5 activists choose a week in jail for protesting Iraq war

[peace4all]

www.brandywinepeace.com/brandywine.html
(click on news)

Dec. 05, 2003

5 activists choose a week in jail for protesting Iraq war
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
Inquirer Staff Writer

Five area antiwar activists were sentenced to seven-day jail terms yesterday after electing not to pay $250 fines for blocking the entrance to the U.S. courthouse protesting the start of the Iraq war. "People were inconvenienced," protester Thomas Mullian, of Prospect Park, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Arnold C. Rapoport. "I suspect that the people walking through the streets of Baghdad found it inconvenient to be bombed."

Before imposing sentences, Rapoport listened courteously to Mullian and four others and let them make extended statements criticizing the war and the U.S. government.

During her statement, Sylvia Metzler, a family nurse-practitioner who works in North Philadelphia, pointed to her T-shirt, which read, "Invest in caring, not killing.<snip>