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Musicans
play peace songs at rally
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Peace
Rally
Citizens
of all ages gather to remember Iraq War dead;
question rationale of Iraq invasion
By
Karen Clem Fritz
You can bomb the world to
pieces, but you can't
bomb the world to peace -
sign seen at rally
They
stood on their convictions. They were respectful, patriotic and earnest.
Local residents concerned about the merits and the management of the
Iraq War, and the protracted length of the war which has claimed tens
of thousands of lives and resulted in growing disastisfaction among
U.S. citizens, gathered for a peacful rally on Memorial Day afternoon
on the courthouse square in Winamac.
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Peace
rally participants display signs along U.S. 35 on the courthouse
square.
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Organized by recent college graduate Scott Darda of Winamac,
with the help of many friends and supporters, the rally drew a 100 and
more spectators of all ages over the course of several hours.
Many of the passing vehicles on the highway honked or
waved their support. A couple used finger gestures, perhaps to proclaim
their disapproval.
A keynote address was given by local teacher Duane Johansen
memorializing those who have died in the Iraq War. He highlighted the
names and contributions of many of those whose lives were cut short.
Greg Hildebrandt of Winamac spoke briefly, expressing
dismay that U.S. citizens were "misled" into the war for reasons,
such as weapons of mass destruction, an alleged Iraqi connection to
9-11 and other motivations, that subsequent events have shown aparently
never existed.
The rally proceeded without incident. The only interruption
came when four county police officers approached Johansen during his
speech and asked the participants to move off the sidewalk and onto
the courhouse lawn.
Most of the remainder of the rally was devoted to music
performed by several local musicians.
Memorial Day Memories
Keynote Address by Duane Johansen
Memorial Day Peace Rally - May 28, 2007, Winamac, IN
It
is a decent and respectful thing we do today, on this Memorial
Day: a day to remember those who have died. It is right and
good that we should honor those who have died doing what they
think is right for their country, that we should slow down for
a moment to think about their lives and the lives of their families
and friends.
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Police
ask rally participants to move onto lawn
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Today,
I want to honor their memories by not prettying up our language
with euphemisms about those who have "fallen" while
"serving" our country. They have not tripped while
plotting zoning strategies in a town council meeting. They have
died while fighting a war. Let us not focus on the hollow platitudes
of bumper stickers and yellow ribbon magnets.
Let us remember that for each of the dead we memorialize today
that there is another heart that was broken when they heard
the news that they would not see their husband or son or niece
or girlfriend again; that for each of the dead there is another
who cried herself to sleep for two months because her brother
or uncle or cousin or father was coming home not for a celebration,
but for a burial; that there is a teacher or a fiancée
or a best friend or a mother who will never forget that phone
call or that knock on the door or that e-mail when it felt like
the world had just plain, flat gotten it wrong.
It is right and good that we should remember those who have
died, but let us not turn our backs on those others we should
also remember today. Let us not forget those who have died while
giving of their lives in different ways: serving the poor, working
for justice, tending to the needy, empowering the dispossessed,
seeking peace or truth. Let us not forget them, for theirs is
also an honorable and a noble cause.
So, on this day let us remember:
Sergeant Jeanette Winters of Gary was the first woman
to die in Operation Enduring Freedom. The 25-year-old Winters
was one of seven Marines killed when their tanker plane crashed
into a mountainside in Pakistan on January 9th, 2002. Winters,
who loved to play the piano while her father played the guitar,
was following in her older brother's footsteps when she joined
the Corps after their mother's death in 1997. When her father,
Matthew Winters, saw a group of Marines coming to his door,
he thought his son had come home for a surprise visit. The soldiers
were there, however, to tell him his daughter had died. He never
got to play the song he had written for her just weeks earlier.
Paul Douglas, a cameraman for CBS News who died a year
ago tomorrow, died while working on a story for Memorial Day.
