Protesters against the Syria regime assembled outside the 16th annual Arab American Day Festival in Garden Grove Saturday evening.

About 150 protesters chanted against the Syria regime, while seven raised their voices in support of it.

The protests not only attracted Syrians, but the Arab community as well.

"Not only are people that are suffering in Syria Muslims, there's Christians also," said Mohammed Al-smadi, who is of Jordanian decent and one of the organizers of the protest. "It's not a matter of religion, it's a matter of a whole nation suffering under one regime."

Al-smadi said Sunni Muslims are being targeted at protests in Syria.

Protesters chanted in Arabic and English, "Free, free Syria, down, down with Assad," while raising megaphones, flags and shoes. Protesters against the regime took off their shoes toward the Syria regime and Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria.

"In our culture, when you give someone their shoe, when you say they're the son of the shoe, that's like the bottom of the bottom," said Omar Ayloush, who of Lebanese, Syrian and Mexican decent and also one of the organizers of the protest.

Even so, protesters taking off their shoe and holding it in the air wasn't the only symbolism there.

Protesters against the Syrian government. Photo by Alvin Kim / Daily Titan Photo Assistant

Protesters against the regime sat down, still on two feet, chanted softly in Arabic and slowly started to raise their voices louder as they made their way up and jumped in the air in unity.

"They've seen in Syria there's a lot of protests that have a lot of charisma," Ayloush said.

"For example, a lot of Syrian ‘desenters' would huddle up together, hug each other and start dancing while they protest, just to add more charisma into the protest," Ayloush added.

There were pre-Assad regime flags, the current Syrian flag, the Palestinian flag and the American flag being waved in the air. The current Syrian flag was waved to show pride of being Syrian and to show no fear of showing their identity, and the American flag was waved to show their pride as American citizens, Ayloush said.

"As Americans we have a duty to show our solidarity, our support for people who want freedom and democracy, the same freedom and democracy we have here," he said.

"We are not Syrian only. We are a diverse group of people here. The majority of people here are American citizens. We are also proud to be Americans," Ayloush said.

However, some people who are against the Syrian regime felt too threatened and intimidated to come.

"Some people that clearly work for the other side are taking pictures of people here, so that they can take it, send it back home for some kind of identification," Al-smadi said.

He called it an intimidation move.

"Some of the officials that work together, they try to identify the activist outside of the country so they can punish their families inside," Al-smadi added.

On the other side, seven protesters who are in support of the regime held the Syrian flag with Assad's face added and a sign that stated "God, Syria and Assad, we love you!"

"(I was) told they were going to protest against Assad and I said no. I didn't know about this until I came (for the festival)," said Philip Bishara, who is in support of the Syrian regime.

The nonviolent protest lasted for two hours.