Anti-War March in Long Beach, CA

February 15, 2003

Nearly 2,000 turned out today for a spirited anti-war march through downtown Long Beach, California, which ended with a rally at City Hall. A large, diverse port city, Long Beach is not known for its progressive politics, and marches in the past have drawn no more than 300. But two of the nine City Council members and State Assemblyman and former councilman Allen Lowenthal voiced their opposition to the Bush Administration's war drive from the flatbed truck that served as a stage for the rally. They were joined by labor leaders, a civil rights activist, an eloquent eleven-year-old poet, and Rhonda Robles, a Native American activist of the Acjachemem (Juaneño) Nation of Orange County and her 85 year old father, Louis Robles, a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge. The Rally ended with singing an Acjachmem song honoring the earth and the ancestors.

A veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Josephine Hill, participated in the one-mile march and received special recognition. The rally was powered by a solar sound system as a demonstration of an alternative to oil dependence, considered by many to be the motivation behind the war on Iraq. The Long Beach Area Peace Network (lbapn.net) organized the event together with several other organizations (below) in support of the worldwide marches, and also in support of a local Cities for Peace campaign to convince the Long Beach City Council to adopt an anti-war resolution.

Quote from Councilwoman Bonnie Lowenthal:

"Somebody said that the children of the world, and I think that's really why I'm here, because there are no lives that are more important than any other lives, and we are here to let the world community know that we support them, that we don't want war..."

(Endorsers included: Gray Panthers, Campus Progressives CSULB, LBCC Progressive Politics Working Group, CSULB Progressives, Citizens For A Better Long Beach, Social Concerns/Peace Committee of Unitarian Universalist Church, Peter Carr Peace Center, Food Not Bombs)

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My sincere appreciation to all who committed themselves to saying NO to the fearmongers, and so defeated their cynical attack on a genuine human culture.