The Downtown Mall echoed with chants of "Not my president! Not my war! Enron's president! Exxon's war!" on Saturday afternoon, when more than 500 demonstrators braved subfreezing temperatures in order to protest possible war with Iraq.
"I think this war is wrong and I want to stand up for peace," said second-year College student Annis Steiner, who attended the protest.
People from Bedford to Richmond joined Charlottesville residents and University students in one of many anti-war rallies across the country on Saturday. Several major U.S. cities, including Washington D.C. and San Francisco, held protests that coincided with the weekend of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.
Critical Mass, a University publication and activist group, co-sponsored the demonstration.
Fourth-year College student Nicholas Graber-Grace, a member of Critical Mass, said organizers chose to hold the protest in Charlottesville instead of traveling to the Washington D.C. rally partly because of the nearby bicentennial celebration of Lewis and Clark's expedition. Graber-Grace said the Monticello event commemorated the country's "legacy of imperialism" that the United States continues in Iraq.
"We see a linkage of imperial policy there," Graber-Grace said.
Sarah Lanzman, a member of the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, the other cosponsor of the protest, said the rally was intended to have an impact "on President Bush and on all our other citizens, to let them know they're not the only ones afraid of war."
Before the march, which began at City Hall and circled the downtown area, a group of nine speakers urged the assembled crowd to voice their opposition to the war.
"I look at the people dying in [the Middle East] and I ask myself: Are they dying for freedom? And I say no -- They're dying for Exxon and Mobil," said Charlottesville High School junior Eugene Puryear, who drew cheers from the crowd for the statement.
Keynote speaker Stephen Colecchi, director of the Office of Justice and Peace in the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, quoted Thomas Jefferson: "I abhor war and view it as the great scourge of humankind."
Participants cheered and applauded throughout the speeches.
The speakers "were profound," said Kelly Foutz, who attends Piedmont Virginia Community College and lives in Charlottesville. Foutz toted a sign that read, "While you're shopping, bombs are dropping."
The Guerilla Arts in Action Theater Organization led the march with a "war machine," a baby carriage covered with pipes, bicycle wheels and pots, which they banged with sticks as they chanted, "Resist the war machine!"
Others carried colorful birds made of cloth and sticks and painted with words like "peace" and "freedom."
The march paused at the statue of Lewis and Clark at Ridge Street and Main Street, where demonstrators stood on the corners of the intersection holding up their signs as other participants beat on drums.
Passing cars honked in support and drivers rolled down their windows to give the peace sign or a thumbs-up to the demonstrators standing in the cold.
Protesters said the United States is heading to war without considering other options.
"There is no need to kill so many women and children," third-year College student Jessica Forman said. "As a country, we need to sit down and decide what else we can do."
Charlottesville residents Stephen and Carol Keese said they are not against the Bush Administration's war on terror, but they are against a possible war with Iraq.
The situation is being handled in "an irresponsible, immature, unfair way," Stephen said. "There's a better way."
His sign read, "Proud of my country. Embarrassed by my president." Eight-year-old Patrick Keese carried a sign of his own creation declaring, "Peace is the best."
Carol Keese worried that the United States is acting without the support of the rest of the world. "Don't let us be a rogue nation," read her sign.
Coby Pieterman of Bedford expressed the same sentiments.
"My greatest concern is that we show, as a country, no humility," she said. "You don't get the support and yet you barge ahead," neglecting domestic problems.
Police said the rally had a large turnout for a Charlottesville demonstration, estimating the crowd to number a little over 500 people.
Graber-Grace estimated that upwards of 800 attended.
"I was blown away," he said "I thought it was amazing. It's the biggest anti-war demonstration in recent memory."
The only disruption was when a group of 12 people dressed in black -- who were not directly associated with the organizers of the protest -- encouraged the crowd to violate traffic laws, according to Charlottesville Police Sgt. Mike Farruggio. But "we didn't arrest anyone," he said. "We didn't want to do that"
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