Anti-war Protesters Use Phone, Fax and E-mail in 'Virtual March'

Anti-war protesters traded marching shoes for phones, fax machines and computers Wednesday as part of a “virtual march” on the nation’s capital. Senators, regardless of their position on a war with Iraq, were barraged with calls, as was the White House. Outside calls to Democratic and Republican Senate offices could not be completed because of busy circuits. “We will let our fingers do the marching and demand that our voices be heard,” said Tom Andrews, the national director for Win Without War, the group that organized the protest. Andrews said about 400,000 people had registered through the group’s Web site for the call-in campaign. “Well over 1 million phone calls were made in just eight hours by people from every state in the country” on Wednesday, he said. “Every senator’s office and the White House switchboard received at least two and often more calls per minute.” The office of Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., received more than 800 calls in a nearly four-hour span Wednesday morning, about twice the number of calls it usually receives. Durbin has opposed unilateral action in Iraq. Durbin’s spokesman Joe Shoemaker also said his office had received 18,000 e-mails since Tuesday afternoon, more than five times the number it typically gets. Full Story