Demonstrators Rally in the US and Europe Against NATO Summit

On Wednesday, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Madrid, the United States and many other European countries this week to call for peace and protest against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Calling the U.S.-led military alliance a threat to peace, demonstrators decried the brutal acts carried out by NATO, asked for the scaling back of military alliances, and spoke up for peace.

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On Wednesday, protestors gathered around the central Madrid plaza of Tirso de Molina, just blocks away from the Prado Museum, where leaders of NATO were holding its gala dinner. The rally chanted slogans, condemning the alliance's aggression.

"Many, thousands of people are demonstrating today in Madrid for peace, for a multilateral world so that Spain can live in harmony," said Jose Luis Centella, president of the Communist Party of Spain.

"The new NATO has certified that it is willing to intervene outside the mandates of the United Nations charter, as was done in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya," said Willy Meyer, a representative of the state platform for peace in Spain.

A non-stop 24-hour peace rally was carried out both online and offline from Saturday to Sunday by antimilitarist and pacifist organizations including "World Beyond War" and "International Peace Bureau." The rally spoke up for peace and cooperation, the cutting back and dismantling of military alliances.

"It is beyond time to address the unavoidable crises of nuclear risk, climate collapse, hunger, and homelessness, rather than manufacturing crises for the benefit of weapons dealers," according to the organizer of the event. "The military machine has done nothing but destruction," said a protestor who joined the rally in New York.

The tweet reads, "The procession of the Communist Youth starts the demonstration against NATO in Atocha. The organized revolutionary youth remain at the forefront of the break with the EU and the armed wing of its imperialist policies: NATO."

Jacques Cheminade, chairman of France's Solidarity and Progress party, recently made a social media appeal, urging France to step out of NATO's integrated command, and comparing the alliance to a "crazy train." The party also held a meeting Tuesday evening at its office in Clichy with the theme "NATO summit in Madrid, a threat to the security of all."

British anti-war organization Stop the War Coalition engaged over 30 local groups to hold anti-war protests in London and Glasgow on Saturday. Lindsey German, the group's convenor addressed the 100 strong crowd paying particular attention to NATO's role in driving the conflict in Ukraine.

"When you hear that NATO is a movement for peace that is a lie -- it is a movement for war," he said. The way to deal with the Ukraine crisis is not to increase the threat or war, said the organization in an article titled "The masters of wars gather in Madrid."

"The NATO powers still fear fighting it directly with Russia because the danger is this will drag them into a much larger war between nuclear powers. So their strategy is to engage in everything but direct military conflict with Russia," it said.

"None of this will make Ukraine safer," said the article, adding "it does not serve the interests of working people around the world, but increases the profits of the masters of war who provide the arms and the governments who facilitate them."