Protesters hold inaugural demonstrations throughout California

By: MARTHA MENDOZA - Associated Press | Thursday, January 20, 2005 9:43 PM PST ∞

SAN FRANCISCO -- Several thousand demonstrators gathered for a noisy rally in front of City Hall on Thursday evening, beating drums and waving peace signs to mark their opposition to President Bush being sworn into office for a second term.

Their voices were echoed in inaugural protests and vigils around the state.

In Santa Cruz, about 250 marchers followed a 20-foot-tall Statue of Liberty puppet to the Town Clock in a demonstration where former Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern was the featured speaker. In Sacramento, demonstrators held a mock coronation at the state capitol, where one protester wearing a Bush mask received a crown. At Stanford University, students gathered in the middle of campus for a lunchtime vigil. Several hundred people marched and chanted at the federal building in West Los Angeles, while in Berkeley a group of artists and writers read poetry and sang songs of peace at a transit station.

At the San Francisco demonstration, protesters waved signs and carried banners with slogans such as "Not Our President," "Drop Bush Not Bombs," and "Hail To The Thief."

Nearly two dozen community leaders and political activists spoke out against the Bush administration's policies including supervisor Tom Ammiano, who led the crowd chanting "Bring the troops home!"

Mike Valenza, a 45-year-old computer programmer from San Francisco, carried a sign with a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. and the words "Stop the War, Fight the Right."

"I felt the strong need to express my outrage over Bush and his agenda," Valenza said. "I don't consider him my president. He stands diametrically opposed to what I believe in."

Barbara Glesener, a 62-year-old retired school teacher from San Anselmo, said she was most concerned with Iraq and how Bush's policies affect abortion rights.

"The president doesn't represent us," Glesener said. "There are too many people dying in Iraq under his regime. He wants to set our country backward."

David Williams, a 49-year-old construction company owner from Oakland, wore a T-shirt with Bush's picture that said "International Terrorist."

"The administration thinks it's got a mandate to continue its policies," Williams said. "This is my way of saying, 'I don't think so.' The Bush administration has no respect for human rights outside the United States and they have no respect for people anywhere else in the world."

The protests began early. Bay Area commuters were greeted on their way to work with signs that read: "Not In Our Name," and a vigil with photos of all the soldiers killed in Iraq was in place at City Hall when workers arrived in the morning.

"We want to spend today reminding this country, this administration, that people are dying," says veteran Steve Morse of Oakland, standing by a poster in front of San Francisco City Hall that read: "To Party Big While Our Troops Die Is Obscene."

The People For the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, pegged its annual fund-raising reception and luncheon at the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco as an alternative to the inauguration. About 200 attendees paid upward of $250 a ticket, swilled sparkling water and red wine, and feasted on roasted chicken with wild mushroom ragout.

Honored at the event were Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, who started MoveOn.org; Robert Klein, who spearheaded the $25 million campaign to approve California's stem cell proposition; and U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson. Organizers said they wanted to give blue Californians a reason to celebrate on Inauguration Day.

"I think America has forgotten that dissent is patriotic," said television producer Norman Lear, who founded People for the American Way in 1981. "We are a group of people who dissent about a number of things that came about in the life of the Bush administration. So we are celebrating the American right to dissent -- the American patriotic right to dissent."

Associated Press writers Terence Chea and Belin Mesfin contributed to this report.

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