Just over 13 hours after the United States and Israel attacked Iran Saturday morning local time, community organizers took to Los Angeles City Hall to protest the attack, with some calling the attack a violation of international law, the U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Act. 

Gathered on the steps of City Hall at 2 p.m. on Saturday, about 200 people came together to protest the U.S.-Israel missile strikes in Iran, calling for an end to U.S. involvement in international war and for the funding used in the strikes to be reallocated to citizens.

“We came out today to say that the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is a continuation of a long set of wars for oil, wars based on lies and wars that will not help the people of America but are actually going to hurt us,” said Kameron Hurt, a speaker of the event and Party for Socialism and Liberation member.

The protest was organized by several community organizing groups, including PSL, 50501, Democratic Socialists of America and Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. 

President Donald Trump justified the strikes in a Sunday morning address, saying they were necessary to maintain U.S. national security interests and that the Iranian regime posed “imminent threats” to the U.S. and its allies.

Aida Ashouri, an Iranian immigrant running for L.A. City Attorney said in an interview that she recalled hiding from bombs in her grandmother’s basement as a child, while living in Iran. Ashouri said she finds it “insulting” that the U.S. government is posing the strikes as an attempt to help Iranians, despite U.S. bombs killing at least 200 Iranians, as of reports Sunday morning.

“They think of those people as fodder for them to build up their message that they’re trying to save the Iranian people,” Ashouri said.

Of those confirmed to be dead, at least 165 killed by U.S. and Israeli bombs came during a bombing of an all-girls school in southern Iran on Saturday. The attacks escalated on Sunday, as Iran launched retaliatory attacks on Israel and other Persian Gulf countries. The U.S. military reported on Sunday morning that at least three American troops have been killed in these attacks. 

Ashouri is just one of the over 140,000 Iranians in L.A., home to the largest concentration of people of Iranian descent outside of Iran. 

Ashouri said she came to make people aware that the U.S. government’s involvement in Iran goes back years, including sanctions before Saturday’s strikes. U.S. involvement in Iran began in 1953, when the U.S. and British intelligence agencies overthrew Iran’s prime minister.

“The best thing for Iran is to advocate for removing the sanctions that are penalizing the people of Iran, that are economically impacting them, making it harder for them to survive, and so they can’t actively participate in their politics,” Ashouri said in an interview.

Along with removing sanctions, Ashouri said she is against U.S. involvement in the Iranian government as she said it has isolated the country, made it harder for it to be included in global diplomacy and “objectifies” the people of Iran, who have held widespread protests against the Iranian government since late December.

“We are not children. We are able to protest, advocate for ourselves and we don’t need someone telling us what to do,” Ashouri said. “There is this subliminal, moral high ground that they’re trying to make by saying [they’re helpingIranians], as if they have any right to tell people what to do or protest.”

Award-winning actress and activist Jane Fonda and L.A. mayoral candidate Rae Huang were two of the speakers who led cheers and speeches denouncing U.S. strikes in Iran. Other speakers connected the protest to other recent protests against U.S. involvement in Palestine and Venezuela as well as ongoing United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity throughout the country. 

“It’s so important right now that we really make the connections between what’s happening in Iran and actually what’s happening here in the city and what’s happening in our country,” Huang said in an interview.

Hurt said the protest wasn’t solely focused on Iran, as PSL’s broader goal is to show how many social issues, such as homelessness and health care, are interconnected.

“As a Black American, I actually have a duty to connect the struggles of our people here to the struggles of immigrants who live next door to us, to the struggles of people around the world who are going through very similar things,” Hurt said. “If it’s our country funding the bombs, then it’s the people of this country that need to stop it.”

Miguel Camnitzer and Daryn Copeland, members of Jewish Voice for Peace, the largest Jewish organization supporting Palestine, said they came because they see the protest as part of the larger effort to unite common causes.

“This is about us being part of a larger movement where we’re trying to unite both with anti-war and what’s happening here at home,” Copeland said in an interview. 

The protest ended after Hurt’s speech around 4:30 p.m. The crowd left the steps shortly after the last speech. The L.A. Police Department was not present at the protest, although L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement on Sunday that “LAPD has stepped up patrols near places of worship, community spaces, and other areas of the city.” 

National demonstrations against the Iran strikes are planned for Monday. An L.A. protest is set to begin outside City Hall at 6 p.m., according to a PSL Instagram post.