A young man held a sign that read “9/11 was an inside job,” while another young man held signs that read “Long live brother Gadafi” and “Dude, where’s my bailout?”  While one angry young couple chanted “What do we want? Troops out! When do we want it? Now!”

This scene was universal throughout the protesting mob as hundreds of people walked one and a half miles from Hollywood and Vine to Hollywood and Highland. Protesting the war led by group ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism).

Before the march, speakers took the stage to speak out against the wars and amp up the crowd, full of war veterans and military families, families of fallen soldiers as well as random people walking by.

One speaker who passionately expressed herself was UC Irvine and former Cerritos College student Enas Abdelkhalaq, who boldly stated that this war was about “making wall street bankers and oil giants rich.”

Abdelkhalaq also spoke about an Anti-Muslim rally in Yorba Linda last month where according to her, Villa Park council woman Deborah Pauly praised the killing of Muslims and Congressmen Ed Royce and Gary Miller expressed they were “Proud to be right wing racist.” 

“This war is not good for anyone,” Abdelkhalaq said, “Except for the fat cats and the government that make all this money while students and the middle class and everyone else are just suffering.”

She went on to add, “There is no healthcare, no education, no jobs and all these people at the top are just guzzling all our money, that’s what brought me here.”

Abdelkhalaq said that oil was the reason for the war was because, “America makes ‘buddy buddy’ with places like Saudi Arabia and they attack Afghanistan and Iraq for the oil and they’re making all this money but our gas prices are still so expensive.”

Cerritos College history major Carolina Morales and Pasadena City College student Yvonne Bonilla were also there in support of the cause.

“All of these wars are a huge cause as to why we’re in a huge deficit,” Morales said, “It’s why our education is at risk, why classes are being cut back, why our tuition fees are rising tremendously.” 

Morales said she wanted to make everyone aware of what was going on.

“We’re trying to bring this consciousness to everybody, that’s why we’re here.”

Bonilla added, “We’re anti-war because we see it as a way to target the youth; they target people who don’t have access to education and lure them into the military with promises of job training and job security, but that’s all a lie. They’ll ship you overseas to fight people just like you that don’t have access to education or jobs.

After the march a closing rally was held where more than 15 speakers closed the day out. Also there to join in the festivities was Chris Shiflett, lead guitarist for the Foo Fighters. Shifflet sang a song titled, ‘Lives in the balance’ by Jackson Brown to fit the mood of the protest.

“I really wanted to get out to the big one in D.C.” Shiflett said,  “But I’m leaving tomorrow to go on tour so that wouldn’t be possible, so I found out that there was a sister march here in L.A. so I wanted to come out and support the cause I believe in.”

Shiflett mentioned that he has participated in rallies during the buildup to the Iraq war but this was his first ANSWER rally.

“I’m anti-war, end of sentence, across the board,” he said, “We’re shredding the middle class to pieces, we’re told it’s the poor people’s fault that the economy’s in the state that it’s in because they take out these loans with criminal banks. Meanwhile, we bail out these banks and cut taxes for the rich.”

After the rally, police began to clear everyone off the street and the sky was beginning to darken but people chanted and sang as they went off to their cars, satisfied that they had made their point.