“My mother is in Kuwait right now because of this and she’s been gone for almost a year now,” said Tyana, 17 at this morning’s rally before leaving for school. She and dozens of activists with her braved cold and drizzle at 7am to occupy Market Street at Montgomerey on the anniversary of the Cheney-Bush reigeme’s bloody occupation of Iraq.

Students, people with family members in Iraq and a representative of the Unitarian Church’s “School of the Americas Watch” were arrested by police soon after occupying a busy intersection with signs, photo images taken of US troops abusing and humiliating their prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and a mock prison where people shackled themselves together dressed in the notorious hoods and coveralls of the US military’s Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

By 9:30, police had secured the area by issuing quasi legal threats and using a few boxes of the plastic handcuffs that hurt and resemble trash bag cinches.