The United States and Israel launched an attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran early Saturday morning. The strikes were reported to have killed hundreds, including Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
On Sunday, IndivisibleNeers organized a rally on King Street to oppose further action against Iran. App State students and Boone locals gathered to show frustration with the attack carried out without congressional authorization.
“Our troops, American troops, are being sent back to the Middle East by a president who claimed to not want to start any more wars,” said Alexis Carr, a freshman theatre major and the director of communications for IndivisibleNeers.
The public was made aware of the attacks through a video released by President Donald Trump on Truth Social the night of the attack. According to President Trump, the attacks were carried out because of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s support of “terrorist militias” and domestic human rights abuses, and called upon the Iranian people to “take over your government.”
Carr said she was skeptical of Trump’s rationalization of the attacks.
“I don’t think we’re getting the whole story here,” Carr said. “The end goal isn’t to free Iranians, it’s to get control.”
The rally took place at the Veterans Memorial, which honors service members from Watauga County who have lost their lives in wars dating back to the Revolutionary War. IndivisibleNeers placed a wooden coffin in front of the memorial to represent the soldiers who would lose their lives if the attack on Iran were to grow into a full-scale war.
Brian Juno, a Vietnam veteran who has lived in Watauga County for almost 20 years, spoke at the rally. He warned an unwinnable, unjust military operation will quickly spiral. Juno said that modern technology like artificial intelligence and drone warfare would make a hypothetical full-scale war with Iran highly destructive for both sides.
“We’ve got to stop this before it gets out of control,” Juno said. “In Vietnam, it started small, then the bodies started rolling in.”
Jackson Johnson, a Senior Fermentation Sciences major and representative from Boone’s chapter of Revolutionary Communists of America, also spoke at the rally. He compared the operation in Iran to the US 2002 regime change in Iraq.
“The power vacuum is going to be worse than any regime,” Jackson said.
He also called for a general strike, which he argued was successful in ending Department of Homeland Security operations in Minneapolis.
Conrad Ramsey, a Rochester, New York resident who was visiting Boone for the day, also participated in the rally. He said he was compelled to join the protest because of his disapproval of Trump, “not just because of Iran, but because of everything else he has done.”
Ramsey also compared Trump’s plans for regime change to the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq.
“We’re not too good at nation-building,” Ramsey said. “It’s going to cost us so many tax dollars for nothing.”
Charlotte Isenberg, a senior English major and President of the Student American Indian Movement, gave a speech at the rally criticizing U.S. aggression and hypocrisy.
“What do we mean when we ask for peace?” Isenberg said. “A return to the status quo? The status quo is violence. This is not about a war that started yesterday, a year ago, 10, 15, 20 or 40 years ago. This has been here from America’s start. This is colonialism, imperialism, American supremacy and white supremacy.”
During Isenberg’s speech, a passerby shouted “kill ‘em all.”
Many of the signs at the rally made references to the Epstein Files and alleged that Trump attacked Iran as a “distraction” from his alleged involvement in the child sex trafficker’s crimes. Isenberg was frustrated by this, which she saw as reducing a major geopolitical crisis to a U.S. issue.
“People see brown people dying and think, ‘must be a distraction from American politics,’” Isenberg said. “What’s happening now is bigger than just us.”
