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United they stand in protest

BY SAMUEL BRUCHEY | Newsday Staff Writer

March 19, 2006

Three years ago, when Kolya Braun-Greiner and other members of the Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives protested the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the response from passersby was largely negative.

Yesterday was a different story.

As Braun-Greiner and about 200 other people gathered at the same location on Old Country Road and Glen Cove Road in Garden City to mark the war's third anniversary by waving signs and chanting for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops, dozens of passing motorists honked their horns, flashed thumbs-up or waved in approval.

"I think the tide is turning," said Braun-Greiner, 50, of Baldwin, standing next to her daughter, Sophia, 6. "It's turning fast."

The demonstration, about the same size as last year, was one of many anti-war rallies staged across the country and abroad. More than 1,000 gathered near a military recruiting station in Times Square; about 300 activists marched from the New Hampshire National Guard Armory to the statehouse in Concord; and there were small events in Australia, Asia and Europe, including one in a London shopping and theater district that drew about 15,000 anti-war demonstrators.

At the Nassau event, Irene Ippolito, 43, a special education teacher who brought her daughter, Meron Bekele, 6, said she believes people are finally realizing that President George W. Bush took advantage of the fear and nationalism felt by many Americans after 9/11 to win support for invading Iraq.

"They didn't have weapons of mass destruction; they didn't attack the World Trade Center," Ippolito said about Iraq. "It was a pack of lies."

As the afternoon wore on, the crowd along Old Country Road got bigger. It included young children, working mothers, high school students and retirees.

Not everyone who passed by agreed with their politics.

"Bomb Iraq!" one man yelled through his open car window as he drove down Old Country Road.

To Susan Brockmann, 43, a midwife from Lynbrook, the war's cost was measured by the many U.S. soldiers and Iraqis who have died.

"I don't think what we are doing is worth the lives being lost," she said.

Even this week's announcement from a top official that the United States hopes 75 percent of Iraq will be controlled by Iraq security forces by the end of the summer did not mollify Mary Pettas, 50, of Oceanside.

"I never felt that we were justified in going into Iraq," she said. "We shouldn't have been there at all."