Demonstrators Take Their Principles on the Road
Marchers Complete 3-Day Trek to D.C.
By Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 29, 2003; Page B04
Some marches turn out tens of thousands. Others turn heads with giant cardboard puppets. Still others lead to clashes with police. For three days, a small group of antiwar activists put the focus on their feet -- walking 40 miles from Baltimore to Washington.
By the time the protesters chanted their way into Lafayette Square across from the White House at 1:30 p.m. yesterday, many jumped in the air and pumped their fists, elated to have survived a kind of protest marathon that began about 9 a.m. Saturday in Baltimore. Along the way, they bandaged blistered feet, avoided poison ivy as cars whizzed past on Route 1 and withstood heckles, obscene gestures and even a mooning from motorists and passersby.
"People will give us the finger, and we just give them the peace sign back," said Sara Jennings, 27, a Canadian preschool teacher and one of about 50 men and women who made the trek. The march left Baltimore's Washington Monument on Saturday morning, and, for the most part, wound along Route 1. Activists slept in supporters' homes in Howard County on Saturday and at a University Park church on Sunday before getting up yesterday and walking the last stretch to the White House.
It was the farthest many had marched. In yesterday's bright sunshine, a support truck followed them, and the marchers stopped occasionally to get orange slices and water bottles and rest in the shade. "There's probably more blisters than marchers at this point," said Josiah Johnston, 22, a Baltimore computer programmer and a march medic.
The event was organized by the Baltimore Antiwar Coordinating Committee. Marchers want the billions funding the U.S. presence in Iraq used instead to help create jobs, revitalize schools and save budget-strapped social services used by those with low incomes. Activists said they used the long march route to take that message to blue-collar neighborhoods where antiwar sentiment is largely invisible and to put their bodies behind their ideologies.
"We're a little too comfortable in this country," said Lauren Ide, 65, a retired nurse who had to change shoes three times and ended up with four blisters, which medics looked after.
"I want to make visible the problem that we're having with the military budget being so high and there not being enough money for social programs."
They sometimes took up one lane of traffic and other times used the sidewalk, carrying antiwar banners and signs through parts of Baltimore, Howard County and Prince George's County in Maryland and the Northeast and downtown areas of the District.
They got a mixed reception. A passenger in one vehicle dropped his pants and mooned them. Shouts of "Get a job" and "Get a life" from other motorists were not infrequent.
But there also were waves, honking horns and extended peace signs. As marchers headed down Rhode Island Avenue NW yesterday after a lunch of curried rice and beans provided by Baltimore Food Not Bombs, they chanted, "Money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation." A construction worker in a white hard hat flashed the peace sign from a scaffold. A taxi driver with a packed cab slowed to grab a flier. On 16th Street, a trolley driver waved and rang his bell.
Those moments made the trek easier for many.
"It's been harder than I thought it was going to be physically," said Baltimore activist Joshua Brown, 29, "but spiritually, I've been ready to walk wherever we have to go to be heard."
