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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2002
NY students march against the war
New York--2,000 New York University and New York City
public and parochial school students, community activists and residents of
Greenwich Village marched through the streets of Manhattan on Nov. 20 against
the looming U.S.-led war against Iraq. The march was planned by NYU students as an outgrowth of a
student walkout to protest the war. At about 12:30 p.m., students began
assembling in front of the shining, multi-million dollar Stern Business School
Building at W. 4th and Mercer Streets on NYU’s campus in Greenwich Village. By
about 1 p.m. a large crowd of several hundred excited students had gathered.
Soon after students spontaneously took to the street and started marching up
University Place towards Union Square. The protest became a kind of moving
street carnival with many people on sidewalks giving the peace sign in support
of the anti-war message. At Union Square, a hub of New York City radical activity
throughout much of the last century, the march seemed to sputter. Police, who
had been conspicuously absent up to that point, began arriving in droves. They
ordered people out of the major intersection. Marchers, however, regained their
momentum, and began heading back towards NYU via Broadway. Initially police had
kept the marchers on the sidewalks. But within minutes, students spontaneously
spilled into the streets, some locking arms as they walked jubilantly down New
York’s most famous street on this warm, late-fall day. Protesters then marched
into Washington Square park, where anti-war organizers had set up a stage for a
speaking program. Without question, the demonstration injected anti-war
militancy into the NYU student body and the neighboring community. Several
hundred high school and even middle school students as well as downtown
residents joined in as the demonstration moved through the Village. A twenty something African-American graduate student noted,
"It was good to see so many people out, especially people of color."
One young Black woman asserted, "I didn’t feel as alienated as I have at
some anti-globalization events." Perhaps Ramon Alejandro Suarez, a NYU
history graduate student, put it best: "The march brought together diverse
elements of the student body against the unjust foreign policy of our current
administration." --Erik S. McDuffie, NYU graduate student |
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