'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

YARD-SIGN UPDATE: At the end

YARD-SIGN UPDATE: At the end of a post last Sunday, I wrote that I was going to put yellow-ribbon bows onto the two peace signs we have in our front yard. I did that, Monday. They looked pretty good, I thought. Wednesday night, the signs got uprooted yet again.

These are really pretty and effective signs, that have been designed and sold at cost by the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice. They have white writing on a blue background. One side says "Stand up for peace". The other says "Say NO to war." CCPJ is already well into selling the second thousand of these signs, and if you drive around our hometown you'll see them on many, many front lawns.

Our home has a prime frontage onto a busy crosstown street. Thousands of cars drive past each day, and when the University of Virginia is in session we have hundreds of pedestrians, joggers, and cyclists walk along our sidewalk each day, too. It's a great place to have pro-peace signs.

Since I first put peace signs out in mid-January, they have been stolen, broken, defaced, or punched through on at least six occasions. For a while, after CCPJ had sold its first batch of 1,000 and before the second batch came in, I had to replace the stolen or broken signs with handmade ones. (And I can tell you that 'Magnum' brand supposedly permanent markers do NOT keep their hue when subjected to severe snowstorms.) Later, however, I built up a back-up supply of the CCPJ signs in my garage, and would simply replace the signs that got stolen or defaced.

For some reason, yesterday morning, when I saw that the signs had been taken away yet again, I felt sick to my stomach, and more violated than I had on any previous occasion. Maybe that was because I'd personalized them with the four hand-made yellow bows. Anyway, I felt quite fed up, and started thinking that maybe having the signs simply stuck into the soil near the sidewalk meant they were just too easy for hostile passers-by to interfere with. (Previously, I'd considered, and quite rejected, the idea of electrifying them somehow.) But maybe, I speculated yesterday, I could suspend them, instead, from some of the tree-branches that hang over the property beside the sidewalk??

So this morning I walked along the sidewalk with the dog to scout out the possibilities. Yes, definitely some very likely looking branches there... But as I walked, I looked down into the little stream that girds our property, some 20 feet below the road -- and there they were! My beloved signs, still decked out with soggy looking ribbons: one in the stream, the other beside it. Both a little scuffed looking...

Well, as you can imagine, for now they are firmly back in solid ground, doing their job of quiet peace witness.

But I still wonder about the sad people who feel compelled to uproot, seize, and sometimes deface and mangle these signs. What about those values that the US was built on: free speech, and private property?

And they would do this even to signs that have yellow bows on them?

Yesterday, some pro-war people from around our area staged a counter-demonstration to the antiwar demonstration that CCPJ and its allies have been maintaining every Thursday afternoon for many years, on a busy intersection near the downtown mall. (I was not there at yesterday's antiwar demonstration. But I was there last week, and I noticed at the time that a middle-aged white guy standing across the street seemed to be watching our arrival and arrangements fairly closely... )

Here's how Daily Progress writer Reed Williams described the initial encounter between the two groups yesterday:

Antiwar activists arriving for a weekly demonstration outside the federal courthouse on Thursday found that their stretch of sidewalk had been occupied by flag-waving supporters of war in Iraq.

?Get out of here,? Robert A. Myer snarled. Then the 71-year-old Fluvanna County resident began to taunt a woman toting a ?Say No to War? sign...

Well, it turns out I do know the woman in question. Poor her, having to put up with such misbehavior! But I'm quite confident that she handled the "snarling" and the "taunting" calmly and well.

I also think, poor Robert A. Myer. He must be a deeply troubled man. Does he have a loved one serving in the forces, and is he sick with worry over that person's fate, I wonder? Or what else might be his problem?

Really, we in the antiwar movement have to find good ways to talk to these sad souls. I mean, surely we can find a way to be civil with each other, and to treat each other with respect and empathy, even if we disagree??

Please send me your comments.