Twenty-two students from UNH’s Peace and Justice League joined about 1,000 others in Boston’s Copley Square last Saturday to protest the war in Afghanistan, urging the U.S. government to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.
Alex Freid, a UNH student and member of the Peace and Justice League (PJL), helped organize transportation to Boston for students with members of the New Hampshire Peace Action.
“It is an invigorating and motivating experience for students to have everyone around them believing in the same thing,” said Freid. “It promotes further involvement.”
Freid had his own reasons for joining the rally on Saturday.
“We use military force as our only way to solve problems,” he said. “ Every time we bomb a village and a parent is killed there is more of a chance that child is going to grow up with an anti-American sentiment.”
UNH students were not the only people from New Hampshire at the protest. The New Hampshire Peace Action filled the rest of the shared bus that was funded by the Student Activity Fee. Approximately 100 other Peace Action members drove themselves to the event.
These students are not stopping at Boston.
“We are looking potentially at a few rallies in New York and Washington over the winter, and we have a big New Hampshire Rally slotted for mid-March,” said Will Hopkins, Director of the New Hampshire Peace Action. “We also do a lot of educational work, films, speakers and the like all over the state,”
The Bread and Puppet Theatre, the second oldest non-profit theatre company in the United States, helped to lead the protest. With them came life-size Afghan women puppets holding dolls symbolizing their dead sons and husbands, as well as other anti-war images depicted on screens.
Gregory Corbino was one of the seven members and 50 volunteers that came down from the Bread and Puppets home base in Northern Vermont.
“We are involved in demonstrations whenever we can be,” said Corbino. “We have a very busy schedule, and we were free. We have been protesting this war ever since it started over eight years ago.”
Chris Hutchinson, from Hartford, Conn., helped to bring over 100 students from Trinity College, Eastern State University, and Stamford College through his organization, Connecticut United for Peace (CTUP).
“We brought up a lot of new student activism to help protest the Afghan war,” said Hutchinson. “It takes you out of the sidelines of history. New student leaders continue to build the anti-war movement, and this is important because people want to do something, and they’re looking for leadership.”
Others came alone or with a friend to demonstrate a more personal response.
“I am very much against the war because of the budget,” said Betsy Wallyer, 69, of Cambridge, Mass. “I want that money to go into our health care budget instead.”
Wallyer is part of Code Pink Alert, a women’s education center that had a table at the rally promoting their organization and a better representation of women in the United States government.
When asked why it was important to take part in this protest, Freid responded with a quote from Matthis Chiroux, an Iraq War veteran who refused to be deployed to Iraq again in 2008 after already serving four years overseas.
“If we are a democracy, we the people are responsible for the actions of our government, he said. “When those actions bring about crimes against humanity in the form of occupation, torture, and war profiteering, it is our duty as people to resist.”
Twenty-two UNH students joined Boston's war protests Saturday
Published: Thursday, October 22, 2009
Updated: Friday, October 23, 2009
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