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Dozens of protesters gathered in Philadelphia on Saturday to demand that Pennsylvania’s U.S. senators, Dave McCormick and John Fetterman, take action to bring an end to the U.S. and Israel’s joint offensive in Iran, which ignited last month.
Protesters held signs reading “Stop dropping bombs on Iran” and “His war, your kids” as they marched from the respective senators’ Philadelphia offices to converge at City Hall.
“We demand engagement,” Aminah McNulty, 34, said. “We demand our elected officials to speak for the people, and we are saying one thing. That is, ‘End the war.’”
Around 50 people marched from U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick’s office in Center City Philadelphia to City Hall in protest of the U.S. war on Iran on Saturday, March 21, 2026. (Emily Neil/WHYY)
The West Philadelphia resident attended the protest as a member of Philadelphia Prayers for Peace Alliance, one of the organizing groups. Others included CODEPINK Philadelphia; If Not Now; Indivisible Philadelphia; Peace, Justice, Sustainability NOW! and the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
State Sen. Nikil Saval, D-Philadelphia, and state Rep. Chris Rabb, D-Philadelphia, who is running to represent the 3rd Congressional District in this spring’s Democratic primary, spoke at the City Hall rally.
Neither McCormick nor Fetterman responded to a request for comment. In early March, both senators voted against advancing a war powers resolution that would require congressional approval for U.S. military attacks on Iran.
On Friday, President Donald Trump said he was considering “winding down” operations in the Middle East, even as the U.S. has sent thousands of additional troops to the Middle East and U.S., Israeli and Iranian airstrikes continue.
More than 1,300 Iranian civilians have been killed in the conflict, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, and at least 13 U.S. service members have been killed since the war began.
More than 1,000 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon, according to Lebanese authorities. Fifteen Israeli civilians have been killed by Iranian airstrikes, and two Israeli soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon. Four Palestinian civilians were killed in an Iranian airstrike in the occupied West Bank.
In Iraq, 60 people have been killed, and in the Gulf states, at least 20 people have been killed in the conflict.
Faramarz Farbod, an Iranian American and a professor at Moravian College in Pennsylvania, decried the airstrike on a girls’ school in the town of Minab in southern Iran. Carried out on the first day of the war, it killed 165 to 180 people, according to Iranian authorities, mostly girls ages 7 to 12, and injured almost 100 more people.
“When we talk about opposing war, this is what we mean,” he said. “Not strategies, not geopolitics, but children, hospitals, children under fire, under rubble, cities under fire, people under rubble.”
Around 50 people marched from U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick’s office in Center City Philadelphia to City Hall in protest of the U.S. war on Iran on Saturday, March 21, 2026. (Emily Neil/WHYY)
Evidence from multiple investigations suggests the strike was carried out by the United States, while President Donald Trump has denied responsibility and said Iran was responsible for the attack.