Protesters continue their stand against Iraq War

Mock coffins draped with the flags of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and the United States were stacked in front of the Hollywood Armed Forces Recruitment Center on Hollywood Boulevard at 3:40 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.

By this point in the afternoon, protesters of the Iraq War had successfully fed their opinion to what they called “the war machine.”

Six years after the United States’ invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, there is still discord between American veterans and civilians.

Hundreds gathered on Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Los Angeles this weekend to march in protest against the U.S. occupation in Iraq. Although the protest has been held every year since 2003, marchers have not lost their anger with the U.S. government for letting the war in Iraq last as long as it has.

The main claims of the protest were that soldiers in Iraq were killing innocent women and children, and that too much money was going to fund the war, rather than going to fund people’s needs such as jobs and education.

Dave Wrathall, a 24-year-old Cal State Long Beach film and media studies alumnus, held up handmade signs and wore daisies around his head to promote peace. Best known on campus for his face paintings and drawings of “peace” and “love,” Wrathall said he gets all of his information on the war from online media.

“I can’t get it through TV anymore because it is controlled by [too much] censorship,” Wrathall said. “People don’t realize we’re still fighting this war. The most common argument is to support our troops. I do in defense, but not offense. There is literally no good reason why we are in Iraq.”

Speakers at the protest said Obama is not keeping his promise for change in America, since U.S. soldiers are still occupying Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan.

With sons of her close friends in the war, Long Beach Area Peace Network advocate and substitute teacher Kathy Pliska, 62, said she hopes Obama is listening to the peace movement.

“A big reason why he got elected is because he was against the war,” Pliska said. “Now he doesn’t seem to be as much.”

Protesters ended their march close to the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, having traveled a mile and a half to drop off a row of mock coffins in front of Hollywood’s army recruitment center as police officers stood close by.

The organizers of the protest also set up a die-in in front of the Mann’s Chinese Theater, so onlookers got a taste of what the casualties of the wars look like. Every marcher in the protest played dead while recordings of bombs being dropped echoed in the streets to simulate the pain and hardship of the Iraqi people, as if the protesters and onlookers were in the war.

But CSULB student veterans said things are different when actually in a war.

Adriana Gallardo-Martinez, a junior political science major, served for over a year as a part of Army transportation in Iraq and Kuwait. She said that when she first joined the Army, people tried to scare her, saying that all the Army did was “bomb villages.”

“The news media is against the war and tends to say we just go and kill everybody,” Gallardo-Martinez said. “That’s not how it goes. There are mistakes, but those are out of your hands when you don’t know what is going on.”

Gallardo-Martinez said the Iraqi people were much nicer and open-minded to soldiers by the time she left.

“You could see in their faces how much hatred they had towards us [in the beginning],” Gallardo-Martinez said. “We weren’t there to shoot or bomb them. We were just trying to reconstruct their government. We know some of them want to be heard.”

Adam Renteria, a junior history major, served in Iraq for six months during the March 20 invasion in 2003. Renteria was a member of the mechanized infantry unit and was in one of the first groups to arrive in Baghdad. He said the main objective was to bring everyone home safe and that nothing took precedent over that.

“[The biggest challenge] after coming back in 2004 was being misunderstood by regular civilians,” Renteria said. “You don’t lose respect for people thinking you’re better. You cherish their willingness to practice our freedoms.”

James Fitzgerald, a senior aerospace engineering major, served in the Air Force as a mechanic in Afghanistan for four months. Fitzgerald said civilians who have never served in the military should be more open-minded.

“They don’t know what’s going on because they don’t know what it is like in the life of a soldier,” Fitzgerald said. “They don’t understand.”

Gallardo-Martinez said that not all media reports are incorrect, but that people have to put themselves in the shoes of soldiers.

“A lot of people in Southern California tend to forget it’s not the soldiers’ fault,” Gallardo-Martinez said. “It’s not that we are for the war. We are just doing our job.”

The updated version of this story was posted at 10:12 p.m. on March 22