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US Protestors Demand "Shut Down Guantanamo"

 

New York, NY, 5 Jul (Prensa Latina) Hundreds of New Yorkers rallied near Herald Square to commemorate US Independence Day by hearing testimonies of US military torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba and demand its closure.

That was just one of many similar demonstrations held across the United States this Fourth of July.

Personalities such as Gloria Steinem and playwright Eve Ensler, along with representatives from Code Pink, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Not In Our Name, and other activist anti-war organizations, read the statements and led the crowd in demanding that Guantanamo be shut down.

The nearly three hundred people crowded behind barricades in the sweltering sun were visibly moved by the accounts, occasionally erupting with chants of "Guantanamo Must Go" to statements from Imara of CCR that "torture is immoral and unpatriotic," and NYC Councilwoman Margarite Lopez’s warning that "History will not be neutral."

Among the protestors gathering signatures to demand that Congress close Guantanamo Detention Center was Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out activist Sally Davidson, who said she was there to "support the troops (in Iraq) and bring them home alive now."

Ms. Davidson noted the growing protest among military families and within the military itself to the continued occupation of Iraq.

Flyers and speakers exhorted demonstrators to mobilize for the mass protest against the US war in Iraq, which will be held in Washington, DC in September, and for the "massive day of resistance" all over the United States called for November 2.

 

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