Douglas and his colleague James Brolan were killed when a explosive
filled car detonated next to their news van. Douglas, a soldier
turned journalist who was known to be a wicked campfire cook
with a broad smile, had danced to Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful
World" on his wedding day. His wife Linda and his daughter
Joanne heard the song again as his casket was brought into his
memorial service on June 12th of last year.
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Rally
participants acknowledge the waves of passersby
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Elizabeth
Neuffer of the Boston Globe who died on May 9th of 2003
when the car in which she was a passenger struck a guardrail
near the town of Samarra. Neuffer, who spoke four languages
and made a specialty of covering war crimes and human rights
violations said that her philosophy of journalism was that,
"the truth may be hazardous to those who tell it, but [the]
truth is not dangerous, disinformation is."
Carolyn Edwards, a civilian contractor from Montezuma,
Georgia, died on March 27th in Baghdad. Edwards, who worked
for the United States Embassy Billeting Office, was killed when
a rocket struck the building she was working in. Edwards, a
former director for the Milledgeville-Baldwin County Habitat
for Humanity, was only five days away from returning to the
United States for good to live once again with her 18 year-old
son Darius.
Kenneth Fannin from Sunset, Utah was a tow truck driver
for Haliburton-owned KBR Industries. Fannin, who was known to
his buddies in Baghdad as "Lugnut," had recently completed
his Bachelor of Science degree on-line and was seeking to become
ordained as a minister. Fannin, a slender man with a goatee
and a pony-tail, was killed when an IED went off near the convoy
of trucks he was in last February 11th.
Robert
Maynard Hutchins was a former president of the University of
Chicago and the founder of the Center for the Study of Democratic
Institutions, a think tank of scholars dedicated to exploring
many issues related to creating a better world - freedom, international
order, ecological issues, human rights and the rights of women
and minorities. Hutchins, a proponent of the "Great Books
curriculum" said,
The
goal toward which all history tends is peace, not peace through
the medium of war, not peace through a process of universal
intimidation, not peace through a program of mutual impoverishment,
not peace by any means that leaves the world too weak or too
frightened to go on fighting, but peace pure and simple based
on that will to peace which has animated the overwhelming
majority of mankind through countless ages. This will to peace
does not arise out of a cowardly desire to preserve one's
life and property, but out of conviction that the fullest
development of the highest powers of men can be achieved only
in a world of peace.
Marla
Ruzicka was killed by a car bomb on April 16th of 2005 that
also took the life of her interpreter Faiz Ali Salim and the
driver of the car. Ruzicka, the founder of the Campaign for
Innocent Victims of Conflict (CIVIC), was instrumental in getting
Senator Patrick Leahy of Virginia to ask that $10 million of
the $430 billion dollars spent in Iraq go to those Iraqis who
had been injured or displaced by the war. Rolling Stone magazine
said that Ruzicka "stands as a youthful representative
of a certain kind of not-yet-lost American idealism, and darkly
symbolic of what has gone so tragically wrong in Iraq."
She was only 28 years old when she died.
Virginia native Tom Fox of the group Christian Peacemakers
was abducted on November 26th of 2005. A group calling itself
the Swords of Righteousness Brigade, pulled the 54-year-old
Fox and three of his colleagues out of their car in western
Baghdad, accusing them of being American spies. Fox had left
behind his two teenaged sons and his job as a manager at Whole
Foods Supermarket in Reston, Virginia following the September
11th attacks. Fox, who had previously played bass clarinet in
the Marine Corps Band, had worked with the Christian Peacemakers
for two years. On the day before his abduction, Fox had written,
"If I understand the message of God, how we take part in
the creation of this [peaceable] realm is to love God with all
our heart, our mind and our strength and to love our neighbors
and enemies as we love God and ourselves." His body was
found on March 9th 2006. He had been severely beaten prior to
being shot.
Private First Class Joseph Anzack graduated from Torrance
South High School in 2005. A month ago Anzack's family thought
they had lost the 20-year-old, and South High School's marquee
was changed to read "In loving memory of . . . ."
