More than 500 cities, villages, towns around the United States are organizing protests for today. Activists are calling for nationwide walkouts, strikes and protests. Yesterday, dozens of people were arrested in Washington while staging antiwar protests in the nation’s capital. Over 200 demonstrators marched from a park near the White House to War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s house in northwest Washington. In Boston, police arrested 36 people in two antiwar protests at a federal building and outside the Boston Stock Exchange. During a midday march to the United Nations in New York, 45 antiwar demonstrators were taken into custody and charged with disorderly conduct.

In Britain, activists are calling on workers to stage a mass walkout from offices and colleges around the country. In Australia, thousands walked out of their homes, schools and workplaces to protest the U.S. invasion. Some 40,000 gathered in Melbourne, and at least 20,000 in Sydney. In Germany, 50,000 school students marched from Berlin’s central plaza, past the guarded U.S. Embassy and through the Brandenburg Gate.

And as we went to air, we heard about arrests taking place locally in New Jersey.

Hours before the bombs fell, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said it was regrettable that war would soon begin. He reported to the Security Council that Iraqi disarmament of weapons could have been verified in a matter of months, had the U.S. not attacked Iraq. And U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the council he would soon present proposals to deal with humanitarian emergency, to deal with what he described as an “imminent disaster.”