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Ten Mainers, including one professor and one student from UMaine, were given a joyous send-off as they left Cascade Park Friday afternoon to join thousands from across the country for the United for Peace and Justice anti-war mobilization in Washington, D.C. on Saturday. The Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine organized the rally to show their support of the attendees joining approximately 250 other Mainers traveling for 12 hours and staying two nights in buses to bring their protests straight to the source of their frustrations.
“We need to send the message to President Bush that there’s a lot of people who believe we’re on the wrong path,” Julia Hathaway of Veazie said.
Hathaway, 48, will join the march in Washington just as she did at a similar event held in 2003. She says this time she will bring her two kids, Adam, 8, and Katie, 12.
“This is their future that is being mortgaged,” she said.
Over a dozen people who were not going to the mobilization attended the rally and donated snacks for the bus ride. They also waved a variety of anti-war signs, which read: “We mourn” and “How much longer will people have to be maimed or killed for oil and ego?”
“I am so delighted so many people came to see them off,” said Ilze Petersons, programs coordinator of the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine.
In addition to the people traveling on buses, there were around 100 others from Maine going to the rally on their own, Petersons said.
To take the bus, attendees were charged $75. Those who could not afford this price were given scholarships or were sponsored by others not able to attend the rally, Petersons said.
Jose Martinez, 21, a Puerto Rican exchange student at UMaine, heard about the trip the day before the send-off and signed on right away.
“I am going because I am not in favor of war,” Martinez said. “I feel bad about all the people dying for nothing.”
Martinez participates in marches and protests in Puerto Rico. There, he is also a member of an anti-war student movement. He said these actions are effective because they are one of the few ways people can assert the little power they have.
Alexander Grab, a history professor at UMaine, said he is attending because he feels thousands of Iraqis and Americans are being killed for the wrong reasons, and that U.S. troops need to be replaced with U.N. forces if the Iraqi resistance is to ever back down.
Connie Jenkins, 57, of Brewer sang “This Little Light of Mine” along with other members of the choir Voices for Peace, as the attendees car pooled from Bangor to Rockland to board one of five buses there. Jenkins could not join the group, but said she is pleased with the participation of Mainers in the anti-war movement.
“We should be very proud here in Maine of the willingness of people throughout the state to take action,” Jenkins said. “We will not be part of any silent majority.”
