By Bill Hackwell on April 16, 2018
April 15 march against war, Oakland CA. Photo: Bill Hackwell
The world reacted in disgust and anger this past weekend after the U.S. led missile attack on Syria. The flimsy justification for this imperialist adventure was that the government of Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons on his own people in the Syrian town of Douma in eastern Ghouta. There has been no evidence backing up the accusation but as the rebuilding of Syria was just beginning, after years of terrible war against bands of Jihadist groups, backed by Saudi Arabia and the Western powers, they could not wait to let a positive effort towards peace like that start to take hold.
Thousands marched in Baghdad, in Athens Greece and in Damascus thousands of Syrians protested in defiance the day after the missiles fell on their country. Other large international protests took place in Mexico, India, Chile, Turkey and in the United Kingdom protestors rallied in front of the residence of Prime Minister Theresa May to condemn England’s participation in the attack. In Cyprus protestors marched and rallied outside a British military base.
Protests were quickly organized in dozens of cities in the U.S. including Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, New York and in Washington DC a demonstration was held in front of the White House.
In Oakland California 500 protestors marched downtown from Lake Merritt to Oscar Grant Plaza. The demonstration was pulled together by a large number of anti war and peace and justice groups who had been planning it for several months to protest the U.S. military role in recent and ongoing wars against Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria. The protest also called for the closing of the hundreds of U.S. military bases occupying and threatening countries abroad.
Source: International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity.