It was cold.

It was snowing hard.

But more than 500 people stood in Lafayette Park today.

Protesting President Obama’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The action was sponsored by Veterans for Peace.

After hearing from Daniel Ellsberg, Chris Hedges, Dr. Margaret Flowers, war vets and peace activists, they marched.

Single file.

Around the Park.

To the White House.

Where police arrested 135 of them, put them on two DC city buses, and shipped them off to jail.

Most were charged were disobeying a lawful order and were fined $100.

Forty demanded a trial and will find out tomorrow when their trial dates will be.

Single payer activist Dr. Margaret Flowers linked the lack of health care in the United States with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Educating and organizing for single payer national health insurance and against the wars have not done the job, Flowers said.

“Our country has gone completely off track,” Flowers said. “We need to end this. We have tried the traditional tools. We have tried educating and organizing. While these tools are important, they are not sufficient. They have not been sufficient. I call on all of you. If you love this nation. If you desire peace. If you want to see jobs, education and health care. If you want to see us lift our people up, we must stand together. The veterans are showing us the way. But today is not enough. Today is the beginning. We must grow until our voices are heard and we cannot be ignored.”

Iraq vet Crystal Colon said the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were doing “nothing but damage and harm.”

“Soldiers are coming back from these wars killing themselves and doing drugs,” Colon said. “We need to take a stand. No more. These wars need to end. And the only way they are going to end is for veterans and soldiers to take a stand and say – no more. We are not doing this anymore. We are not dying for political greed and corporations.”

Iraq Vet Mike Prysner – co-founder of March Forward – said that the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq cost over $700 million a day.

“This is a crime — while so many of us are hurting. We can spend $700 million a day better than bombing people that we have no reason to bomb. We could spend $700 million a day rebuilding those countries we have destroyed. We could spend $700 million a day caring for those veterans when they get home. We could spend $700 million giving every single person health care, a college education, a job, a livelihood and a home. That’s what we need to spend our money on.”

“But this government is not going to do that. They are not going to end the wars. Because it’s not our government. It’s their government. It’s the government of the rich, of Wall Street, of the oil giants, of the defense contractors. And the only language they understand is shutting down business as usual. And that’s what we are going to continue to do until these wars are over.”

“People ask me what do we do? We all know things are bad. Do we vote? Do we support a politician? Join an organization?”

“It’s simple. We fight. And we fight. And we fight. We shut down our workplaces. We shut down our schools. We shut down the streets. We shut down business as usual. Until we force the people in there to do what the people out here want. We will fight until there is not one more bomb dropped, not one more bullet fired, not one more soldier coming home in a wheelchair, not one more family slaughtered, not one more day of U.S. imperialism.”

Chris Hedges gave a speech on hope.

“All who resist, all who are here today, keep hope alive,” Hedges said. “All who succumb to fear, despair and apathy become an enemy of hope. They become agents of injustice. Those who resist here today with non-violence are the last thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration. Hope is not comfortable or easy. It is not about the right attitude or peace of mind. Hope is action. The more futile, the more useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion, the more potent hope becomes. Hope never makes sense. Hope exposes the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state.”

“If we resist and carry out acts, no matter how small, of open defiance, hope will not be extinguished. If all we accomplish today is to assure a grieving mother in Baghdad or Afghanistan, a young man or woman crippled physically and emotionally by the hammer blows of war, that he or she is not alone, our act will be successful.”

At the end of his talk, Hedges recited from memory WH Auden’s poem — September 1, 1939.

“Defenseless under the night, Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light, Flash out wherever the Just, Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them, Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same, Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.”