Protestors gather in Washington DC

Today in the Washington Post, there was an article about a woman who got arrested for protesting the war on Iraq. Her name was Cindy Sheehan. She recently found out that her 24 year old son died over seas. She led a 26 day demonstration in washington which included a sit in. Over 100,000 people showed uip to show their support. Even though this demonstration seemed peaceful, the police were eventually brought in. Cindy Sheehan was just one of the women arrested.

Another war which sparked many protests was the vietnam war. When you think of these protests, you mainly think of college kids holding peace rallies on their campus. Another tyoe of protest used, however, was called National Moratorium. The idea was to have everyone in the nation who disagreed with the war to stop their daily activity on the same day. This day was October 15, 1969. People would close their businesses, stay home from work, or not go to school. Since todays demonstration went on for 26 days, you can say that it had the same idea as national moratorium.

Even though these protests seem similar, they are different in two ways. The first is the reason for protesting. During the Vietnam War, the draft still existed. Some people were being forced to fight for something that they did not necessarily believe in. Today, everything is completely voluntary. If you want to fight, you can and if you dont want to fight, then that's great too. The other difference is the protestors themselves. During the vietnam war, the protestors seemed to mainly be young men who didn't want to get drafted. Today, it seems more to be the family of people who is fighting over seas, or who has died over seas. Either way, the protestors always seem to find a way to get their point across.