Despite rainy weather a crowd of about 15 gathered in Heartside Park today to protest the ongoing Occupation of Afghanistan. Organizer Stelle Slootmaker said Its been 8 years since the US began bombing Afghanistan in retaliation for 9/11, too many innocent families have been killed, too many troops have been killed in Afghanistan. The cost has been to high in human lives and in our tax dollars. Originally the demonstration was to be a march but the group chose to spread out through the city and pass out information about the cost of the war. The group passed out orange leaflets with statistics from the National Priorities Project that has estimated the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at $479.2 million dollars to the residents of Grand Rapids. The leaflets go on to show what that money could have gone towards in Grand Rapids, such as providing health care for 180,159 people for a year. Demonstrator, Nick Manes said I feel that in the 8 years nothing has been accomplished and the current administration will accomplish nothing further by sending more troops. Its time to get out, it was a long time ago.