[Update: While we're waiting (see below), here's the Washington Post account of the vigil/march tonight outside the currently unoccupied White House. And here are some pix from around the country, interlaced with heavy sarcasm, courtesy of the Brad Blog.]
I went to the PDX peace vigil this evening. I was on the north side of the Hawthorne Bridge. It's really difficult, under those circumstances, to get a handle on how many people were involved. There were a lot, though. Lots of support from cars--and TriMet buses!--passing over the bridge.
Note to other participants: Was it me, or did it seem to wind up early? I wonder if being spread out thin along bridges, as opposed to massed in a crowd, caused the sense of participation to fizzle a little early?
I have the same problem with cameras that I have with pens: Give me a nice one, and I'll lose or break it within a week. Give me a cheap disposable one, and the thing will last longer than the Pyramids. So I don't have any photos to show from the vigil--yet. I buttonholed a couple of nice people with digital cameras who promised they'd email me some photos for you. When they arrive, I'll post them. Thanks in advance to my volunteer photographers.
And none of the local media seems to have filed reports on the vigil yet. I'll get something up when they start checking in--probably tomorrow evening.
Two of my prospective volunteer photographers asked me to sign postcards to my Senators, to be hand-delivered to their offices Monday morning. I prefer original composed notes to pre-written ones, but these had room for my remarks, and the two people, associated with the First Unitarian Church Peace Action Group, were very nice. So I had the cards, but read them over and saw that words to the effect of "get our troops out of Iraq now" were pre-printed on them. So as nicely as I could handed the cards back (but still asked them if they'd like to contribute some photos). I objected to the Iraq war before there was an Iraq war, and I think it's been a disaster for everyone but the terrorists-in-training. That being said, I'm still looking for another alternative to support--not forging blindly and stupidly ahead on the same failed path, but not bailing and leaving the region to civil war. I still don't know what that is.
On the same subject, and while we're waiting for all this to come together, here's a post by Billmon at the Whiskey Bar, on why he didn't go to the DC vigil but would do it differently on reflection --although that bumper-sticker summation doesn't really do it justice. He makes a point that should make a lot of Americans really uncomfortable: Apart from the damange this war is doing in Iraq, it's corroding what should be best about America and Americans.
As a nation, we may be so desensitized to violence, and so inured to mechanized carnage on a grand scale, that we're psychologically capable of tolerating genocidal warfare against any one who can successfully be labeled as a "terrorist." Or at least, a sizable enough fraction of the America public may be willing to tolerate it, or applaud it, to make the costs politically bearable.It's a dark and complicated argument. Check it out, then check out your conscience, then check back here for update on the PDX vigil.
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