George Mason University (GMU) student Brad Beardall's apartment was an impromptu crash pad as out-of-town guests slept on the floor Friday, Jan. 17, in preparation for the march on Washington the next day, protesting the impending war with Iraq.
"It was like a little sleep-over," Beardall said on an Orange Line train out of the Vienna station the following morning.
University of North Carolina students Molly Craven and Jon Kelman were part of that sleep-over so they could exercise their rights as Americans from all walks of life in front of the Capitol.
"It's certainly not an issue of patriotism versus not being patriotic," Kelman said.
The day was a first for the newly formed Northern Virginia chapter of "Grandmothers for Peace," with Burke resident Suzanne Doherty leading the way. After starting the group with just two grandmothers the week before, she marched with a group from Burke.
"It was wonderful," Doherty said. "We were three grandmothers, and we had three kids. We've got a chapter going."
Vienna residents Jessica Uze and Ava Wolfbert were at the march with a group from the Northern Virginia Ethical Society, a nondenominational religious movement.
"It's not America killing Iraqis, it's human beings killing human beings," Wolfbert said.
A GMU student looked at it from another viewpoint. She is Iraqi as well and felt the lack of knowledge and propaganda played a role. She chose not to give her name.
"I think a lot of people are ignorant, and they believe what they see on TV. Everybody wants Saddam gone, but they don't want America to do it. America doesn't have a right to do that," she said.
The march on the Capitol was put on by ANSWER (Act Now Stop War End Racism), an international activist group. Although temperatures hovered around 25 degrees, people bundled up to attend, many of them from out of town. Guest speakers included Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic and Rev. Jesse Jackson among others. Kovic is the author of "Born on the Fourth of July," an anti-war novel that was later made into a movie starring Tom Cruise.
"You will find strength as I did," Kovic said. "You will not only stop the war, you will change the country. This fight will be won in the end."
Jackson tried to get the crowd behind him with a pastor-like speech.
"We must fight back because our lives are at stake," he said. "This is America at its best, can I get a witness?"
Besides many marchers from the Washington, D.C., area, other states represented at the march included Florida, North Carolina, Michigan and Ohio. Michigan resident Brad Perkins brought a video system to make a documentary. His trip down from Ann Arbor, Mich., took 14 1/2 hours, which included a stop in Ohio to pick up a friend.
"I slept a couple hours," Perkins said. "A little coffee, a little music."
"It's like a little diary for me," he said of his video project.
Reston resident Megan Minogue, a student at Stoneridge High School, was at her first protest.
"I think we have our right to come here," she said, clutching her sign. "People were handing these out."
GMU graduates Lewis Dabney and Jennifer Perrella live in D.C. Perrella saw some pro-military protesters along the way.
"I don't think they're mutually exclusive at all. I don't think the soldiers want to risk their lives," she said.
Fellow GMU graduate Eva Chmielinska looked over toward the Capitol building. She's contacted her representatives about the issue.
"They listen, we called on the comment line. They should listen, we elect them," she said. "This administration is too arrogant."
The colorful attire, coupled with the nonviolence message, accompanied the 1960s-style protest.
George Crowe, in from New Hampshire, ran into some opposition. "We got heckled by one guy with an Uncle Sam hat," he said. "After he couldn't get anything out of us, he started picking on the Red Sox." Crowe was wearing that team's baseball cap.