BY ALISON DELLIT
On March 15, the day after a 2000-strong protest in Traralgon, people hit the streets in a number of regional and rural areas in Victoria to oppose the government's support for Washington's war drive.
Six-hundred people marched in the East Gippsland town of Bairnsdale, in a protest organised by the East Gippsland Peace Network.
In Albury-Wodonga, on the NSW border, 500-600 protesters came out to protest. Speakers included Brett Dickson, Bill Deller from the Victorian Peace Network, a local school student, the Greens' Darren Stanhouse and academic Dennis Black.
Protest organiser Melinda Finnigan told Green Left Weekly that she was "really happy" with the protest. "We marched for an hour. I looked at the main street and we filled half to two-thirds of it!"
Finnigan explained that the organisers had had to foot the bill for the cost for the event themselves: the council had charged them for use of the park and they had had to secure public liability insurance. A local councillor, Stuart Baker, had organised a truck and a sound system for the event.
Around 400 people also protested in Frankston. James Dooley, one of the protest organisers, told GLW that they had decided not to have any political party speakers on the platform. Instead, the rally was addressed by World War II veterans Robert Newson and Gerald Kay, and Vietnam veteran Frank McCrahan, all of whom spoke about the horrors that war can inflict.
David Spratt from the Victorian Peace Network and Brandon Bride from the Mornington Peace Network also spoke, as did Jeanette Martin and Neil Adams, who recently walked from the Mornington Peninsula to Canberra to protest the war. Dooley told GLW that, considering the local print media refused to cover the protest before it happened, it was "quite a good turnout". "A friend of mine told me that it was biggest turnout for a protest ever in this area", he added.
A protest was also held at Wonthaggi.
From Green Left Weekly, March 19, 2003.
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