Outraged by the civilian casualties from the war on Iran, protester Guido Reichstadter scaled the 168-foot Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. He remained on the bridge for over five days. Upon descending, he was arrested and charged by law enforcement for trespassing. Reichstadter says he undertook his protest as a form of nonviolent opposition against both the Trump administration’s war on Iran and the unchecked acceleration of artificial intelligence systems — some of which have been used by the United States military to select targets for deadly missile strikes. “We the people, in whose name these murders are being committed, we’ve got the power and the responsibility to nonviolently withdraw our support, our cooperation, from the system, from the regime,” he explains. Reichstadter is a former U.S. Marine who left the service after refusing to deploy to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. He is now an outspoken social justice activist and the founder of the grassroots coalition Stop AI.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Democracy Now! | Radio Free (2026-05-11T12:35:28+00:00) Meet Guido Reichstadter, the Marine Veteran Who Scaled D.C. Bridge to Protest Iran War & AI. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2026/05/11/meet-guido-reichstadter-the-marine-veteran-who-scaled-d-c-bridge-to-protest-iran-war-ai/
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