WASHINGTON, 10 March 2003 — Thousands of women — and a handful of men — clad in pink and hoisting balloons and peace signs marched across the Americas Saturday to protest US plans for war with Iraq and to mark International Women’s Day.
Calling their protest a “code pink for peace,” organizers said they hoped it would contrast with the government’s color-coded alerts against terrorist threats.
The crowd, estimated by organizers at between 5,000 and 7,000, stretched along several city blocks near the White House.
The protesters railed against President George W. Bush, chanted “Give peace a chance” and danced to the tune of what they called “the drums of peace.”
“We’re taking to the streets because Bush refuses to listen,” said Kristi Laughlin of Oakland, California, one of the organizers.
“He’s determined to go to war, but we’re here to bring the voices of women and children to demand peace, and to demand a non-violent solution.”
A group of young girls led the protest, followed by the “raging grannies” who sang protest songs from atop a truck, and a group that chanted Buddhist mantras. Also among the protesters were Nobel peace laureate Jody Williams and rock singer Michelle Shocked.
The demonstration was mostly peaceful, but did lead to some arrests: Alice Walker, author of the novel “The Color Purple,” and writer Maxine Hong Kingston, author of the memoir “The Woman Warrior.”
The noted authors, along with some two dozen other writers, were detained for crossing a police line as they finished their march, a US Secret Service spokesman told CNN. A banner stated “No more blood for oil” and another suggested the United States should “drop Bush not bombs.”
Police blocked access to the front gates of the White House as thousands of protesters circled the building after marching several kilometers (miles) across the US capital in one of several protests across the United States. “We are here because the world needs to know there are American voices that oppose the rush to war,” said pink-clad Shira Keyes.
Small groups of conservative counter-protesters heckled the demonstrators, urging them to find husbands and stop nagging.
One counter-demonstrator told the protesters to “go find a husband and nag him, not us” and another accused them of being “lesbians and abortionists.”
Women in San Francisco, meanwhile, were organizing a gathering to form a giant illuminated peace symbol at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge, and peace protests were also planned in several other US cities.
In Chile, about 1,500 women marched through downtown Santiago and chanted “No to War in Iraq,” toting placards reading “Women vote no to war” and “No to the Yankee imperialist war against the Iraqi people.”
Women in the Salvadoran capital, San Salvador, more than familiar with war after their country’s lengthy turmoil, marched on Simon Bolivar Square against war in Iraq. “We women give life. No to death, no to war, yes to peace in Iraq,” they chanted.
In Argentina, hundreds of women with groups representing the more than 60 percent of Argentina’s population that has sunk into poverty marched on the Plaza de Mayo with their priorities clear. In Guatemala, local UN representatives urged the government to step up spending on women’s education and to reduce the number of women who still die in childbirth — now 55 for every 100,000 live births. And hundreds of women in the indigenous-majority Central American nation marched in the capital against discrimination, and against war in Iraq.
