Top Pun at Toledo "No War in Iran" Protest
This last weekend I participated in two protests as part of the national Day of Mass Action to Stop War on Iran – February 4, 2012. On Saturday afternoon, about 15 to 20 people gathered outside the Defiance County Courthouse in Defiance, Ohio. This anti-war protest was sponsored by the Defiance County Citizens for Change and Occupy Defiance. It was certainly difficult for me to resist participating in an act of defiance of war in a city literally named Defiance! On Sunday afternoon, about 30-some protesters gathered at the corner of Secor Road and Central Avenue. This no war in Iran protest was a special edition of the Northwest Ohio Peace Coalition’s weekly protests against war has been going on since the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003. A call to action and endorsement by Occupy Toledo helped bolster the usual numbers of the unusual suspects.
Both days were beautiful February days thanks to global climate change. In an unrelated observations, there were large numbers of internal combustion vehicles passing by at both locations. There was an overwhelming friendliness to our antiwar message, maintaining a very positive ratio of at least 10 to 1 of honks for peace versus middle fingers and angry screams out of the window. Of course, there were plenty of blank stares and averted gazes amongst the silent majority. Hopefully, those people who were not even looking outside the car window, busily texting, were telling their friends and enemies to come down and join the protest. I would note that this is a big change from the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003 when the NWOPC weekly protests began. At that time, with the run-up to the Iraq war and the shock and awe beginning of the so-called war, the American people seemed patriotically supportive or oblivious to our wars and their implications. At these weekly protests, at the beginning of the Iraq war, there were a large number of motorists hurling angry epitaphs at us for protesting the war.
A few days before the Iraq war started, a couple dozen or so of us were arrested protesting in front of the Toledo U.S. Army recruitment center. Eight or nine of us went on trial a few weeks later, and during jury selection I was amazed to witness that the majority of jurors could not even state an opinion regarding the war. Obviously, most Toledoans, probably fairly representative of Americans, were either not paying attention and/or didn’t really care. I hope that today, after a decade of drumming up and fighting what is openly billed as an endless war against terrorism, that the American people are beginning to realize that the so-called new war against terrorism is really just the same old war that has been fought since the beginning of humankind, or human unkind as the case may be! One of my favorite quotes shown in the peace sign design to the right, demonstrates the futility of war: “You can no more win a war than win an earthquake!” May we truly take this to heart and not fight merely to end a particular war but to end war itself.
