Finding My Voice

March 19 marks the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Many events are planned throughout the United States, and the World… vigils, peace marches, and non-violent protests. Soapbox Poets for Peace is issuing a NATIONAL CALL TO ACTION for Poets of conscience to come to D.C. on Wednesday, March 19th, armed only with poems of peace, witness, truth, mourning and outrage. Over the next nine days, we will be using this blog to add our voices to the growing crescendo, calling for an end to war and a return to peace and justice… the thoughts, words written, and events attended these past five years – while tens of thousands of men, women, and children have met their death through no fault of their own. We must end this craziness.

Finding my Voice
January 18, 2003

I was a young mother in the 1960’s, married to a recently graduated chemical engineer. He was just beginning his upwardly mobile climb in the world of giant corporations and had received draft deferment through his employment with a major chemical company. Since I had no friends or relatives in the military, all that I knew of the Vietnam War was what I read in the newspaper headlines or saw on television. We lived in the southeastern corner of Texas - not exactly known for liberalism or radicals, especially the long-haired kind wearing Birkenstocks and carrying peace signs. I still believed that my country followed a moral high ground, and trusted that my president and his administration were doing what was best for our country and the world. While tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians were being killed in a country I knew little about, and while other twenty year olds were being jailed for taking part in sit-ins and protest marches, I teased my hair into a beehive, joined a garden club, played duplicate bridge, fed babies, and dutifully played the role of career-enhancing wife.

I ironed clothes while I watched Martin Luther King Jr. on TV giving his famous “I Have a Dream” speech before a crowd of 200,000 people in Washington D.C. I was impressed by what he said, but looking back now I realize he was way ahead of me. It has taken me years to realize the truth in what he said on that day. It took almost three decades before I found the passion and the courage to stand alone in front of my local post office in 1990, to protest the First Gulf War. There were supposed to be others, but I was the only one who showed up carrying my handmade antiwar sign. It occurred to me that I could just quietly leave and no one would know the difference - but in my heart I knew I had to stay. I was there to do more than protest the Gulf War - I was doing penance for the years I had lived in comfortable American ignorance while wars and covert military actions were taking place.

With full knowledge that a corporate vice president’s wife protesting on a busy street corner might stir up unwanted controversy in my husband’s career, I stood my ground for an hour. I didn’t make the newspaper or appear on the nightly news. I didn’t get jailed. Only those folks who passed me on their way to and from the post office, knew of my silent protest. The Gulf War took place anyway; the whole world watched it on their television screens, minus the blood and horror of dying innocent people. We were Top Gun. But while my protest was not successful in deterring the war, it did make a difference in my life. I was once again that young girl who spoke out against injustice; who spoke up for fair treatment and refused to apologize for my impassioned words, when I believed them to be true. The phrase “She hath a tongue with a tang,” was written under my graduation picture in the high school yearbook because of my fiery words to a teacher in defense of another student. For too many years that tongue had been silent.

Bob and I often reflect upon our individual Gulf War protests. While I stood alone in front of the post office, he and three others stood in front of the county Court House receiving jeers and crude remarks from passing motorists. We laughingly say that we were destined to get together. Now we will join others in another protest against another war. When will this ever end?

Tomorrow’s posting will describe the January 18, 2003 Peace March.

... P. L. Morningstar
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