- President Bush doesn't need to be in town for the Salt Lake City mayor to protest against him. Rocky Anderson will speak at a peace march and rally on Saturday, and has sent out an e-mail encouraging others to join him.

The rally (it starts at Pioneer Park at 11 a.m. with a march to City Hall) is one of several anti-war demonstrations happening throughout the country that day.

Anderson's e-mail was sent to the hundreds of people who wrote or called the mayor to complain about or cheer his protest of the president while Bush was in town last month to speak at a Veterans of Foreign Wars conference.

The e-mail was part explanation of why Anderson thought it was appropriate - even his duty - to protest the president, and part rehash of the mayor's beefs with Bush.

Those complaints are many, from the war in Iraq, to federal deficits, to tax cuts for the wealthy, to Bush's opposition to increasing the minimum wage.

"Speaking out in this manner . . . is the way a democracy is supposed to work," Anderson wrote. He said people who called him unpatriotic "fail to distinguish between a theocracy and a democracy. President Bush works for us."

Anderson again took issue with Sen. Orrin Hatch referring to last month's protesters as "nutcakes," calling it petty.

To his critics: "Their view is that I should have had the decency to just keep quiet. That's not going to happen."

hmay@sltrib.com