March 18 -- A young woman crouched near the ground to put the finishing touches on the picket signs that lay scattered around her, while a half-dozen student activists stood nearby, talking, smoking cigarettes and hoping that their weeks of planning would pay off.

A plethora of reasons were given for Thursday's student walkout at Santa Monica College, a laundry list that included everything from racism and attacks on women's rights to state budget cuts and the newly installed parking meters near campus.

But the overriding concern of the protesters was the war in Iraq now entering its third year, an issue over which their school -- and the rest of the country -- remains bitterly divided.

By eleven o'clock, a diverse crowd of some 60 demonstrators had gathered in front of the college library before beginning their march to the military recruitment center a mile away up 20th Street at Santa Monica Boulevard.

"Are you joining the protest?" asked a kid with curly hair and bright eyes as he handed out a list of ant-war slogans from behind a table covered with stacks of leftist literature that included illustrations of clenched fists and a tract by Emma Goldman.

Behind him, Josh Saxe, an earnest looking young man with wire rimmed glasses, was being questioned by a pair of cops eager to know if any acts of civil disobedience had been planned. Saxe told them there weren't.
"They just wanted to know if we were going to break any laws," said Saxe, a student from Cal State Los Angeles, who like many of the organizers is a member of the Progressive Alliance, a reincarnation of an earlier campus socialist club.

"It's not that we're against being disruptive in principle," he said, "especially when it comes to the war; we just wanted this march to be peaceful."

Like many others who participated in the march, Saxe said that primary goal of the demonstration was to get the military recruiters off campus.

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