“NO MORE YEARS!”

500,000 demonstrate in New York against Bush

by Yvonne Klomke

[This article originally published in:junge welt, August 31, 2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.jungewelt.de/2004/08-31/007.php.]

While official authorities spoke of 120,000 demonstators, a policeman in the Monday edition of the New York Times spoke of a “half million” people who protested against US president George W. Bush on Sunday in the streets of New York. The organizers, the alliance “United for Peace and Justice” encompassing 800 organizations, extolled the largest anti-war demonstration in the US since the protests against the Vietnam War. One goal united the demonstrators: “No more years!” – no more term in office.

Many New Yorkers expressed their annoyance that the republicans chose their city for their convention. Kate Abell, a teacher, told the Washington Post on Monday that the party of the acting president has no base in the city. There was only one reason for their convention in New York. “They are playing with the image of September 11.” “They use fear and death to make Bush’s policy “more appealing” to the population.

The demonstrators carried banners and signs on which they portrayed Bush as a “liar”. They urged “Drop Bush not bombs” and “Bring our troops home”. One demonstrator summarized the four year term in office of the current president: massive spending on bombs and no spending on jobs, schools, housing construction or health care. Men and women carried a thousand coffin replicas draped with American flags to vicariously remember those Iraqis and Americans killed since March 2003, the beginning of the Iraq war.

The city of New York had prohibited the organizers in advance from ending the march withy a demonstration in Central Park “to spare the grass” according to the official reason. Nevertheless several thousand spontaneously set out to the park after the end of the demonstration to organize a “citizen picnic”. Hundreds lay in the grass to form an enormous peace sign with their bodies.

One female demonstrator described the mood as “peaceful, joyful and defiant”. Even a police spokesperson Raymond Kelly declared to the press that “the great majority of demonstrators were peaceful”. However there were 1500-2000 arrests.