine Valley College, said she came to San Francisco to march with similar-minded people, something she found sorely lacking at Irvine.

"It's more not to feel alone. No one seems to be doing anything, they're just mouthing rhetoric," she said.

But how effective will the protest movement be? Even the answer to that varied from person to person, and while some were optimistic, others were not so sure.

"I see Bush's momentum really meeting some resistance," said Johnson, pointing to both increased turnout at protests and the dissent expressed by many countries in the United Nations.

Pendle, however, disagreed.

"If the world community can't change the administration's opinion, I doubt the protesters will make a difference," she said.

But she added that even if the objective were next to impossible to obtain, it was the effort that counted.

Bethany was more blunt in expressing her prediction, in spite of all the principles she believes in.

"Ultimately," she said, "Bush is going to get what he wants."

Copyright ©2003 Daily Bruin via U-Wire