Rally of a thousand recalls Vietnam era
The protest was going on while the president spoke at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention at the Salt Palace, and it continued more than two hours.
Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson was greeted with loud chants of "Rocky! Rocky! Rocky! Rocky!" A larger-than-life George W. Bush figure danced with a mean expression on its papier-mache face. Hand-lettered placards carried slogans ranging from "Mormons Against Bush" and "Exit Strategy Needed" to "Draft the Bush Twins."
While Rich Lyman performed on the keyboard, a character in a yellow chicken costume danced in front of the loudspeakers. A sign on the costume read, "George: Scared of Cindy?" referring to Bush's refusal to meet with Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar mother who wants to talk with the president about the death of her son in Iraq.
A youth who was apparently an adolescent rode on the shoulders of first one youth, then another. For a time the boy rose above the crowd, a red bandanna around his face, an obscenity about the United States painted in red letters on his bare chest and a statement that might be considered a threat against the president's life painted on his back.
On a nearby street corner, half a dozen folks who supported the president held a counter-demonstration. Inside Pioneer Park, another pro-Bush activist jostled roughly through the crowd and confronted protesters.
While Lyman was playing and singing "Blowin' in the Wind," a veteran in a military cap talked with the Deseret Morning News. Hugh Musser, a West Valley man who served in Japan during the Korean War, said of the rally, "I love it. I love it. It's long overdue."
"We have an important message to deliver to a certain guest who is visiting our city today," said the Rev. Tom Goldsmith, minister at the First Unitarian Church, 569 S. 1300 East. "There is urgency for us to finally burst the bubble which protects George Bush from reality."
The Rev. Goldsmith said the American people are "waiting to hear why our sons and daughters are dying in a land that had never, ever produced terrorists before our invasion."
Iraq "had nothing to do with 9/11, never had weapons of mass destruction," he said.
"The war against Iraq is disastrous."
Anderson was announced as "one of the most liberal mayors in the United States." The crowd began chanting the mayor's nickname, but he called for them to change the slogan to "We're not going to take it anymore!"
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