WASHINGTON -- About 75,000 chanting protesters braved a cold spring rain Saturday to march from the White House to the Capitol in a demonstration against U.S. policies in Central America and South Africa.
Students and members of about 200 civil rights groups, unions and religious organizations streamed into the nation's capital on some 1,500 chartered buses for the protest, billed as the National Mobilization for Justice and Peace.
After assembling in a park within shouting distance of the White House for a rally, the protesters filled Pennsylvania Avenue from curb to curb in a column that stretched from the presidential mansion to the Capitol.
Saturday's protest, reminiscent in spirit of the rallies of the 1960s and 1970s, marked the start of three days of demonstrations to be highlighted Monday by acts of civil disobedience at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.
Among those taking part in the demonstrations Saturday were the Rev. Jesse Jackson, folk singers Peter, Paul and Mary, actor Ed Asner, baby doctor Benjamin Spock, '60s radical Abbie Hoffman, Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg and Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times.
Addressing the crowd at the Capitol, Jackson condemned apartheid, South Africa's system of racial separation, as 'morally wrong, sinful and ungodly.'
'Every moral and ethical imperative that made us say no to Hitler and the Third Reich must make us say no to (South African President Pieter) Botha and the fourth reich.'
He also called for an end to U.S. support for rebels fighting to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua.
'We can end the war in Central America,' he declared. 'We can have peace, but we must have leadership that's intelligent, alert, agressive and awake.'
Prior to Jackson's speech the crowd, standing shoulder to shoulder on the west front of the Capitol, chanted, 'End the war, we don't want no war,' echoing the refrain of a reggae band.
A spokesman for the U.S. Park Police said the official estimate of the crowd grew from 22,000 to 75,000 people. March organizers had predicted 100,000 would attend the march.
President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, left the White House late Friday night to spend the weekend at Camp David. White House officials denied the trip to the presidential retreat was made to avoid the demonstration.
The usual coalition of organizations supporting such demonstrations was fragmented by the refusal of some labor leaders to support the protest. Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO, urged members of the labor federation not to attend the protests, claiming organizers were guided by pro-communist and pro-Soviet groups.
Protest organizers denied those claims and countered that other labor groups were participating in the demonstrations. Henry Nichols, president of Hospital and Health Care Employees Union, told reporters that the labor movement was represented at the rally by 20 international unions.
'For us as a labor movement not to be here today is a betrayal of our members,' Nichols said. 'Here is where the labor movement belongs.'
Organizers for the demonstration have called for an end to U.S. military support to rebel groups in Central America and Angola and for tougher U.S. sanctions against South Africa's white-minority government.
Jackson, in a news conference before the march, said, 'We must have a commitment to peace in Central America and justice in South Africa.'
'We must fight for human rights everywhere and measure human rights by one yardstick,' he said. 'We must fight terrorism and measure terrorism by one yardstick.'
Ellsberg said the demonstration was particularly timely because of the unfolding Iran-Contra scandal, and predicted that as witnesses granted immunity from prosecution by congressional committees begin to testify next month, 'President Reagan will be looking down the muzzle of impeachment.'
Before setting off on a march past the White House to the Capitol, the demonstrators gathered on the Ellipse, the oval park behind the presidential mansion, displaying banners and listening to speakers and singers performing on three stages set up on the damp grass.
'We want to send a message -- student aid not Contra aid, and food for the poor, not bombs for the Pentagon,' said Scott Saxby, 23 a senior at Keene State College in Keene, N.H.
Johnny Levett, 40, a nurse and member of Local 1199 of the National Hospital and Health Care Employees Union in Cincinnati, said he came to Washington because as a black who fought for civil rights in the 1960s, he felt a kinship with blacks fighting against apartheid in South Africa.
'I've been through it here and they're going through it there,' he said. 'That association through family and through race is what brought me here.'
