On September 15, 2007, tens of thousands of demonstrators took their message of opposition to the Iraq War to the steps of the Capitol building in Washington, DC. The event was the product of the organizing efforts of a number of antiwar groups including A.N.S.W.E.R (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Veterans for Peace, Code Pink, Gold Star Families for Peace, the National Council of Arab Americans and the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. Rain Burroughs of the Virginia Antiwar Network (VAWN) helped to organize and fill a motor coach of antiwar activists from the Richmond area to go to the DC event.

Protestors gathered on the north side of the White House in Lafayette Park, where a noontime rally was held. There were many prominent speakers including Ramsey Clark (former US Attorney General), Cynthia McKinney (former US Congresswoman), Cindy Sheehan (founder of Gold Star Families for Peace), Rev. Lenox Yearwood, Navy Petty Officer Jonathon Hutto and Liam Madden (co-founders of Appeal for Redress), Ralph Nader, Howard Zinn (WWII veteran and author of A People’s History of the United States), Garett Reppenhagen (Chair of BOD for Iraq Veterans Against the War), and a number of family members who have lost loved ones to the Iraq War.

The march to the Capitol kicked off around 1:30PM, led by Iraq war veterans, Gold Star families whose loved ones have been killed in the war, and other war veterans. As is often the case, estimates of the numbers of participants varied widely in the media. Organizers put the crowd at 100,000. Based upon relative sizes of previous national demonstrations against the war, I would estimate the attendance at well over 50,000.

Marching shoulder to shoulder across the eight lanes of Pennsylvania Avenue, the antiwar protestors encountered an estimated several hundred counter-demonstrators between 7th and 10th Streets. The counter-demonstrators were organized largely by Rolling Thunder (a motorcycle club made up of veterans) and Free Republic. Both heated as well as cordial exchanges occurred at the sidewalk interface, but the level of animosity and abuse was much curtailed over what war protestors encountered during the their demonstration to mark the Fourth Anniversary of the Iraq War earlier in the year.

Once reaching the grounds of the Capitol building, thousands of protestors participated in a planned “die-in”. There did not appear to be any attempt to arrest participants there. The Capitol Police drew their "line in the sand", however, at the terrace located at the base of the steps to the Capitol. Hundreds of the protestors gathered around the perimeter of this terrace, while police formed a line on the other side of the low wall that defines it.

Led by Iraq War veterans, protestors were arrested once they scaled the wall and entered the terrace. The process was fairly orderly and mostly a symbolic gesture on the part of participating demonstrators to succumb to arrest in a show of opposition to the Iraq War and Congress' ineffectiveness in dealing with it. Nearly 200 demonstrators were arrested in this manner.

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