Antiwar Protesters In 20 Major Cities To Rally Saturday

Demonstrators will rally tomorrow in Boston and 19 other major cities to demand immediate and total withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from all of Southeast Asia.

Members of the National Peace Action Coalition are sponsoring the action which was planned last July at a conference in Los Angeles.

The local coordinators are the Greater Boston Peace Action Coalition (GBPAC), the Student Mobilization Committee (SMC), and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).

Demonstrators in Boston will gather in Copley Square at noon and march to the Boston Common bandstand where the main rally will begin at about 1:30 p.m.

Post Denise Levertov, who recently returned from North Vietnam, and

Russell Johnson of the American Friends Service Committee will be the main speakers. James Metzger, guitarist, and John Perrault, singer-song writer, will provide entertainment.

Teresa Gillett, vice-chairwoman of the National Episcopal Peace Fellowship and a staff member for GBPAC, said yesterday that the post-election date for the nationwide action was chosen because, "Regardless of which way the election went we had a cause to raise"--either to demand that Nixon withdraw troops or, if McGovern had won, to demand that Nixon begin implementation of McGovern's policies during his Jame duck period.

She said that the demonstration would provide a chance for people who have been working in electoral policies to "get together on the issue of peace again."

"We want to alert people to the fact that war is still going on," Gillett said.

She added that the emphasis of tomorrow's rally would be on total troop withdrawal rather then just ceasefire. "It's too easy for a cease-fire to be-broken while big military build-ups are still taking place in the area," she said.

Gillett said that she could not estimate the number of people expected at the rally. "It's-impossible to get any feel for what the size of that demonstration might be," she said