“We got a pretty lucky break,” she said. “It’s not a school-sponsored event but it worked as amazing publicity for us.”

And, in an effort to ensure the protesters’ safety, Zeig-Owens estimated that six Cambridge Police Department officers escorted the students to the Yard.

“Security felt that they were well on their way to expressing themselves and having a meaningful experience,” said CRLS Assistant to the Principal Michael L. Young. “Personally, I just wanted to make sure it was a worthwhile experience.”

Himmelstein said she was impressed with the number of CRLS students who turned out to protest with a range of other groups.

“It was a really nice sense of community,” she said. “I really liked the diversity of ways that people were thinking about the war that were represented by the speakers.”

Other Cambridge locals put together their own smaller protests to voice opposition to the war.

All-around Cambridge activist Eli Yarden said he was mobilizing a group of local residents in the Green Party to protest what he called “Bush’s War.”

“I just see it as an unfortunate turn in American foreign policy to neo-imperialist policy,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that we don’t have an anti-imperalist party in the United States.”

—Staff writer Claire A. Pasternack can be reached at cpastern@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Susanne C. Chock contributed to the reporting of this story.