The participants boarded buses on Saturday morning and arrived in New York later in the day. They participated in a feeder march with hundreds of other people from western Massachusetts, eventually arriving at the rally, which was took place at 49th Street and 1st Avenue.
The rally was a relatively peaceful event, except for some moments of frustration with the police. "It took us a few hours to get there because the cops weren't really letting us in," said Carson Mitchell '05, who attended the rally. "We had to break down some barricades."
"I saw some antagonism on both sides-on the part of the police and the protesters. I didn't see any extreme police brutality," said Penelope Van Tuyl '03.
"There was a whole spectrum in terms of age and race," said Van Tuyl. "It wasn't all hippies and college students. There were whole families. I even saw a group of senior citizens marching behind a banner that said 'Pissed Off Grannies.'"
Mitchell said he attended the rally because he wanted to show that he doesn't agree with the reasons he thinks Bush has for urging war. "The government isn't being forthcoming about its motives for going to war," he said.
"My main reason for going was because I can't stomach the Bush administration's policy of preemptive war. I think it's a really bad precedent," said Van Tuyl. It's really disturbing that our political leaders aren't talking more. Recently there's been a little more dialogue in Congress."
Professor of History and Women's and Gender Studies Margaret Hunt also attended the rally. "This war is profoundly misguided. It will cause massive civilian casualties, cost incredible amounts of money and further destabilize the region," she said. "The rush to war and refusal to talk about the human and dollar cost is not worthy of us as a nation."
Matt Jones '05 thinks that if war is declared against Iraq, people will continue to protest. "People are laying out plans, although it may not be in the form of rallies, things will happen," said Jones. Jones said his decision to attend a protest is dependent on the specific protest. "I'm not going to every one," he said.
"The key thing now is to keep the momentum going," said Hunt. "A truly successful peace demonstration makes it hard to do business as usual. It disrupts the war-mongers' sleep. This one did that and more."
Hunt noted that she was pleasantly surprised by the level of media coverage of the protest. "I think it is somewhat unlikely-though still not impossible-that this war can be averted," she said. "But the extent of the global turnout ... may mean that there will be more care on the U.S.'s part to avoid civilian casualties. There is more of a sense that the whole world is watching."