Alone and Unobserved

I’ve been following the Cindy Sheehan story with interest and a great deal of sympathy, so when MoveOn announced that a vigil was being held right here in Salt Lake City to support Cindy’s cause, I was very excited. Things started up at 7:30 pm in front of the City & County building with five minutes of silence. We gathered in a loose circle as the various photographers and cameramen wandered around taking touching pictures of us. Then those who felt like it were invited to step forward and share their reasons for being there. My favorite reasons (paraphrased):

• “I am a normal, conservative, middle-aged woman from Middle America. I’m just like hundreds of thousands of other mothers all across the country who have decided to support Cindy Sheehan and ask for the end of the war. I want Bush to know that we are normal, normal as anyone, but he doesn’t have us anymore. We aren’t buying into the lie anymore.”
• “Over 25,000 Iraqi civilians have now died in Iraq as victims of this war, compared with 1,800 US citizens. If the numbers were reversed, how would we feel?”

I also greatly appreciated the mothers and family of Iraqi soldiers, Marines and veterans who spoke, as well as the man who accompanied himself on the guitar while singing a very entertaining anti-Iraq-War song.

After the first half-hour group discussion, the evening kind of fell apart for a while. Many people left, thinking it was over. Those of us who remained walked to the curb of State Street right across from the courthouse and held our signs up for passing cars. At 10:00 we participated in a newscast for CBS 2News, which was fun.