A cold wind chill didn’t deter SF State’s Students Against War from heading down to meet up with passionate protesters from UC Berkeley and City College of San Francisco as well as a colorfully dressed group of singing grandmothers dawning frying pans to stage a protest and rally outside of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office at the Federal Building in Downtown San Francisco Wednesday afternoon.

The groups' mission was to send a clear message to Pelosi that they don’t approve of the war and of her funding of it. Students Against War gathered in Malcolm X Plaza carrying signs reading “Hey Pelosi! Students Say: Troops Out Now” and mobilizing to head downtown.

Karen Knoller, a 20-year-old Students Against War member, felt that the people elected Nancy Pelosi to end the Iraq war, but she’s only paid lip service to that promise. “People are fast losing confidence in her because of her lack of action,” she said.

“In the end it won’t be politicians who end war, it will be a movement of students, US soldiers and the Iraqi resistance,” Knoller said. “We want immediate withdrawal of all troops, and to funnel money to infrastructure.”

The group expected that police would escort the group away from the offices but their objective is to get Pelosi to hold a town hall meeting with them.

The City College of San Francisco Students Against War had about four attendees but was expecting a lot more. Kitty Lui, 20, a former CCSF student, said that their purpose is to build a broad nationwide campus network, to meet and network with people who are just as angered as they are and want to organize with them.

“She (Pelosi) is the third most powerful person in office right now. We want to pressure her to end war funding, and because she’s the Speaker of the House the SF movement is in more of a strategic position to end the war,” Mary Wilson, 25, said. Wilson is a student at CCSF, and she is angered that the Democrats were elected and haven’t taken any action to end the war.

“If Pelosi and the Democrats don’t do anything to end the war, why vote for the Democrats anyway?” she said.

Speakers took to a megaphone on a concrete bench and yelled their thoughts on war and policy. John Gibson, 18-year-old Peace and Conflict Studies major from UC Berkeley’s Stop the War Coalition, spoke of the monies going into war funding.

“Over one third of the nation’s bridges are structurally deficient, maybe we can save people in Minnesota from falling into the river if we spend a little more money building the bridges in this country and a little less money killing people in other parts of the world,” Gibson said.