About 150 people gathered in Roosevelt Park Saturday morning and marched to Lockheed Martin and back to protest military action in Afghanistan.
The international group Act Now to Stop War & End Racism sponsored the rally, which was billed as a day of coordinated protests against war and racism with similar rallies scheduled in cities nationwide and internationally.
Many protesters spoke against what they called atrocities being committed in Afghanistan. They also spoke against the Lockheed Martin Corporation, which was recently awarded a contract of more than $200 billion by the Department of Defense to be spent during the next 20 years to produce at least 3,000 supersonic jets, all equipped with radar-evading technology and the ability to execute short take-offs and vertical landings.
UNM student Ben Jones said one of the goals of the protest was to promote awareness of Lockheed Martin's links within the Bush administration.
"They have a very central role in the military industrial complex and an incredible amount of power in the current administration," he said. "So what we can do is go out there and say that we're watching, that we're not afraid and that we're going to keep telling other New Mexicans about what Lockheed Martin does all over the world and here in New Mexico, and we don't want to give them $200 billion dollars."
Jones also said the United States needs to change its policies in the Middle East and that he disagrees with the bombing.
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"People don't want to do the research on what we've done with the Muhajedeen in the past and how the Taliban came to power," he said.
UNM student Meghan Lennox said hospitals and two Red Cross buildings have been bombed in Afghanistan and that the Department of Defense contract was inconceivable.
Donald Thompson, 77, a member of the local chapter of Veterans for Peace, said he served in World War II and the Korean War. Thompson, a retired Albuquerque elementary school teacher and former state legislator, said he is against the military action.
He is against "especially going at it alone, more or less independently, instead of going to the United Nations and getting all the nations together," he said. "And, if there is a bad man like bin Laden and those people, well then that's the U.N.'s job to go into another country and get him not us, and I don't believe in war in general now anymore."
He added that serving in the Navy, he had seen a lot of people die horrendous deaths during war.
Dillinger Davis, 33, who didn't participate in the march, said he showed up at the rally out of curiosity and agreed with the protesters.
"As a minority, I feel like all the oppression this country's done, you can relate when you see them attacking someone else," he said. "It seems like a world-dominating thing. The extreme stuff that they do to other people makes other people react extreme and it creates a militant, fanatic mentality against this country. It's easy to justify and rally against America with all the bad things that it's done and the policies it has."
