In the 1960s and ’70s, a good-sized group gathered every Saturday morning in front of Town Hall (the current Spruce store next to Restoration Hardware). Week in and week out, they protested the Vietnam War.
Estelle Margolis, on the bridge.
Since 2005, a much smaller vigil has taken place on the Ruth Steinkraus Cohen Post Road bridge. For over 300 Saturdays, several folks have held a “peace vigil” to draw attention to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Estelle Margolis was there 40 years ago. She’s still working hard for peace. This Saturday from 11-11:30 a.m., she says, “we will ‘celebrate’ the 7th anniversary of our peace vigil, if celebrating is an appropriate word for this serious mission.”
She adds:
We have failed to generate an influential peace movement in this country. I believe it would be different if we had a draft. We do get a lot of honks of approval on the bridge for our message: “End the Wars, Bring the Troops Home!, Get Out of Afghanistan, NOW!”
We will commemorate 7 long years on this Vigil. We are sick about the time we have been trapped in these two countries. President Bush created a living hell that is now 10 years old.
After 10 years we are still in Afghanistan at the insistence of President Karzai, who is known to be corrupt and untrustworthy. We support this fake “democracy” with our troops lives, financial aid and weapons while the Afghans make huge amounts of money exporting heroine. The latest figure estimates over 300,000 acres of poppies are planted every year….
The scene on the Ruth Steinkraus Cohen Bridge, several years ago.
How many horribly wounded young people could we have saved with a serious nationwide peace movement? How many lives? Over 6,000 dead and over 40,000 wounded. Over 400,000 who are in need of help from the Veterans Administration and a record high number of suicides among returning vets. How many more will there be? What have we done?
Come join us and lend your voice to the call for peace.
