War Threat Prompts Local Protests

Antiwar protesters took to the streets in Westwood and the San Fernando Valley on Wednesday to demonstrate against the threats of war delivered in President Bush’s State of the Union address.

Outside the Federal Building in Westwood, a crowd -- estimated at 750 by police and at 2,000 by organizers -- flew kites, waved signs, sang songs and carried banners, eliciting honks from passing drivers.

“Anyone who would drop cluster bombs on children ... has got to be insane,” said Ceil Sorensen, 81, of Granada Hills, who wore a Green Party T-shirt.

One couple towed a movie screen depicting images of mangled children who they said were wounded by American bombs in Afghanistan.

Ian Thompson, 27, a labor attorney and protest organizer, characterized the crowd as “a large group of people who don’t think war is inevitable.” His group, the International Answer Coalition, said more protests are planned elsewhere around the country and the world in coming days.

Earlier at Cal State Northridge on Wednesday, hundreds of students gathered in a march and rally to protest a U.S. Army ROTC recruitment program aimed at Latino students, saying the initiative unfairly puts Latinos in harm’s way at a time when the nation is on the brink of war with Iraq.

A march and rally, organized by a coalition of student, faculty and community groups, were timed to follow the president’s address and this week’s return of an ROTC program to the campus after a 10-year absence.

Protesters hoped to pressure university officials to challenge a 1996 law that allows on-campus military recruiting.

The activists are especially concerned about the ROTC’s Latino recruitment program, which they say targets members of a single minority group who would find themselves on the front lines in a war.