I'd wanted to live highway blog today, but my son has baseball practice and my husband's at the Giants game, so I had opted for driveby freeway blogging while my kids (11, 9 & 8) were in school. (New to freeway blogging? http://www.freewayblogger.com/)
My newest good buddy, Shesh, joined me on a freeway blogging trek to the Crosses of Lafayette. We hung two banners facing southbound 680 on just before the 24west turnoff. The skyway we used has a view of Walnut Creek BART station. The first banner is in the photo:
The second banner, just next to it said: "US and Iraqi kids priceless". Then we headed toward the Crosses of Lafayette. These have been widely covered in the media. Before we got there, we stumbled upon a student demonstration -- in Lafayette (where the Upper Happy Valley looks down upon the Lower Happy Valley) !! Students from the local high school walked out to claim peace. See Katherine Tam's coverage (nice job!) in the Contra Costa Times http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_5793516. Now, we were not freeway blogging on behalf of www.Crosses4Peace.org. We were asserting our right to free speech -- certainly more critical to democracy than a billboard's right -- as individuals. Anyway, as the article mentioned, we happened to join the demonstration with an extra banner and two white crosses asking, "More War? call your Rep 1-202-224-3121" just before the police broke up the scuffle, but before the media left. My appreciate to Katherine Tam for including us -- even the website! And can I add how encouraged I am every time I see high school kids speaking out against this war. It is they, after all, who'll likely be drafted if we don't drastically and decisively change course.
We hung another banner over eastbound 24. This was the first time anyone ever said anything to us. As we were walking onto the pass over, she asked if we knew it was illegal. Shesh asked, "walking?" We ignored her, kept walking, and finally hung the banner. It's modeled after the http://www.moveon.org/ bumper sticker which says, effectively "END THIS WAR" (it says"ENDLESS WAR", but LESS is replaced with "THIS")
We finally made it to the Crosses of Lafayette memorial. Shesh cried, too, just like I did the first two times I saw it.
We added two more crosses.
To our pleasant surprise, even after we took the time to stop for driveby food before heading home, the "END THIS WAR" sign was still there.
No comments:
Post a Comment