Rocky still at it - organizes protest to Bush's Utah visit

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Some habits transcend political office.

Rocky Anderson, Salt Lake City's outspoken former mayor, is organizing a peace and human rights rally to protest President Bush's fundraising visit to Utah next week.

On Wednesday, Anderson will join Daniel Ellsberg (of Pentagon Papers fame), an Iraq veteran and a mother of a serviceman killed in the war at a 5:30 p.m. public protest at Washington Square - the grounds surrounding City Hall.

"I hope this will be an enormous rally reflecting a nonpartisan call for an end to the immoral human rights violations that are characteristic of totalitarian governments," said Anderson, who now runs the Salt Lake City-based nonprofit High Road for Human Rights Advocacy Project.

"It's so important that there be voices of conscience. I felt like we had a responsibility to give people a forum to speak out."

High Road dubs the event a gathering of active citizens "saying 'no more' to disastrous war, deceit, domestic spying, unconscionable and illegal kidnapping and torture, flagrant violations of the Constitution and crimes against humanity."

It will be emceed by Troy Williams with music by Rich Wyman.

Bush will be in Utah on Wednesday, along with Mitt Romney, to appear at fundraisers for presumptive GOP nominee John McCain in the capital and Deer Valley. The president also is to meet Thursday with the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

As mayor, Anderson held multiple Bush protests at City Hall in addition to appearing at rallies in Washington, D.C., and across the country.

He will be joined by Ellsberg, author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, who Anderson calls "the greatest voice of conscience in our nation's history."

Marshall Thompson, an Iraq veteran and peace activist who walked the entire state of Utah calling for withdrawal from Iraq, will be there. So too, Kathy Snyder, the mother of a serviceman killed in Iraq and author of Not Another Mother's Son Should Die in Iraq.

Members of Salt Lake City's MoveOn.org are organizing a second event, scheduled for 6 p.m. at Library Square to the east of City Hall.

It is dubbed the "Bush-McCain Challenge." Residents will be invited to take a quiz to try to distinguish policy and key quotes between Bush and McCain.

MoveOn, which is setting up the "challenge" in cities across the country Wednesday, compares the quiz to the Pepsi-Coke soft-drink challenge. The quiz also is available online at http://www.bush-mccainchallenge.com.

"We'd welcome them to set up a table," Anderson says.

djensen@sltrib.com