Hundreds of people gathered at Mission and 16th on Saturday to show their disgust with the war in Iraq.

“We want people to be able to express their frustration at the war, at the lack of hurricane relief,” said Kristina Anderson, a member of SF State’s Student’s Against War group.

Getting military recruiters out of public schools and the United States military out of Iraq were the two main points conveyed at the “College Not Combat, Relief Not War” contingent. The demonstration was part of a larger national day of protest that was happening all across the country.

“I feel right now, it has become very obvious that the Bush administration cares more about war and oil than people and now is the time to protest because now is the time it would make a difference,” said Lacy MacAuley, another member of SAW.

MacAuley said that there is a “breaking point in public sentiment against the war” due to Cindy Sheehan’s visit to Crawford and hurricane Katrina’s devastation of the Gulf Coast.

“A major amount of our resources went from the U.S. to Iraq to pay for the war and that’s what left us so sensitive to natural disasters like hurricane Katrina. We would have had a much more effective response if our resources hadn’t been drained,” MacAuley said.

The protest also caught the attention of politicians. Green Party member, Peter Camajo, who was a candidate for governor during the recall of Gray Davis, said what the United States is doing in Iraq is only creating more violence and endangering America.

“(The protest is) a way to protect our soldiers because the only way we can protect them and save them is to bring them home,” Camajo said.

The demonstration eventually moved down 18th Street toward Dolores Park. As the couple of hundred protestors progressed down the street they started to chant, “rise up, get down! There’s an anti-war movement in this town!”

Protestors walked holding signs that read “Military Recruiters Lie! Our Children Die!” and “Bush Hates Black People,” which was originally uttered by recording artist Kanye West after Hurricane Katrina.

Organizers did not have an estimate of the amount of people in the crowd, but said that it met their expectations.

As the protest went on people started to show up in San Francisco fashion: dressed as robots who wanted to be fed oil, wearing bush masks with signs that said he was on vacation and the Statue of Liberty with her mouth tied closed with a bandana.

In the mass of demonstrators was Harlow Williams, a Vietnam veteran who is now part of the “Veterans for Peace” group.

“I don’t see the same way anymore,” Williams said. He said he does not call what is happening in Iraq a war, instead describing it as “premeditated murder on the part of the administration.”

But though he may have very similar views on the war, he does not think that military recruiters should be banned from school campuses.

“If equal time and representation, with equal tabling space and availability is given to the students with counter-recruiting, then I think that recruiters ought to be allowed on campus,” Williams said. “Because that type of speech I believe in. I think it needs to be balanced. I would not say stop the recruiters.”

But part of the demonstration dealt with getting the word out that the anti-war movement now has a new gust of wind and people do not have to feel as if they are in the minority if they are against the war.

“We hope that it gives confidence to the other people in the anti-war movement so that the next time we have a demonstration more people are confident enough to come out and actually believe that we can stop this war,” Anderson said.