NEW YORK - March 19 - A total of forty-four people were arrested in this morning's protests against war profiteering at the New York Stock Exchange. They are now being released, many with a court appearance on April 17, 2007.

As the United States entered the fifth year of the war in Iraq, opponents of the Bush administration policies have spent three days voicing their opposition across the country. On Sunday, thousands gathered in large-scale rallies held by the anti-war coalition United for Peace and Justice and other groups in cities from cost to coast. Today was set aside by the March 19 Peace Actions Coalition (www.march19peaceactions.org) for smaller-scale civil disobedience actions specifically targeting war profiteers.

Many of the New York City protesters in and around Wall Street were members of the local chapter of the War Resisters League, the country's oldest secular peace group, an endorser of the March 19 Coalition. Steve Theberge, a member of the WRL staff, was among those arrested. "We come to the Stock Exchange today to call attention to the companies that are profiteering from the war," he said soon after being released from five hours in a holding cell, "companies like Lockheed Martin, which has seen its stock price rise 116 percent since the start of the war." Theberge, who works on WRL's counter-recruitment project, continued "as we organize against military recruiters—refusing to be the grist for the war mill-- we also need to remove the profit from war."

One of the Wall Street protesters was Frida Berrigan, a policy analyst at the Arms Trade Resource Center of the World Policy Institute at The New School University and a member of the WRL local group and of WRL's national executive body. Echoing the coalition statement, she added, "As we move into the fifth year of a war that is costing $8 billion a month, the only winners are companies like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon."

http://www.march19peaceactions.org/

http://www.warresisters.org/

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