Minnesota Independent photo by Chris Steller

A day’s wait brought relative quiet for antiwar activists who locked themselves to a pair of military recruiting office doors in Minneapolis Friday. Without much reaction from police or recruiters (at least as of early afternoon), the protesters took advantage of heavily trafficked Washington Ave. SE to spread their message.

Minnesota Independent photo by Chris Steller

On Thursday similar “lock downs” at several metro area recruiting stations, including Washington Avenue’s, sparked lively standoffs and in at least one case ended with police cutting protesters free and issuing citations.

But on Friday, members of Students for a Democratic Society and the Peace and Justice Committee at Macalester College experienced hours of relative quiet outside the U.S. Army and Navy recruiting stations near the University of Minnesota campus.

Minnesota Independent photo by Chris Steller

Sporadic conversations with passersby and occasional police drive-bys punctuated a somewhat sleepy atmosphere on the shady side of a campus-area street that carries more vehicular and pedestrian traffic than the average Minneapolis thoroughfare.

Minnesota Independent photo by Chris Steller

The contrast was especially marked with a similar action last year, when the same groups’ lockdown at the same location coincided with a street protest on the anniversary of the Iraq War, said spokeswoman Leigh York, who was herself arrested yesterday at another recruitment office in Brooklyn Center.

Minnesota Independent photo by Chris Steller

York said the two women and three men arrived before the side-by-side recruiting stations’ 8 a.m. opening today and locked themselves to both doors. U-shaped bike locks bound door handles to protesters’ necks at each office. Connected by chained arms between them were three more protesters.

York said those locked down and as many as a dozen supporters (including a medic) in attendance were prepared to stay the day at least if left undisturbed. Voluntarily unlocking would be a group decision, she said.

Supporters offered water and hand-fed bites of banana to protesters as the day wore on.

Passersby stopped to argue or encourage. “Get a fuckin’ life,” said one.

The protest, which York described as “public civil disobedience and direct action” was meant to disrupt recruiting for a military involved in what she called “imperialist and profit-driven wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”