By Joyce Howard Price and Larry Witham
THE WASHINGTON TIMES, June 4, 1999

Protesters at the White House raised a hue and cry against the air war on Yugoslavia Thursday even as organizers of Friday's planned anti-war march promised to do the same at the Pentagon.

However, furious march planners say police won't let them follow their chosen route from Memorial Bridge to the Pentagon. If approval isn't granted, they say they'll protest that and even engage in civil disobedience.

Police arrested 23 activists for blocking traffic at a White House driveway Thursday. Among the apprehended was Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Detroit, a Catholic priest, a United Methodist minister, three nuns and a group of Quakers.

The arrests followed a one-hour peace rally at Lafayette Park led by Catholics, Methodists, Mennonites, Quakers and members of other religious groups involved in peace movements.

Bishop Gumbleton said the bombings by North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces "violated the moral code of every religious tradition."

In an interview the bishop said the nation's clergy have not previously risen to fight against the assault on Yugoslavia because they have not comprehended the toll it was taking on innocent civilians.

"There is a lack of religious reaction because the government has so effectively used its propaganda machine. It has made us feel, 'Something has to be done,' " he said.

Speakers at the rally of about 150 people argued that bombing Yugoslavia to force its military retreat from Kosovo has merely increased the suffering in that region.

"War just doesn't work," said the Rev. John Dear, a Jesuit who heads the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

"Bombing doesn't solve anything. Violence only sows the seeds of more violence."

The protest was organized by Peace Action, which organized massive marches in the 1980s to protest the Reagan administration's military buildup. It in turn is part of the ad hoc National Coalition for Peace in Yugoslavia, which is planning tomorrow's march to the Pentagon.

Leaders of the march, who are affiliated with the New York-based International Action Center, want a 1-and-a-half-mile section of Route 27, or Washington Boulevard, closed to traffic tomorrow for a period of about an hour to allow between 5,000 and 10,000 protesters to walk on the roadway.

But Cpl. Justin McNaull, spokesman for the Arlington County (Va.) Police Department, said, "Route 27 is a high-speed road that gets a lot of traffic. It's not a little road; it has four to six lanes," he said.

And he said police do not plan to shut it down to traffic on Friday because IAC failed to file an application with the Virginia Department of Transportation to close the road to traffic. "That's required, and they were told on May 26 they had to do that," the corporal said.

But Brian Becker, co-director of the IAC, countered that when his organization tried to file an application with VDOT, it was told it first had to file a request with the Arlington County Police Department. And the county police department turned down the request to close the road, he said.

Cpl. McNaull said it all boiled down to a "lack of action [by the march organizers] to get the road shut down." Instead, Cpl. McNaull said, anti-war demonstrators have the option of using what he described as a "bike trail" from the bridge to the Pentagon.

"We believe that's good, viable alternative route," he said.

But IAC officials don't see it that way. "They've given us a route that's absurd . . . if this was a rally in support of the war, there wouldn't be any kind of problem," said Imani Henry, a march organizer.

Mr. Becker agreed. "The route they've given us is unsafe," he said, noting that it would require crossing a stretch of the busy George Washington Memorial Parkway.

"It's also politically motivated, and it's unacceptable," he said Thursday.

Mr. Becker points out that the bike trail is "narrow" and, at some points, allows only a single-file procession. For 10,000 people to traverse that path will take "hours," he said.