ncisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, organized by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and other coalitions. For the regional action in New York, buses, vans, car caravans and trains have brought people from as far south as Charlotte, NC to as far north as Burlington, VT. Over 35 cities organized transportation to New York City. Today demonstrations are the first massive outpouring since the October 25, 2003, demonstrations when 100,000 people came into the streets of Washington DC and hundreds of thousands more in countries around the world.

"The March 20 Global Day of Action proves that opposition to the Iraq war and occupation is deep and it is worldwide," said Brian Becker, spokesperson for the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition.

"It stunned the war-makers that the people of Spain, having experienced a horrific terrorist attack on civilians, could three days later resist the right-wing pressure applied by the pro-Bush Aznar government and turn that government out of office," continued Becker. "This incredible upset was a focused repudiation by the people of the government's cooperation with Bush and Blair in carrying out the aggression in Iraq. That was a remarkable political development which will have widespread repercussions," Becker said. The people of Spain will be in the streets on March 20th in dozens of cities.

"March 20 is a powerful manifestation of the people in the United States who are demanding `Bring the Troops Home Now' and `End Colonial Occupation from Iraq to Palestine to Haiti and Everywhere,'" said Peta Lindsay of the ANSWER Student and Youth National Coalition and student at Howard University. "Youth and students from across the U.S. are organizing to tell Bush that they will not fight his wars and we are demanding that the 2 billion dollars a week he is taking from us to spend on war and occupation in Iraq be spent instead for schools and jobs and to meet human needs."

"Tens of thousands of New Yorkers have come into the streets today defying the efforts of the Bloomberg administration and the NYPD's attempt to disrupt this demonstration and to intimidate people with their threats of pens and barricades," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, attorney with the Partnership for Civil Justice. In the week prior to the demonstration, in response to the call from the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, New York City Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council received more than 5,700 e-mails and letters demanding that they uphold the free speech rights of demonstrators.

"One year ago the Bush Administration promised "shock and awe" for the Iraqi people," stated Larry Holmes, a Vietnam-era veteran and a member of the ANSWER steering committee. "This was brutally frank language describing the administration's quick-start readiness to use limitless violence against the people of countries that have been targeted for regime change. While the use of high tech military power proved able to destroy the Iraqi government it had the unintended consequence of bringing about a united world public opinion that stands against the White House and the Pentagon. In the United States, these policies will only lead to a further radicalization of the population similar to what happened during the Vietnam War thirty years ago," Holmes predicted.

Founded in September 2001, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition represents the first national coalition to come together to mobilize against the Iraq war and has organized most of the large anti-war demonstrations in the last two and a half years in the United States. A.N.S.W.E.R., is the broadest and most diverse anti-war coalition in the United States and A.N.S.W.E.R. organizing centers have been active in more than 170 U.S. cities and towns.

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