Friends to be made at political peace vigils

By Francesca Lo Basso
Collegian Editor
October 11, 2006

Camaraderie is one of those feelings you wrap yourself in at night when you begin to think the world is empty and cold. There’s something to be said for dozens of people huddled together clutching signs and cheap candles, shoulders squared and braced against the encroaching dusk of an autumn night. It’s more than reassuring – it’s uplifting – to know that you’re not alone in your beliefs, that you’re not crazy because you think peace is more than a concept but a way of life to which to aspire.

Something that happens, every time I go to one of these marches or vigils (besides the perfunctory phone call from my mother making sure I haven’t been arrested), is that any discouragement that has been settling on my shoulders over the past few disheartening weeks is lifted. People always ask what a cluster of protestors on a street corner does for the greater good, and I always say it is the greater good. It is as much for us as for the cause.

International Peace Day was Sept. 21; on that day, The Brandywine Peace Community, an organization devoted to peace through nonviolent resistance, arranged a candlelit vigil on the corners of Market and Second Streets in remembrance of those who have died in battle. Coinciding with International Peace Day, Sept. 21 also marks the start of Declaration of Peace Week — a week of protests, marches, demonstrations, sit-ins, lobbying and other acts of nonviolent civil disobedience aimed at Congress to demand they bring the troops home from Iraq. Declaration of Peace Week is a national event with vigils occurring in cities across the country. The campaign calls for a comprehensive plan to end the war to be established. If its not, a national press event will be held to announce the next steps in the campaign to create and activate this plan.

The vigil, followed by a march to the federal building (the office of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-PA) was a success, in so much as a plea for peace can be called a success.

I remember standing there in the beginning of the evening, when the sun was still shaded behind low-hanging clouds and rusting the sky a dull orange, just a few of us shielding small white candles with the palms of our hands, and slowly, as the dim turned to nighttime, I looked down the ever growing line of protestors as more and more candles erupted like little yellow pinpricks of hope in the gloom. Cardboard posters stamped with peace signs and the statement “Bush Won’t Listen; Congress Must Act!” fluttered against lampposts as cars trucked up and down Market Street. And, to my surprise and satisfaction, people wandered out of the Continental Restaurant and the cafés on Second Street and chanted their agreement.

Cars honked and drivers flashed two fingers in peace signs as they passed us. People walking on the street stopped and stood behind us. A teenager crossing down Second Street and over Market unzipped his green hoodie to show a “Bush: American Errorist” T-shirt in silent consent.

These little victories matter. A mother, one of the thousands of such mothers, tearfully talked to the group about the death of her son in Iraq, and I remembered again why I keep fighting. These are not statistics. Not concepts, programs or courses of action. This isn’t a symbol; these aren’t pawns. These are people. These are men, women, sons, daughters, husbands, wives and friends. These people are someone’s neighbor, someone’s childhood sweetheart someone’s classmate. They have names, faces. They have voices that are being silenced by gunshots and explosions – words that look too fake, too pale in thin black ink to convey the weight behind them.

And I think this. And I fight.

lobassof1@lasalle.edu