We attended a peace march in downtown Portland on Sunday. It is the third anniversary of the start of the Iraq war and soldiers and civilians are still being killed. We hear all the time about the US soldiers who are killed, but one thing that is not reported in the US press is the number of civilians that are killed in Iraq. Here is a website devoted to just that, with amazing documentation, called Iraq Body Count.
It was a big gathering--we noticed that right away, but we couldn't see just how big as we were part of it. But the march went on and on for blocks and blocks. The police didn't block off the streets! I felt badly for the people whose cars were stuck there while thousands of us trooped by. The police did start stopping the march to let cars go through intersections, which I thought was silly. Why not just redirect? They always blocked off the streets in San Francisco.
When we got home we looked it up--9 to 10 thousand people participated! That's a huge march.
And then to read in the paper this week that Bush has announced that we will have troops in Iraq past his presidency--ARG! Funny how we didn't hear about that before the 2004 election. Hopefully whoever comes in after Bush will have some notion as to how to resolve this whole mess.
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5 comments:
I'm so glad that you were able to attend, Elizabeth! And, I'm so pleased it was a large turnout.
We were unable to attend ours, but drove by and honked and waved.
As to the last part, Sigh. I am stunned speechless. Really.
Thank you again!
I wanted to go in the worst way. My son and i have attended all the peace marches....even when they had the gulf war.
I guess you could call me a pacifist. I hate all war. It solves nothing!!!
OK I will get off my soapbox.
When Bush won reelection I went into a depression. I almost moved to Canada.
Glad to know there are others who feel as I do:)
I was also very pleased that it was a large turnout, Mimi!
We've made it to almost all of the marches since the January one before the Iraq war started. (For the gulf war marches, I wasn't a pacifist yet and still believed that the establishment knew what it was doing....) We've alternated between wanting to move to Canada and thinking that we need to stay and try to help work things out here. Sometimes we're afraid this government is getting too fascist, though, for us to make any difference.
And I absolutely agree with you, Susan, that war solves nothing. Well, it does show who is boss, for those who want that. I don't believe that's solving anything, though. Getting smaller and weaker countries in line is not peace.
Elizabeth, on a side note, Petros went to the declaration of Greek day on Saturday. He was SOOO impressed with your husbands speech.
He said "he spoke better than the greeks."
Petros is pretty hard to impress:)
I could say how old I am, and also opposed the VietNam war, but I will just let that one go.
I am sure the FBI has me on file from way back.
Susan
Susan--Fr. Paul did us all proud! He really did do a nice speech and everyone was telling me how proud they were of him. It was a nice day and a beautiful celebration.
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