The Cavalier daily :: Monday, April 26, 1971 :: University of Virginia Library

Several hundred thousand
demonstrators gathered in Washington
this weekend and rallied peacefully
before the Capitol on Saturday, calling
for an end to the war.

Organizers of the rally claimed an
attendance of 500,000, but police
estimated the crowd to be about
200,000.

The march began at the Ellipse behind
the White House at 11 a.m. and
continued down Pennsylvania Avenue
toward the Capitol for more than five
hours.

Young People

Most of the marchers were young
people, although he crowd included a
number of middle-aged and older people.
Veterans and a group from the St. Louis
Teamsters Union also accompanied the
demonstrators.

Arriving at the Capitol, the crowd heard a
series of speeches calling for an end to the war,
interspersed with entertainment by Peter, Paul
and Mary, Pete Seeger, and John Denver.

Coretta Scott King, widow of the late
Martin Luther King Jr., asked for complete
withdrawal of U.S. forces by August 28, eight
years after Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech
at another demonstration in Washington.

Mrs. King stated that the large attendance at
the rally disproved what she called the "cynical
administration assumption" that a sealing down
of the war would cause resistance to the war to
decrease.

'Keep Coming Back'

John Kerry, a former naval officer who was
wounded three times in Vietnam, said that the
demonstrators would "have to keep coming
back until this war ends." He expressed a need
to alter "the basic structure of the country."

"The American people know, even if their
President does not, that we have stayed too
long in Vietnam and bled too much and
committed too many horrors, and the time to
get out is now," declared Senator Vance Hartke
(D-Ind.), who is scheduled to speak at the
University commencement exercises in June.

Later in the afternoon, Sally Davis, mother
of black militant Angela Davis, charged that Lt.
William Calley Jr. is receiving preferential
treatment by the government while her
daughter is confined in a cell without bail.

After the speeches, the demonstrators
picked up their own litter from the Capitol
grounds at the urging of their parade marshals.

Arrests

Police listed ten arrests during the day in
connection with the rally, but most of those
arrested were released almost immediately on
$10 cognizance bond.

Militant protesters, who had threatened to
lay siege on the Capitol, made little disturbance
during the weekend.

Mr. Kerry, the naval veteran who spoke to
the protesters, appeared before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday
during hearings on various proposals concerning
the war.

"How do you ask a man to be the last to die
in Vietnam?" asked Mr. Kerry during his
testimony. "How do you ask a man to be the
last to die for a mistake?"

He said that angry GIs in Vietnam are
turning search and destroy missions into
"search and avoid" missions, and that some
soldiers were flatly refusing to obey orders for
hazardous duty.

Clown Joins Saturday Demonstration

Diverse Groups Marched Down Pennsylvania Avenue To Capitol

Former soldiers lying mutilated in veterans
hospitals are victims of "the indifference of a
country that really doesn't care," Mr. Kerry
declared.

A demonstration similar to the one in
Washington took place in San Francisco
Saturday, attended by more than 150,000
people.

The crowd, including many servicemen, was
led by a Vietnam veteran in a wheelchair.

In Paris, spokesmen for the North
Vietnamese and the Viet Cong hailed the
antiwar demonstrations in Washington and
issued appeals of support for the "courageous
Americans."

Xuan Thuy, delegate to the Paris peace talks
from North Vietnam, and the Viet Cong's Mme.
Nguyen Thi Binh expressed the hope that
President Nixon would "listen to the voice of
the American People."

President Nixon

While the rally was taking place in
Washington, President Nixon was spending the
weekend at Camp David, Md. Mr. Nixon said
that he will also miss the proposed
demonstration next week, when he will be at
the Western White House in San Clemente,
Calif.

Some of the more militant elements present
at Saturday's demonstration have promised
another demonstration next Saturday and
incidents of civil disobedience designed to
disrupt the normal functions of the city and the
government.