yeah, but i see that there were flags there and that some people made poster with refs to the stars and stripes. same thing. i dig the corporate flag, myself. i stuck makeshift cutouts on mine!
<...> things were so much more grave, so different the day the Gulf War started. Our meeting was impromptu; we called each other in the early morning hours and met in a student lounge somewhere on campus.
i was a little late, but some of the old timers from Vietnam protest era were there. they were giving us the low down on what might happen were we to continue to protest in front of the recruiting station. their voices were serious and hushed. we had a vote about whether to move to the Post office across the street from the recruiting station where we'd been protesting. protesting in front of the recruiting station would get us arrested. should we do that just yet? (the unemployment office is conveniently next door to the recruiting station.)
a ball of anxiety welled up in my stomach and i swallowed hard as I listened to the recitation of the law and the consequences. i was afraid. my son was little. he'd been protesting right along with me, many days, saddled in that trusty back pack in the months leading up the the Gulf War. my step son was in Saudi Arabia. my then husband--much older, more conservative, more old-fashioned--was not pleased. he put up with my other activities. this time it was different. this time i had a kid. this time... he never said much, but i could see the look in his eyes.
i cried. i didn't know what to do.
ahhhh fuck it, i thought to myself, what's your problem. you laved down on the ground in front of the troopers pointing guns at you in order to stop a nuke dump siting commission. you took a chance then. why not now? my son...what about my son. can i bear being in jail? will my husband leave over it? he's already having a hard time with my going to college.
i sat in that bathroom and silently wept a little more. confused. thoughts racing through my head. plagued by the urgency to return and not make a scene. besides, my son was out there. i couldn't take too much time.
i brushed myself off. people were waiting for me. when i got back to the lounge where our group was huddled, people were talking in low voices. only a slight moment of silence followed quickly by words of encouragement. words of kindness: we understand the risks you take; it's ok to be afraid.
there was a stash of flags: people borrowed themf rom their parents. others just had them around. someone who worked for a printer made some teeshirt flags in huge sizes to wear over our winter bundles, so we could look like patriotic michelin tire men.
we'd already discussed using them. because we knew.
we knew that the days prior to day the bombs starting dropping on Baghdad had been days filled with horns honking and people cheering us on as they drove by the protest site. a lot of people were opposed to guns for oil. but, we knew. we knew that the support would evaporate, though I don't think i had any idea how quickly. with a step son in the army and having given many speeches about how I came to my decision, i thought there'd be more understanding, more support for us, more antipathy to what the US was doing. at least a little more fear.
so we all took off to our selected protest site, intent on meeting back up and doing what we'd been doing every day for months. i parked a block a way, up north main street. i tucked my son all snug in his snowsuit and secure in the trusty back pack and slung him on. we walked along the familiar old main street of my childhood. "roots in the past, hope for the future" signs say every so often. i sneer at them: another PR kampaign dreamed up by the chamber of commerce. ahead i could see small sea of blue pea coats and capped heads sprinkled with some flags, some quite large. they were in front of the post office. i was a little stunned to see so many protesters and flags?!
as i got closer, the knot in my stomach returned. the crowd was composed of men in their 40s-70s, men who normally sat on barstools at the American Legion and VFW.
I walked through the sea of thronging blue pea coats and caps, their stars and stripes snapping tightly every so often as a wind whipped upward. Did they know who I was? Did they wonder, "Who is this woman with her kid and her flag?" I don't know. I'll never know what they thought, but it sure felt good to know that they didn't have the upper hand that day as I linked arms with Ruth and Jim, a long time activist couple in their 70s. During the Vietnam War Ruth and Jim and their kids shat on the Courthouse steps in a small town where they put signs on Main St. that say, "roots in the past, hope for the future."
kelley