Washington, D.C. – Saturday, nearly five hours after the beginning of the anti-war march at the capital, hundreds of war protesters were still in motion, completing the loop past the White House.

A group of students from the University were among the last to finish, joining dozens of others from Champaign-Urbana and over 100,000 people from elsewhere.

Sasha Mobley, graduate student, emphasized that despite being stuck for almost two hours in a huge bottleneck of converging people, she was “impressed that nobody lost their temper or got upset.”

She went on to point out how “mainstream” the crowd appeared, though she did mention the lack of racial and ethnic diversity.

“The crowd didn’t seem any different than the people you’d see milling through the Smithsonian,” Mobley said.

In what was an often-quoted number throughout the weekend, several recent polls have showed that the majority of Americans are no longer in favor of America’s presence in Iraq.

“I feel angry,” said Charles Byrne, graduate student, explaining why he came to the protest. “I feel misrepresented by my government.”

Natalie Havlin, graduate student, said she came to the protest to “show solidarity with American families who have lost so much in this war.”

Havlin said she marched in the protest near a group whose banner identified them as family members of a slain American soldier. The family cried as they walked, while nearby protesters carried a long string of pictures of hundreds of slain American soldiers attached.

One popular theme among protesters was the government’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina. Many protesters held signs reading, “Make levees, not war.”

Following the protest, at a separate speaking event at the First Congregational Church of Christ, Camilo Majia, a member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War, spoke about his experience in Iraq and why he joined the organization.

“It takes (soldiers) years to come back (to normal life) and to deal with the things we did in Iraq and the things we didn’t do,” Majia said.

He later voiced strong criticism against America’s policing the world.

“People cannot be ruled, cannot be conquered,” Majia said. “(Iraqi) resistance is our resistance. They’re fighting for all of us.”

George Galloway, the British Parliamentarian who famously spoke out against the war to his government, shared the stage with Majia, expressing outrage at what he calls a de facto draft of soldiers to the war.

“We do have a conscription,” Galloway said. “We have a conscription by high unemployment, low-wages, and racism.”

Later he went on to condemn the political leaders promoting the war.

“How I wish they would put on a tin hat and go fight in Iraq,” Galloway said. “Bush, Cheney … when they had their chance to go to war, they did everything in their power to avoid it.”

Immediately following the protest, thousands of marchers gathered on the lawn west of the Washington Monument for a rally and concert. Many of the protesters from Champaign-Urbana did not stay for the rally because buses were embarking for the 13-hour ride home. Approximately 100 people filled the two charter buses organized by the Anti-War, Anti-Racism Effort.

Cindy Sheehan, who has recently brought much attention to the anti-war movement with her protests in Crawfordsville, Texas, was the keynote speaker at the rally.

She came to Washington, D.C. as part of Gold Star Families, a group of relatives of slain soldiers who are speaking out against the war. Next to the Gold Star Families’ tent were hundreds of white wooden crosses, set up like the Arlington Cemetery, commemorating more than 1,900 American soldiers killed in Iraq.

It was reported in the Washington Post’s Sunday edition that several families demanded that the picture of their child be removed from a poster displaying soldiers killed in Iraq that was on display at the Gold Star Families tent. Those families said they felt dishonored by Sheehan’s efforts.

During the march, inflammatory rhetoric occasionally was exchanged between the anti-war protesters and a small group of people defending the war in Iraq. Their numbers were dwarfed by the tens of thousands of protesters, but the supporters of the protests made their views known through the use of bullhorns.