Give peace a chance
There's big doings for the peace movement in DC this weekend. There's a big march, a concert and a bunch of actions from civil disobedience to congressional lobbying. I unfortunately can't be there because my family needs me here but I think if I was free this weekend, I would have gone. It would have been my first march since 1969 when I walked through Hartford CT in the first moritorium against Vietnam.
I remember it like yesterday. It was the first time I had ever been to the North End, which at that time was the poor section of town. The march was long,covering a couple of miles and thousands of us took to the streets with our black armbands, finally converging for a day long peace festival in Bushnell Park. I was young then and if there were many middle aged people, I didn't notice it at the time but the sense of common cause, the solidarity among strangers has never left me.
Thus I've been wondering about the "new peace movement" that was finally given a focus with Cindy Sheehan's Camp Casey in Crawford this summer. I've been watching the coverage and thinking it's the same folks who inspired a legion of musicians to write songs of peace then, that are at the forefront of the movement now. A piece in today's WaPo leads me to believe I'm right. The half dressed hippie chicks and longhaired boys in tattered jeans have mostly given way to gray haired grannies and families with children but they're the same people who marched with me then and the generation born of us when we traded in our tie-dyes for business suits.
We thought we had changed the world for good and it wasn't just the war in Vietnam. We fought for women's rights, civil rights and other social justice issues and we did make a difference. Who thought we would have to do it all over again 35 years later? Yet here we are fighting for the very same things. It makes me sad and angry but there's an air of expectancy around this event that gives me hope. Those that can be, will be there this time and I'm sure I'm not the only one regretfully attending in spirit only.
I'm a big believer in the power of synergy. We did it once, we know how it's done and we can do it again.
I remember it like yesterday. It was the first time I had ever been to the North End, which at that time was the poor section of town. The march was long,covering a couple of miles and thousands of us took to the streets with our black armbands, finally converging for a day long peace festival in Bushnell Park. I was young then and if there were many middle aged people, I didn't notice it at the time but the sense of common cause, the solidarity among strangers has never left me.
Thus I've been wondering about the "new peace movement" that was finally given a focus with Cindy Sheehan's Camp Casey in Crawford this summer. I've been watching the coverage and thinking it's the same folks who inspired a legion of musicians to write songs of peace then, that are at the forefront of the movement now. A piece in today's WaPo leads me to believe I'm right. The half dressed hippie chicks and longhaired boys in tattered jeans have mostly given way to gray haired grannies and families with children but they're the same people who marched with me then and the generation born of us when we traded in our tie-dyes for business suits.
We thought we had changed the world for good and it wasn't just the war in Vietnam. We fought for women's rights, civil rights and other social justice issues and we did make a difference. Who thought we would have to do it all over again 35 years later? Yet here we are fighting for the very same things. It makes me sad and angry but there's an air of expectancy around this event that gives me hope. Those that can be, will be there this time and I'm sure I'm not the only one regretfully attending in spirit only.
I'm a big believer in the power of synergy. We did it once, we know how it's done and we can do it again.
posted by Libby Spencer at 2:24 PM
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