Standing near the corner of Maple Avenue and Church Street Tuesday night, the sound of whistles, clapping and drums could be heard easily. By 7:50 p.m., the crowd responsible for the racket made their point loud and clear: “Bush, step down!”
About 40 activists gathered to protest before President George W. Bush delivered his annual State of the Union address. The activists were members of the Chicago and Evanston chapters of The World Can’t Wait, a national organization dedicated to “driving out the Bush regime.”
Protesters marched down Church Street, along Chicago Avenue and back up Davis Street, yelling and waving green and black signs that called for Bush to resign. Using water bottles, tin pots, whistles and their own voices, the protesters sought to drown out the president’s message.
“I feel like he’s leading the country in the wrong direction,” Evanston activist Jan Curtis said.
Curtis and her husband, John Rusk, joined the other protesters just before the march to condemn the Bush administration.
“He’s just going to get on television and pontificate about how the country is heading in the right way,” Curtis said. “But it’s a lie.”
The Evanston march was a smaller part of a protest event that took place earlier today in Chicago. World War II veteran Ben Solomon missed that event, but he did come to march in Evanston. SoloMonday, 80, has been protesting war since his stint in the Southwest Pacific during World War II.
He said he saw many friends die in the war, and he wants to prevent the deaths of hundreds of young Americans.
“This war is an unholy alliance between religious beliefs and corporate agenda,” Solomon said. “The United States is losing its good name in the world, and we are losing our young people.”
The World Can’t Wait gained popularity late last year after it bought a full-page advertisement in the New York Times. The advertisement called for the president’s resignation.
Few of the activists marching in the cold were young, a fact protest organizer Grace Richardson said she regrets. But some of Evanston’s youth voiced different opinions to those of the protesters as they made their way through downtown. One student mockingly shouted “Go Bush!” as the protest closed.
“I think that America is a great country because you can say whatever you want, but these people don’t understand the way a democracy works,” said Amanda Schaal, a Northwestern graduate student. “Bush was elected, and you, a few people marching up and down, isn’t going to change that. I think it’s a waste of time.”
Reach Vincent Bradshaw at [email protected].
