"The other night in New York at a Cindy Sheehan event, we were handing these out and I gave a packet to one of the mothers there. She recoiled. She said, ‘My son's in Iraq. I can't take those. I used to hide them from him.' But you know what she said then? She said, ‘Keep going. But keep going!'

"People get very excited about putting them in places and then other people find them. The other day we got an email from a cop who had found one in the Federal Courthouse in New York and he was so moved he wrote us."

New Orleans Evacuee: She's holding up a bright red sign that says, "New Orleans Evacuees for Peace." Erica Smith is twenty-five, a law student at Loyola in New Orleans. ("We've been relocated to the University of Houston law school.") "I've probably met about ten people from New Orleans today and I've had lots of people come up to give me a hug.

"I was planning to come to this anyway. But with what happened in New Orleans, well... I was lucky, I live uptown and my place is on the third floor and a friend had a key and checked. It's okay. But all of our National Guard troops were off in Iraq instead of rescuing people here. Instead of being here to help out, they were off making problems in the rest of the world."

Mother and Son: As we circle back toward the Mall, we pass a mother and son standing on the sidewalk. She's holding what, for me, is the most striking sign of the day: "No Iraqis left me on a roof to die." Her twelve year-old son, Muata Hunter, holds a sign too. It's simple and eloquent. "No war." Just as I approach them, a young black woman comes up to ask (as I was about to do), "Is your home in New Orleans?"

"No," the woman answers, "but my heart is. It's my people."

She's Aziza Gibson-Hunter, a local artist. "I've been thinking and thinking," she says, "trying to figure out how to make my people understand the direct correlation of this war and our well-being and I just thought this put it succinctly."

Her son shyly tells me that he made his sign that morning. "I just think war shouldn't be done. War isn't necessary. My uncle's been in war and my cousin Jimmy was in Iraq."

His mother adds, "He made it back."

Tam Turse is a photojournalist working in New York City.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War.

Read other columns by Tom Engelhardt 

Recommend this article...

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto:

Be first to comment this article

Write Comment

Please keep the topic of messages relevant to the subject of the article. Personal verbal attacks will be deleted. Please don't use comments to plug your web site. Such material will be removed. Just ensure to *Refresh* your browser for a new security code to be displayed prior to clicking on the 'Send' button. Keep in mind that the above process only applies if you simply entered the wrong security code.
Name:
E-mail
Homepage
Title:
BBCode:
Comment:
Code:*
	I wish to be contacted by email regarding additional comments

Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.4