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Protesters arrested at recruitment offices

Michael Stetz, SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

September 27, 2005

Two anti-war protesters were arrested for blocking the doors to a pair of military recruitment offices in downtown San Diego yesterday.

"We're making sure no one signs up today," said Hal Brody, who positioned himself inside the entrance of an Army recruitment office.

Brody and Gary Stewart, who stood in the doorway of the neighboring Navy recruitment office, were promptly arrested and charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor.

About a dozen Iraq war protesters chanted, "Shame!" and "Let them go!" as the men were led to police cars.

The protesters were part of the anti-war group San Diego Civil Disobedients..

Stewart, in handcuffs, said he participated in the protest because the Iraq war is "a cancer on this planet."

Both men went peacefully.

The San Diego protest was one of several held around the nation yesterday. In Washington, D.C., Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in the Iraq war and has since been a leading activist against it, was arrested after she and other protesters blocked a pedestrian walkway in front of the White House and refused to leave.

In San Diego, protesters gathered at Horton Plaza and then marched to the recruitment offices on Sixth Avenue. They taped a sign to the Navy office window saying: "No One Signs Up to Kill or Die Today." It blocked recruitment posters that said: "The Timid Need Not Apply" and "Live Your Life at the Speed of Sound."

The protesters also propped up at the offices dummy body bags that read "cannon fodder" and "collateral damage.

Omar Clay, a spokesman for San Diego Civil Disobedients, said the protest was intended to start a dialogue over who really deserves arrest for the Iraq war. He said President Bush should be the one facing arrest because, Clay contended, the war is illegal.

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