BY DOUG JENNESS AND JOSHUA CARROLL
MINNEAPOLIS - William Richardson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was greeted by more than 100 angry pickets when he spoke at the University of Minnesota February 20. As they rallied outside the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute on campus, protesters' chants against U.S. threats to bomb Iraq echoed through the breakfast gathering Richardson was addressing. Several speakers referred to the protests a few days earlier in Columbus, Ohio, where three prominent figures in the Clinton administration were targeted by angry protests.

After a half hour or so the protesters were permitted to enter the meeting area to ask questions. At one point Richardson, attempting to paint the Clinton administration's stance as moral, said that food and medicines enter Iraq within the framework of the economic sanctions. In response, dozens of protesters chanted, "Shame! Shame! Shame!"

Richardson was unable to complete his speech before his departure as shouting and chanting continued.

The previous afternoon a demonstration at the federal building in downtown Minneapolis drew over 200 protesters. Called by the Iraqi Peace Action Coalition, an ad hoc formation that includes a couple of dozen organizations, the action was the third such protest since the third week of January.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - "They tried to use us as a pep rally for their war, but we wouldn't let them," said Amber Decker, a 21-year-old student who had attended the "town hall meeting" at Ohio State University. Decker was at a demonstration of 2,000 against U.S. war plans at the White House February 22. She was one of a dozen young women from Ohio State at the demonstration. They had come to Washington to attend a Women of Color and Allies Summit sponsored by the National Organization for Women (NOW), and decided to attend the rally when it was announced in one of the workshops there. One of the women carried a hand-lettered sign that read, "We were at your town meeting at Ohio State; you wanted our opinion. We say: NO WAR!"

Decker explained that when she had gone to the Ohio State meeting she had not yet made up her mind about U.S. plans to bomb Iraq, but that when she saw how the press and the Clinton administration "tried to use it and manipulate it to serve their own interests," she decided that she was opposed to the planned war. "They said they wanted the opinion of the `heartland,' but they didn't like our opinion, so they tried to turn it into something else."

Kristen Bolzenius, also a student at Ohio state, explained that after the "town hall" meeting, the university administration, some members of the faculty, and other students tried to convince those who had opposed the war that "we had let down our country." She said that being at the demonstration and meeting people who applauded them for standing up to Clinton's war advisors gave them more confidence.

More than 200 people demonstrated at the Newark Federal Building February 21 to protest the Clinton administration's latest war moves. The action was initiated by the Islamic Students Organization at Rutgers University in Newark and the Young Socialists, and sponsored by other Islamic, Filipino, and Pakistani student groups.

Mutaz Szharef, the first speaker at the event, spoke about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children who have died as a result of the brutal United Nations sanctions in place since the 1990 -91 Gulf war. The Iraqi people, he said, should not be made to pay for the actions of the Saddam Hussein government.

Melissa Harris, the Socialist Workers candidate for the Newark city council, put forward a different view. "What is at stake is the sovereignty of Iraq," she argued. "The U.S. government has no right to intervene."  
 
 
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