Around fifty people gathered outside of the City-County building Monday evening to protest the US and Israel’s recent bombings in Iran, specifically the bombing of a girl’s school which resulted in 85 to upwards of 175 casualties.
According to Red Crescent, 555 Iranians have been killed in US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
Since Saturday’s strikes, six US soldiers have been killed.
A helicopter circled above as seven speakers from eight different organizations including ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition, Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and the Pittsburgh Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Coalition among others addressed to the crowd and led them in chants.
The organizers condemned the attacks and demanded the U.S. pull out of Iran, citing the country’s bloody history in the region.
Taylor Goel, a speaker from the ANSWER Coalition and PSL said the US is not involved in Iran to “free the Iranian people,” contrary to what President Trump said the objective of the strikes was.
“Biden, Trump and their rabid Zionist dog Netanyahu, who are committing genocide in Palestine, who slaughtered thousands of women and children in Gaza now,” Goel said. “All of a sudden, pretend to care about the Iranian people’s freedom. So they’re waging another illegitimate genocidal war; and it’s being done in our name, with our tax dollars, with our hard-earned money.”
According to a CNN poll, 59% of Americans oppose the US’s strikes on Iran.
“The war machine doesn’t care,” Goel said about the popular opinion. “Six [US] soldiers already dead, working-class kids sent to kill and die so that oil executives get richer.”
A speaker with the International Solidarity Committee of Pittsburgh, Sid Fritsch, said the war is “unnecessary and unprovoked.”
“This is the cost of war,” Fritsch said. “That people suddenly are tossed into tumultuous times of their lives. That they were going to school, they were raising a family, they had hopes and dreams, and they’re disrupted not because they’ve done anything wrong, not because there was a hurricane or an earthquake, but because men in suits in a small room, far removed from any semblance of democracy, decided that they are going to attack them today.”
Fritsch went on to say the U.S. is violating international law with the recent strikes, referring to the attacks as “shameless and gangster conduct.”
Like Goel, Fritsch said the strikes are unrelated to the freedom of the Iranian people.
A BDS Coalition speaker, Ian Hoppes, brought possible solutions to the discussion.
“I want people to think of the technological might and sophistication that it took to destroy so many lives in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine over the past few decades,” Hoppes said. “I want you to think about the complex infrastructure, technology, logistics and coordination that was required to accomplish all of it.”
“Now, I want you to think about what we could accomplish in this city and around the country, in the world, if those resources were being put not into killing people, but into making human life better — foods that are locally grown and produced, healthcare that is accessible for everybody, and an educational system that doesn’t constantly try to figure out ways to justify war.”
The crowd dispersed around an hour after it formed.
