""One bright sunny morning, in the shadow of the steeple, By the Relief Office, I saw my people--
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering, if
This land was made for you and me."-- Woodie Guthrie.

Bodhi Busick entertaining the crowd with "This Land is Your Land," a timely reminder in election year 2004. Will this land remain at the mercy of Halliburton and other exploiters or will The People rise up and take it back?

Chris Ream, commander of a swift boat during the Vietnam war, pointed to parallels between that war and the current war in Iraq. "We were told after the Gulf of Tonkin that if we didn't fight (the communists) there, we'd have to fight them on the shores of San Francisco Bay. Well, that was a lie. A similar thing is happening now in Iraq.

The thing that worries me the most is that we are less secure today in America than we were before the war in Iraq. We were beloved around the world after
9-11, and now 90% of the world thinks we're the greatest threat to international peace".

Chris addressed the T.V. ads by the Swift Boat Liars for Bush, "although I'd rather get to the real issues of the campaign." One Bush ad states that Vietnam P.O.W's were adversely affected by John Kerry's anti-war stance after he returned from Vietnam and testified before Congress. "Who's the most famous person to be in the Hanoi Hilton? John McCain! What does Republican Senator John McCain have to say about John Kerry? "I respect him, and I honor him." If there was any truth to those ads about John Kerry, John McCain wouldn't be saying that!"

"In the Navy, when the ship goes aground, the captain gets relieved. Support our troops and elect a new leader!"

Pete McCloskey, former U.S. Congressman, California (R), Korean war veteran, U.S. Marines. Joining the Veterans March for Kerry on Sunday, McCloskey noted that thirty-three years ago he had been on another march, walking with John Kerry to the National Cemetery at Arlington as part of a Vietnam veterans protest of that war.

Addressing the veterans, military families and their supporters at the October 17th march in Sacramento, McCloskey said:"I want to say how proud I am to have walked with you on this day. I've been privileged to walk today with a man who fought at Guadalcanal in WWII. I walked with one of the pilots from the Tuskegee Airmen, and I walked with a black man who had the guts to join the Marines in 1941 at a time when all his NCO's were white men from Texas or Louisiana!"

In 1967, McCloskey was elected to Congress and visited Vietnam several times, returning with grave doubts about the war.

"In 1971, I testified before the Fulbright Committee that what I'd seen in Vietnam on my three trips there constituted war crimes. Not the individual acts of cruelty, but the missions of search and destroy, free fire zones, and burning down villages that gave support to the Viet Cong. We defined those actions as war crimes in Nuremberg in 1948, after WWII. Then, seven years after voting to give President Johnson the authority to go to war in Vietnam, after Tet, after the Pentagon Papers, the American people began to believe that the war was wrong and that we had been misled, just as we have been misled into the war with Iraq."

Noting that none of the architects of either the Vietnam war or the war in Iraq had served in the military, McCloskey said: "I've served under nine presidents and I've observed one thing:-- if a man was shot at when he was young (ex: JFK and G. Bush, Sr.in WWII), those men have been reluctant to take us into a war that is unnecessary. But those who dodged combat (and nobody joined the National Guard in 1968 except to dodge combat)--those who somehow missed their share in the combat action of their youth-- have been quick to want to go to war as President to prove their manhood."

"I got elected to Congress in 1967 and I went to Vietnam because I wanted to see what my friends were doing there. I came back to the U.S. after my third visit in 1971, and I found John Kerry-- silver star, bronze star, three purple hearts-- organizing vets to speak against the war, just as you men have walked today to demonstrate against the war, in a misty rain,. because this war is wrong."

"We are an occupying power in Iraq. We are destroying our military establishment in trying to occupy and build a new nation. If we were young Iraqis, do you think we would welcome a government put in power. by the shock and awe firepower of the U.S.?"

"In 1971, it was deemed unpatriotic to be against the Vietnam war, but after seven years of conflict, the American people rose up to stop it. For this war, it shouldn't take us that long! We have an election on November 2nd where we have the chance to elect a true war hero, a man of strong and resolute leadership!"

In closing, McCloskey urged the crowd to go to the "battleground" states to make sure that everyone who is for Kerry gets to the polls. "I learned a very simple lesson when I was opposing the Vietnam war-- it's not the people who are for you who make the difference, it's the people who actually vote!"