The family celebrated when the American Red Cross determined
that he was alive and well. But, on May 12th, Anzack was one
of three U.S. servicemen abducted by Iraqi insurgents. Anzack
(Joe-jitsu on his MySpace page) loved the beach, football, and
Pantera and just wanted to come home and "find some one
to settle down with." His body, which had bullet wounds
in the head and abdomen, was found floating in the Euphrates
river near Musayyib last Wednesday.
Ralph
Waldo Emerson was the son and grandson of ministers and was,
briefly, a minister and a school teacher. He was also the nation's
leading proponent of transcendentalism, a form of environmentalism
whose main principle is the "mystical unity of nature."
The writer and Harvard grad (he entered when he was only fourteen)
was known as an excellent orator and as a fierce abolitionist
and pacifist. Emerson reminds us that, "The real and lasting
victories are those of peace and not of war."
Army
Specialist Curtiss Carter of Lafayette died in Kuwait during
Operation Enduring Freedom. Carter, who loved fishing and flying
model airplanes, was also a champion rodeo rider. He died from
an accidental gunshot wound from his own weapon on February
27, 2002. Carter, 25, left behind his young wife, whom he had
married just sixteen hours prior to shipping out.
Lance Corporal Jeffrey M. Lucey of Massachusetts joined
the Marines Corps Reserve in 1999, hoping to get money to help
pay his college tuition at Holyoke Community College, where
he was studying to be a police officer. He finished a seven-month
tour, much shorter than the average tour today, in July of 2003.
He was so distraught by what he had seen - and what he had done
- in Iraq that he started drinking heavily, a dangerous mix
when combined with the Prozac and Klonopin he was taking to
combat the depression that had overcome him. Even though his
family had taken care to lock up all the knives in the house,
the hadn't thought about the garden hose. Lucey used it to take
his own life on June 22nd of 2004.
Malachi Ritscher of Chicago had a license plate that
read AKG C 414, the name of his favorite microphone. Ritscher
was best known for his live concert recordings, mostly of local
jazz groups who couldn't afford expensive studios. He played
a mean saxophone, dabbled in watercolors and poetry, and made
his own hot sauce dubbed "Undead Sauce" (secret ingredient?
Pistachio) Ritscher was appalled by the war in Iraq, saying,
"When I hear about our young men and women who are sent
off to war in the name of God and Country, and who give up their
lives for no rational cause at all, my heart is crushed."
On November 3rd of 2006, Ritscher knelt down beside the "Flame
of the Millennium" sculpture just west of the Loop, doused
his body in gasoline, held up a sign saying "Thou Shalt
Not Kill," and lit a match.
Julia
Ward Howe believed that religion was a matter of "deed,
not creed." She and her husband Samuel housed escaping
slaves in their basement while raising their six children. Howe,
writer of the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, is
also known as the founder of Mother's Day in the United States.
In 1870, Howe proposed that there be a special day set aside
for those mothers who had lost a son in the Civil War, saying,
Arise,
then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant
agencies,
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and
patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of
another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with
our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the
balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons
of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great
and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the
dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace.
In 1868,
General John Logan, the National Commander of the Grand Army
of the Republic, inspired by his wife, proposed that there be
a day set aside at the end of May to remember those who had
given their lives in the Civil War. General Logan realized that
war was such a painful event that it should be only a last resort,
saying, "As long as I saw a chance to avert war, I voted
and worked for peace."
Do what you will to memorialize these men and women. Say a prayer.
Sing a song. Shed a tear. Hold your child closer to you. Stay
quiet for a moment or two. Then, go home and honor their memories
by working to make this country, this world, our community,
a better place for all of us. Let us live the words of John
F. Kennedy:
Peace
does not rest in the charters and covenants alone. It lies in
the hearts and minds of all people. So let us not rest all our
hopes on parchment and on paper, let us strive to build peace,
a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace in the hearts
and minds of all of our people. I believe that we can.
(Note:
Johansen did not read the entire speech at the rally)
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