The Word From the Streets of New York: "No War!"

As the battle in Iraq gets gets uglier, the peace cause is building steam.

In the face of polls that show 70 percent of Americans rallying behind President Bush, hundreds of thousands of protesters streamed through the heart of Manhattan on Saturday to denounce the US attack on Iraq as a reckless affront to international law and American democracy.

Unlike the massive demonstration on February 15, a national protest that drew hundreds of buses from other states, this was largely a New York affair--which is what made the turnout so impressive. The official crowd estimate by police was "in excess of 125,000," but officers at the scene said more than 200,000 marched, while organizers claimed 300,000.

While that may have been fewer than the half a million who swamped the city on February 15, the day was far more peaceful.

Under sparkling blue skies, throngs of festive but adamant protesters drummed and chanted their way down Broadway from Herald Square to Washington Square Park. The crowd was so huge it packed Broadway for two miles, and a good hour after the front of the march reached the park, the back hadn't even left 42nd Street.

Though there were some scuffles and arrests after a group of about 150 young anarchists tried to stage a breakaway march south of Union Square, tensions really only flared at the end, when police sought to clear the thousands still jamming the streets around Washington Square Park. There were 91 arrests, the bulk of them made after protesters chanting "Our streets!" staged a sit-in on Waverly Place.

Police reported 17 officers injured, eight of them after being sprayed with "mace-like substance." But activists said it was likely blowback from the pepper spray that police used when they moved in to clear a crowd of people (a few of whom were burning American flags) at the southwest perimeter of the park.

Organizers with United for Peace and Justice, which won a permit for the march, blamed police for escalating the conflict. "When we reached the park, the crowd was in a very celebratory mood," said Bill Dobbs. "All they had to do was bide their time and wait for things to wind down." Instead, marchers were greeted at Washington Square with a police loudspeaker broadcasting a tinny order: "The march is now over. Please disperse in an orderly way."

For most in the crowd, however, their aim wasn't challenging police but what they saw as the frightening arrogance of the Bush Administration. Many said it was the memory of 9/11 that compelled them to march. "When I saw the first footage of the 'Shock and Awe' campaign, it looked so much like the Twin Towers attacks, and I thought those people must feel just like us. What did the Iraqi people do to us?" asked Claudia Rullman, a plant biologist from Brooklyn Heights.

In addition to the march in New York, about 50,000 came out in San Francisco for a rally called by International ANSWER, and smaller demos were held in hundreds of cities nationwide. Abroad, another 100,000 rallied in London over the weekend, 90,000 in Paris, and tens of thousands protested in Sydney and the Australian capital Canberra to demand the removal of Aussie troops. Thousands more hit the streets in Mexico, Russia, Taiwan, India and Belgium.

What Now?

So where to go next? On Thursday, New York activists are planning a large civil disobedience protest at Rockefeller Center targeting the media and corporate profiteering from the war. Many groups are also planning roving street blockades, taking their cue from the wave of protests in San Francisco that paralyzed the financial district last week and resulted in 2,150 arrests. San Francisco activists are calling for more direct-action protests on Monday and Tuesday.

The idea, activists say, is to make the political and economic costs of war untenable. But they're facing a stiff crackdown by police, who have been using a city ordinance to declare the street assemblies illegal, penning people in on sidewalks and then arresting them en masse, and sometimes with force.