Protesters mark war anniversary

More than a dozen arrested at Boston, Chicopee rallies

Residents listened to speakers during a demonstration against the war in Iraq yesterday on the Boston Common. Hundreds statewide protested on the fifth anniversary of the conflict. (DOMINIC CHAVEZ/GLOBE STAFF)

More than a dozen protesters were arrested yesterday in downtown Boston and in Chicopee, as hundreds of residents statewide took to the streets on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war to call for an immediate withdrawal of US troops.

Boston police arrested five people blocking the entrance to the Armed Forces Career Center on Tremont Street shortly before 4 p.m. Police said they acted after repeatedly telling the group to disperse.

One of the demonstrators, who was not arrested, said the protesters who were arrested were enacting a scene of destruction from Iraq, posing as dead Iraqis and American soldiers and people mourning them.

In Chicopee, police arrested eight protesters who were blocking the entrance to Westover Air Reserve Base yesterday morning. They were charged with disturbing the peace and obstructing traffic, said Chicopee police Captain Steven Muise.

Peggy Anderson, 70, of Granby, who was at the protest but was not part of the blockade and was not arrested, said the eight protesters were stretched across a two-lane highway, holding signs made on pieces of bed sheets that called for an end to the war and depicted Iraqi children. "It was basically a sad demonstration, not an angry demonstration," Anderson said.

On the Boston Common, near Park Street Station, roughly 100 people gathered around 5 p.m. for speeches, a moment of silence, and a reading of the names of Massachusetts soldiers and Iraqi children who have died in the conflict.

Joanna Vogel, 18, an Emerson College student, said that people gathering in spite of the cold rain gave the event deeper meaning.

Many of those present said that getting out of Iraq will not be simple. "It will take a grass-roots movement to do it," said Wendy Henry of Brookline.

Meanwhile, in Cambridge, members of the 181st Infantry Massachusetts National Guard returned to the National Guard Armory yesterday. The unit of about 90 soldiers had been in Iraq since last summer, said Major Lisa Ahaesy, a National Guard spokeswoman. All of the soldiers deployed returned home, she said.

Globe correspondent Jillian Jorgensen contributed to this report.