Weekly War Protest

So there was an article in the Wednesday paper saying that there was going to be a weekly war protest on the town square from 6:30-7 every Thursday night. The girls were a little pooped from a day of swimming, so I went alone and Bret stayed home with them.

Sabine and Birch helped decorate the sign I made. I rode my bike to the town square with the sign in the adapted "Burley" bike carrier. As I was riding to the square I heard the sounds of the Town Square Shoot Out ("a lively reenactment of frontier justice on the Jackson Town Square, in what is the longest, continuously running shootout in the country!" Oh my.).

I arrived at the southwest corner of the square (in front of the new elk antler arch) just before 6:30 and saw...no protesters, but LOTS of tourists...hmmm...Feeling rather conspicuous with my big sign (it's roughly 3'x3' and mounted on cardboard), ARMY T-Shirt (go brother Timon) and "Bush Lied Troops Died" pin (thanks, Granny Jean), I was pleased to see my friend Jim (who happens to be a Vietnam Vet). He wasn't there for the protest -- he just comes to the town square to people watch during the summer, but he was kind enough to hang out with me until another protester arrived. Gotta love these small towns -- it was Estella, who I used to work with at the Ski Corp (now JH Mountain Resort). She and I were standing by the elk antler arch chatting about the war and her grand kids, when another woman, Melanie, showed up. The next to show up was Tat, the organizer (who had been doing some cooking with her kids and lost track of time!). So the 4 of us stood, talked, and...protested.

We got a thank you from a Navy doctor and his father -- the doctor had just returned from deployment in Okinawa -- where he was not eligible to go to Iraq, but felt that he would probably be going to Iraq in a year or so. We wished him safety.

We also got lots of looks from tourists...like how dare we remind them of such...ugliness...when they were trying to enjoy their vacations. Sorry to be the buzz kill...but over 3,000 US soldiers will never have another vacation (not to mention the anguish their families suffer) and the thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths and displacements. Yeah, I guess that would be a bummer to realize on your vacation.

BTW, I am a librarian, so I have to give credit for my sign idea, as well as my statistics. I found the Pro-Life idea (and many other good ones) here (it originally said "And you thought he was pro-life!" but I didn't have enough room for that...I now realize it might have been confusing to some, like I was saying I was Pro-Life, but oh well...it got people's attention). My stats for casualties came from here (US) and here (Iraqi).