Some differences, but not about war

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Some differences, but not about war
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Estimated 150,000 attend demonstration in Washington, D.C., including LI teens with boyfriends in Iraq

BY DANIEL WAGNER
WASHINGTON BUREAU

September 25, 2005

WASHINGTON - Stefanie Baum and Abi Carson hardly blended in to the "tattooed freaks and hippies and radicals" Baum saw around her at yesterday's anti-war demonstration here. Wearing bright red shirts that read, "George W. Bush stole my boyfriend" and "My other half is in Iraq," the two Seaford High School students attracted plenty of attention - not all of it positive.

While many of the thousands of marchers stopped them to say "God bless you," or "Good luck," others reacted with cluelessness, disbelief or outright hostility.

Baum said she has dealt with this before. On the day her boyfriend, a Marine, left for Fallujah last March, a girl in her art class asked if he was going to Iraq on vacation and said she thought the war was over.

"I had to leave class, I couldn't take it," Baum said. "That's when I decided to educate myself more on it, and read books - not exactly about the war itself, but about what they're doing there."

The two students, who asked that their ages not be printed, said they haven't been to a protest before but couldn't sit by while their boyfriends faced danger overseas. They and Carson's mother, Donna, joined more than 800 Long Islanders participating in what organizers hoped would be the largest peace demonstration since the Iraq war began. Police said there were about 150,000 participants, the Washington Post reported.

Protesters attended a rally near the White House where they heard the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a slain soldier who protested outside Bush's Texas ranch. Then they walked along a march route that passed the White House. Groups of counterprotesters stood along the path, shouting pro-Bush slogans.

The protest was organized to coincide with other, similar events in U.S. and foreign cities including London and Rome.

Long Island organizers said they were impressed with how many in their group were first-time protesters. Susan McKeon, a retired elementary school teacher who lives in Suffolk County, said, "It's a very representative slice of Long Island, not the usual people left over from the sixties."

Bert Napier, a World War II veteran from Roslyn Heights, has noticed a dramatic shift in public opinion on Long Island away from the Iraq war.

When he started participating in peace vigils just after the war began, he said, "People would come by and give us the finger and yell 'commie' out the window. Now everyone honks their horn, and it's rare that we get a derisive comment."

Carson and Baum said they were moved both by the gruesome images on some protesters' signs and by their first experience with such a large group of people who feel equally strongly about the war.

The two said they know at least six students from Seaford who enlisted in the military in the past year.

Baum said she opposes the war not out of fear for her boyfriend's safety, but out of confusion about its purpose.

"What's it about?" she asked. "Oil, maybe? Nobody knows. All I know is, every time I fill up my gas tank, I say thank you to my friends" who enlisted.

Copyright (c) 2005, Newsday

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