Beating drums and waving signs denouncing the Bush administration and calling for peace, thousands of demonstrators marched peacefully Saturday through the streets of downtown Chicago to mark the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.
Their nearly 2-mile trek from the Chicago Water Tower on Michigan Avenue to Federal Plaza in the Loop was one of many protests held around the world Saturday.
Ellen Rebman, 19, a College of DuPage student from Wheaton, said she was protesting because her boyfriend, an Army reservist, may be sent to Iraq. She participated in a longer march that started in the Pilsen neighborhood and passed through the Loop.
“Someone you love is going to someplace dangerous like that, to a place you don’t support,” Rebman said. “My boyfriend is probably leaving. My boyfriend might never come back.”
They stepped off from Chicago and Michigan Avenues, where hundreds of demonstrators were detained and arrested last year, a day after the start of the Iraq war. This year, police said there were three arrests among the estimated 5,000 who marched.
Around the country, an estimated 250 war protests ranged from solemn to brash.
Thousands marched in San Francisco, where police arrested 82 people who were blocking traffic. In Manhattan, protesters filled more than a dozen police-lined blocks. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg estimated the crowd at about 30,000, but organizers later said there were more than 100,000.
In Chicago, the most significant conflict Saturday was a dispute over whether protesters would be allowed to march on Michigan Avenue, a route the police said posed too much of a public safety risk as tourists packed the Magnificent Mile.
With more than 1,000 police officers in riot gear on duty, and with prisoner buses used as barriers to channel the march away from Michigan Avenue, the impasse ended when Rev. Jesse Jackson stepped in and told the organizers to accept the Police Department’s route.
The demonstration drew some war supporters who called the protest unpatriotic.
Before the demonstration began, Charles Bolwin, 55, of Aurora, a Vietnam veteran, held up a sign near the Water Tower criticizing presidential candidate John Kerry’s anti-war stance.
“I’m supporting [the troops] instead of demonstrating against them,” said Bolwin, an employee with the Illinois Department of Transportation who dressed in fatigues and wore a Purple Heart.
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Edited by Patrick Olsen (polsen@tribune.com) and alBerto Trevino (atrevino@tribune.com)
