Salt Lake bracing for 5 rallies

All planned Aug. 30, but Bush may not be in town

By Kersten Swinyard
Deseret Morning News
Published: Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2006 9:15 a.m. MDT
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Salt Lake City is preparing for at least five demonstrations the afternoon and evening of Aug. 30, but all five may miss their mark if President Bush doesn't come until later in the day.

The White House said Tuesday that Bush will spend the night of Aug. 30 in Salt Lake City and then "on Thursday, Aug. 31, the president will have events in Salt Lake City" before traveling to Camp David for the Labor Day weekend. It is not known when he will arrive in Salt Lake City on Aug. 30, and rallies are scheduled beginning at 11 a.m.

The city's special-events coordinator has received applications for five gatherings spread among Pioneer Park, Liberty Park and Washington Square downtown, with rally cries ranging from anti-Bush to pro-president to "support the troops."

The permit process requires demonstrators to pay $5 and give the city notice of the size, location and time of their demonstrations. Protests last year when the president spoke to a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars were on the day of his visit.

Terry Schow, vice president of the local branch of the American Legion convention corporation, said Tuesday that he's not sure whether the president will address the convention Wednesday, Aug. 30, or Thursday, Aug. 31.

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"I guess that's within their prerogative to set it," Schow said. "It would be kind of crazy to invite him and then say, 'I'm sorry, you're five minutes later than what we'd like, and we have Joe Smith from Brigham City, Utah, that we'd like to put on instead.'"

Sen. Orrin Hatch's office said that the president is to speak at a fund-raiser for Hatch at noon on Aug. 31, and Bush is also expected to meet with leaders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that day.

To Crystal Young-Otterstrom, one of the organizers of a rally on Washington Square against Bush, the possibility of not speaking at the same time the president does is an acceptable hazard of staging the protest.

"If it's a welcome gift or at the same time he's speaking, then we're fine with both," Young-Otterstrom said. "It really doesn't matter the day that it's on. He's here — he'll see the papers and see the response, and that's what we're gearing for."

Young-Otterstrom is working with an ad hoc group, We the People for Peace and Justice. The group has invited Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, and Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson to speak. The group estimates 5,000 participants at a rally from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Washington Square on Aug. 30.

The group is scheduled to march from the square to the federal building at State Street and 100 South from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Young-Otterstrom's group also has applied to hold a rally that evening at Pioneer Park from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

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