WEST FRESNO PEACE MARCH

WEST FRESNO PEACE MARCH
By Mike Rhodes
April 12, 2003

Fresno is a divided city! West Fresno is on the “other side” of the railroad tracks and highway 99. If we had a more physically visible system of apartheid in Fresno, there would be a wall with barbed wire on top that divided the African- Americans, Latinos, and South East Asians on the West Side from the rest of Fresno. The unemployment rate in Fresno County is 18%. It is probably double that in West Fresno.

It was in West Fresno that Peace Fresno organized a march for peace today. Carrying signs that said NO BLOOD FOR OIL and NO WAR about 100 anti-war marchers took their message of peace to this community. Peace Fresno purposely selected West Fresno as the starting point of today’s march which wound through Chinatown and ended at the Free Speech site on the Fulton Mall. Peace Fresno held this march in downtown Fresno to draw attention on the local costs of the war. They wanted to make sure that people got the connection between budget cuts which hurt the poor and the cost of war. Many of the youth that have been “drafted” into the military out of economic necessity come from West Fresno.

While Peace Fresno was not successful in getting very many West Fresno residents to participate in the march, it was a sincere effort to bring the antiwar message to those most affected by the war. The march concluded at the Free Speech site (see http://www.fresnoalliance.com/IWW/ for more information about the historic significance of this site) where speakers from several community groups spoke.

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