Friday, May 26, 2006

The power of grassroots organizing

Starting today, the beginning of Memorial Day Weekend, many of us in the blogosphere will begin to deploy toy soldiers as part of a war against war. These soldiers will be tagged with a variety of anti-Iraq war slogans.

This peaceful protest is intimate, and designed to get into people's hearts and minds. Because it isn't strident, angry shouting, because it is muted, it becomes more eloquent. The whimsy of using toy soldiers is poignent at a deep level, because most of the soldiers who are deployed in Iraq, or who will be deployed to Iran if the Bush Administration plows forward, are children who have barely begun their lives. Too many are coming home with limbs missing; too many have come home in body bags.

Like Viet Nam, the soldiers are not the enemy. The administration run amok is the enemy. Many of our Viet Nam veterans continue to suffer from severe mental anguish. I hear stories from men I know who served; my son-in-law never knew his father who was MIA in Nam, and whose name is on the Wall in Washington.

Please join us. Deploy troops. Bring our young soldiers home.

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