Some 500 people participated at the April 9th, Westwood demonstration against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The demonstrators lined Wilshire Blvd. with signs and banners, receiving enormous positive response from those driving by the scene. The crowd was made up of Asians, Latinos, African Americans, Anglos... basically every community was represented. Favorite signs read: "So many things to protest, so little sign.", "U.S. out of everywhere!", and "Stop the 9/11 cover up." There was no violence and no right wing hecklers, but a protestor was arrested when he placed an anti war sign on the war memorial stature on the corner of Wilshire and Veteran.

At around 7:30 p.m., the crowd had dwindled to around 70, but it was decided to hold a march through the Westwood Village area. Chanting "Hey Bush - what do you say - how many kids have you killed today?!", and "U.S. out of Iraq!", the marchers snaked their way through the Village, disrupting the Friday evening complacent scene of movies, cafes, and cheap entertainment.

The protest was spread out with most people on the south-west corner but all corners were well covered. The rally event lasted about three hours.

The march through Westwood Village was a spontaneous idea. It was a very good idea. It was initiated by an independent group of individual activists on the spot. Activists should consider more of these kinds of small scale sidewalk marches. You don’t need a permit if you stay on the sidewalk and it only takes about 50 people to have some mass. These kinds of sidewalk marches connect with the public in a way that the large permit marches do not. You can connect with people in stores and cafes. They don’t expect it so you are really helping to burst their state manufactured bubble of mind control. For that short moment one has distracted them from them their daily routine as obedient consumers and movie goers.

The bicycle police were even kind enough to give us an escort, we didn’t even have to ask and there they were reminding us to stay on the sidewalk.;-) They also radioed ahead to intersections so there were motorcycle units there to help us safely cross the street. ;-) We also outed two under covers who were marching with us for our “protection”.;-)

Thank you, thank you... to the 60-70 who participated in the non-permited march through the streets of Westwood Village. My friend and i, tired of standing around on the corner shouting at cars, spoke with a few protesters around us and found that many others felt similarly. The organizing from that point was relatively easy. We walked through the crowd asking others to join our march and to our surpirse we amassed almost 70 willing to assert their constitutional right to take this movement of the goddamn corner and into the heart of Westwood. The message we read was load and clear, the people need leaders who will lead not stand on a corner and complain about what we should do. I appreciate ANSWER for all the work they are doing to wake up the masses; however, there is so much more we, the poeple, need to be doing if we ever hope to change this corrupt system.

leaders are targeted by police.

Remove the so-called leader, and the mob achieves self-consciousness as a leaderless mob.

then it become's the responsibility of the people to assume control.