“We are here today to say that this insanity must stop. The graveyards are full enough —just stop,” said author and Vietnam veteran Robert Taylor to a crowd of hundreds of community members, local politicians and students participating in an afternoon anti-war rally in Tappan Square last Saturday, September 15.

The rally was sponsored by the Oberlin Community Peace Builders and the Oberlin post of Veterans For Peace and co-sponsored by dozens of community and student groups ranging from Sacred Heart Catholic Church to the Oberlin Peace Activists’ League to the Oberlin Congressional Research Project.

After Taylor’s introduction, Don Hultquist of Community Peace Builders welcomed the crowd, and Oberlin College professors Dan Styer and Steve Volk spoke on the war and Bush administration policies. Ronnie Rimbert, City Council Vice President, also spoke — from a Marine’s perspective — on troop withdrawal.

Next came Colin Jones of the Oberlin Peace Activists’ League, who shared his thoughts on OPAL’s opposition to the war. College sophomores Anna Ernst and Maia Brown spoke about Peace and Conflict Studies at the College, while seniors Cecilia Galarraga and Kathryn Ray presented the results of the Congressional Torture Research Project to Congresswomen Marcy Kaptur, representative of Ohio’s 9th district, which includes Oberlin.

Ray said, “After completing this research project, I realized that the threat facing democracy today is not that the government will conduct secret, immoral operations behind the backs of the American public, though this may have been the case thirty years ago. Now, we are faced with the possibility that the government can authorize practices which torture and kill civilians in front of our faces and it won’t make any difference.”

Representative Kaptur began her keynote speech, Ending This War and Preventing the Next, by thanking the crowd, who she referred to as “citizens of good conscience.” She denounced the leadership of the Bush administration early on, claiming she had “never seen anything like this in the history of the United States of America.”

Kaptur touched on many topics in her speech, including presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich and his relation to Ohio’s status in the 2008 election, saying, “When Dennis Kucinich is marginalized, you — Ohio — are marginalized.”

Kaptur continued, covering topics of energy independence, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, military contracts and the creation and exploitation by the Bush administration of what Kaptur described in the Congress as a “climate of fear,” saying that the country and the military had been “hijacked.”

The rally drew local political leaders as well, including Oberlin City Council members Eve Sandberg, Anthony Mealy and Ronnie Rimbert, Lorain County Commissioner Betty Blair and State Senator Sue Morano.

One notable aspect of the protest was the disproportionate ratio of students to community members: OPAL estimates that non-student turnout was as high as 300, while only an estimated 70 students attended. OPAL’s Elijah Bergman said, “I think we did a good job of getting the word out around campus, but we’re going to have to think about why this happened.” Student Senator Jones added, “I was encouraged by the turnout, but I hoped for more.”