March 20, 2003 - Anti-war leaders in the United States urged Americans to show their opposition to U.S. military strikes against Iraq by participating in walkouts and protests nationwide. The call came as a wave of anti-war protests began to roll across Europe after the opening salvos of the war sparked angry demonstrations in Asia and Australia.

U.S. ORGANIZERS, many of them veterans of past protest movements, described the scale of what was planned as far larger than anything seen in the United States since the Iraq war debate began last year.

"Most of us have pledged resistance and there will be massive civil disobedience all across the country," says Jody Dogg of Women's International league of Peace and Freedom.

In Washington, D.C., the Shirts Off Coalition called for a march of resistance on Thursday.

The movement's previous predictions of a massive public rejection of the war option have not materialized, with opinion polls showing that support in the United States for a war even without U.N. consent has only grown since the New Year.

However, antiwar activists have mobilized very large protests on several occasions this year, particularly in Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Seattle.

For the first day of war, Gordon Clark, an activist with Iraq Pledge of Resistance, said acts of civil disobedience had been organized in more than 50 cities, with protesters well aware of the risk of arrest.

Protest plans include larger demonstrations, classroom walkouts, blocking main roads and highways to peace encampments in front of local federal office buildings or in the middle of university campuses and of course, peace marches.

Some protesters reportedly are also planning to target military installations and recruiters - a particularly dangerous tactic in a country shaken by the attacks of Sept. 11.

At Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., about 1,000 students have pledged to boycott classes on the day the war begins.

In San Francisco, protesters plan to disrupt traffic in the financial district with cars and bicycles. Some other local groups pledge to hold "die-ins."

ANSWER - Act Now to Stop War & Racism - one of the nation's largest anti-war coalitions, says it plans mass demonstrations in major cities, including Washington, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In New York, ANSWER will muster its forces at Times Square and stage an impromptu march through the Theater District.

PROTESTS AROUND GLOBE
The protests were part of anti-war demonstrations around the world. Some of the global protests Thursday included:

In Melbourne, Australia's second largest city, some 40,000 anti-war protesters brought traffic to a standstill barely three hours after the first U.S. missiles struck Baghdad. Thousands also marched on the U.S. Consulate in Sydney.

In Berlin, Germany, 50,000 school students marched past the guarded U.S. embassy and through the Brandenburg Gate. The crowd whistled and chanted and carried banners saying "Stop the Bush fire," "George W. Hitler," "No blood for oil." Bigger demonstrations were planned for later Thursday in the capital and in dozens of other towns and cities. Some 5,000 students were also demonstrating in Cologne.

In Paris, France, the U.S. embassy was barricaded and surrounded by police ahead of a planned protest later Thursday.

In Athens, Greece, nearly 10,000 people, including many schoolchildren, marched to the U.S. embassy.

In London, anti-war campaigners blocked roads, boycotted schools and workplaces, and began gathering in public places. "I am surprised how quickly the protests have kicked off," John Rees, of the umbrella Stop the War Coalition, said as he dashed to a gathering in London's Parliament Square.

Anti-American sentiment was stronger still in Muslim Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan, where many saw the attack as the beginning of an American campaign to subjugate the Islamic world and seize control of oil.

In Pakistan there were scattered but peaceful rallies across the country against what some called "American terrorism."

Indonesia's biggest rally was in Jakarta, where 2,000 people from a conservative Muslim party sang and chanted anti-American slogans outside the heavily fortified U.S. embassy.

U.S. PROTESTS WEDNESDAY
On Wednesday, scattered protests across the United States drew crowds in the hundreds.
Some 200 demonstrators, some wearing red dye on their faces and clothes to represent anticipated Iraqi civilian casualties, blocked rush hour traffic as they marched from a park near the White House to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's house in northwest Washington.
John Parrish, 44, of Silver Spring, Md., called the president's stance on Iraq "absurd."
"Making a pre-emptive strike sets a bad example to the rest of the world," said Parrish. "What if Pakistan did a pre-emptive strike against India? They can say, 'the United States does it, why can't we?'"

Demonstrators were arrested after sitting down on the street in front of the White House and blocking entrances to government buildings in other cities.

Another 27 protesters were arrested after climbing over a temporary metal fence. Other protests were staged in New York, Boston, Utah, Chicago, Minneapolis, Ohio, Delaware, Maryland, Detroit, Wisconsin, Arkansas and Nevada.

In New York City, protests in downtown Manhattan Wednesday drew about 300 people.
Calling it a "Code Pink" emergency, nine women wearing nothing but pink masks stopped traffic. The women also had pink paint covering their private parts.

In Atlanta, about 30 people gathered in heavy rain just before midnight, quietly holding signs that read, "War is not the answer."

In Washington state, several hundred people showed up at peace demonstrations in Seattle and Olympia. Eleven protests were arrested when they refused to leave a mall at closing time.
In Salt Lake City, protests gathered outside the federal building following the initial strike on Baghdad and said they plan to camp out there indefinitely.

In Raleigh, N.C., about 50 people gathered outside the state capital to protest in a chilly rain.

Chaitra Keshav, an intern in international news at MSNBC.com, as well as The Associated Press contributed to this report.