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Daily News Analysis

Rallies in LA and DC against US war in Syria

Crescent International

The US is addicted to war regardless of who is in the White House--a Democrat or Republican. There is also increasing opposition to such wars as yesterday's protest rallies in LA and Washington DC showed. Organizations such as ANSWER and CodePink have stood up to the warmongers and mobilized public opinion. More Americans need to join such rallies to end the violence and aggression.

Washington DC,
Monday March 23, 2015, 09:27 DST

Even as the Washington warlords, their merchants of death supporters (aka weapons manufacturers) and media hounds whip up war hysteria, there are many people in the US that speak out against such crimes. While the rightwing media deliberately ignore or downplay such protests, there are others that are forced to take note. Social media outlets have been an important source of information sharing.

On March 22, the ANSWER coalition organized a protest in Los Angeles to protest US involvement in wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine. Even the corporate media could not ignore it. Protesters carried signs reading “Hands off Syria” and “Wanted for the destruction of Iraq.” The protest was supported by other well-known anti-war groups, including the feminist group CodePink and Popular Resistance. The march symbolically began outside of the CNN headquarters on Sunset Boulevard, to protest the media’s role as agitators for US military intervention abroad. Protesters carried mock-coffins, to symbolize the number of innocent civilians killed in US wars.

Earlier in the day, a crowd of nearly 200 protesters had gathered in the streets of Washington DC as part of the “Spring Rising” campaign in opposition to US military interventions and drone strikes. Like the protesters in LA, people attending the marches carried flag draped coffins. Just as the US media outlets film the coffins of killed US military soldiers in order to arouse patriotic sentiment in the public, the protesters used mock coffins to underscore the devastation that US wars have inflicted on civilian lives. Some protesters had dressed in Guantanamo Bay prison orange garb and black hoods in order to remind the public of Obama’s broken promise to close down the camp.

The DC protesters marched to Capitol Hill, stopping at the offices of defense contractors and organizations that have been responsible in fueling and agitating for wars in the Muslim world. ANSWER has in the past spearheaded many demonstrations and protests against atrocities such as the Israeli war on Gaza (which the US tacitly supported) and also Ferguson, in which a young innocent African American boy, Michael Brown was shot in an incident of police brutality.

As the US uses the media to orchestrate public approval for its never-ending global war, organizations such as ANSWER and CodePink have stood to oppose violence and brutality by arousing public consciousness.

END


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