Hundreds protest ‘Bush Regime’
Daylong demonstration ends with 5 arrests
One
was Linda Boyd, a Clyde Hill mom and housewife. Another was Linda
Strader, a West Seattle real estate agent. Patricia Thompson, a Seattle
legal assistant, turned out with her law firm.
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They
were among several hundred protesters who rallied all day in Seattle
against President Bush on Thursday, one of about 200 coordinated
demonstrations nationwide organized by World Can’t Wait — Drive Out
the Bush Regime. The day began at the University of Washington, moved
to 11th Avenue and Olive Way on Capitol Hill and eventually to an
all-night rally in front of the federal building downtown.
Police arrested five people.
Police arrested three protesters at the Capitol Hill rally and
booked them into the King County Jail for obstructing and resisting
arrest, including one for investigation of assault, Seattle police
spokeswoman Deborah Brown said.
Police, who also guarded protesters’ safety, arrested a fourth person possessing an illegal fixed blade knife.
As the protest moved downtown, police arrested a fifth person near
12th and Olive who was carrying a rifle wrapped in a blanket.
“We don’t know what his intentions were,” Brown said.
Police reports with details of the arrests were not available Thursday night.
Asked what motivated them to protest, nearly everyone in attendance
cited a litany of reasoned, passionate concerns — the conduct of the
war in Iraq, domestic spying, erosion of civil liberties and the
botched federal response to Hurricane Katrina. They said Bush’s recent
signing of a bill authorizing tough detainee interrogation amounts to
legalizing torture.
“I’m probably the only Realtor out here,” Strader, 53, said of the
first demonstration she has attended in her life. “I just decided today
to put my convictions where my mouth is.”
Having grown up an “Army brat,” Strader said she has sympathy for
troops she thinks are being misused by being ordered to fight in Iraq.
She also said she is “mad and scared that someone could come into my
home due to my convictions,” referring to her fears of domestic spying
and that the Constitution has been eroded during the Bush
administration.
“It makes me so emotional. I feel very frustrated, and I love my country,” Strader said.
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Gilbert W. Arias / P-I | |
| Seattle police officers scuffle with an unidentified man before arresting him at Cal Anderson Park during a protest Thursday against President Bush. |
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Protesters chanted, waved signs and wore costumes mocking administration officials.
Boyd, in her late 40s, said: “What has galvanized me is the erosion
of our Constitution — of the 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights,
seven have been eroded. As a housewife and mom, I felt I could no
longer sit by and see our government destroyed.”
Boyd ticked off a list of concerns, calling the war in Iraq illegal and for Bush’s impeachment.
“Torture is not an American value,” she said, referring to abuses of
Iraqi prisoners in the war on terrorism. “President Bush’s disdain for
the law is intolerable.”
Patricia Thompson, 50, of Seattle, a legal assistant whose law firm
turned out for the protest, said she had been joined earlier in the day
by her 82-year-old father, a World War II veteran of the 10th Mountain
Division. The demonstration “was a good thing for my father to come
watch,” Thompson said.
“He is horrified at the mess they made of Iraq. Weapons of mass
destruction was a snow job. We never finished in Afghanistan. It’s an
absolute shambles of incompetency and profiteering,” Thompson said.
One of the younger demonstrators, meanwhile, who gave her name only
as Jackie, said she attended because: “I’m one person wanting to be
with many. We can do a lot by being together.”