Grand River Avenue traffic was halted Saturday afternoon as MSU student groups and area residents took to East Lansing streets in protest of a U.S.-led preemptive strike on Iraq.
Hoisting anti-war placards and chanting pro-peace slogans, the participants marched west on Grand River Avenue before turning at Michigan Avenue to march east.
Seven activist student groups - Direct Action, Students for Peace and Justice, People for Positive Social Change, Radical Queers, Feminists for Ending the Misogynist System (FEMS), Eco, and Students for Economic Justice - sponsored the march.
Anthropology senior Amy Macaluso, a member of Students for Peace and Justice, said the protest succeeded in spreading the groups’ anti-war message.
“We’re here in solidarity with the people in Washington, D.C.,” she added. Saturday’s protest coincided with larger anti-war rallies held in the United States and Europe to protest a pre-emptive strike against Iraq.
In addition to anti-war and economic concerns over a pre-emptive strike on Iraq, several student groups joined the protest to explain the social implications of warfare.
Interdisciplinary humanities junior and FEMS member Sarah McDonald was on hand to pass out anti-war FEMS fliers to passing cars.
“War is a symptom of the gender system,” McDonald said. “The more power men get, the less power women get.”
East Lansing police escorted the marchers throughout the entire rally. Police said the event initially caught them off guard, but participants were generally well-behaved.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” East Lansing police Officer Adrian Ojerio said while surveying the protesters final stop at Bailey Community Center, 300 Bailey St., for impromptu poetry readings and drumming.
“Except for the inconvenience of traffic, up to this point (they’ve been well-behaved),” Ojerio said.
One display of aggression marred the otherwise nonviolent protest by a man who apparently disagreed with the protesters, environmental studies and applications senior Mike Belligan said.
“Somebody came up really irate and tried to violently pursue his point. He had his finger right up in my friend’s face,” Belligan said. “It’s really easy to get into tangling with the people. It’s to be expected.”
Rally participants agreed, though, that the message for peace was not complete with the end of Saturday’s march.
“This isn’t the culmination of anything,” one protester said while addressing the crowd at Bailey Community Center. “This is a start.”
