Virtual War Protest

Gerrie, who has a very pretty new website and blog, had a call to protest back in may. offered to send out many Endless/End This War bumper stickers for people to put either on their bumpers or elsewhere (as long as they were placed legally) as a virtual protest.

This is mine. I took it after shopping at trader joes. i try hard to bring my own bags (thus the target bag and the black bag and several others as well).

What i want to make perfectly clear - i support all of our soldiers in iraq and everywhere else. i just want them to stop dying. i don't think we (the US) went into this really knowing what it was going to be. many of us never really understood why we went at all. we have a base closeby and many of the kids in irene's classes have dads and moms who are over in iraq. when she was in kindergarten, there was a plane that went down that had several men from stead air force base in it. one of the kids in irene's class was potentially on that plane. many of us moms were trying to figure out who they were b/c one of the men who died was the father of a kindergartener. god - that brought it closer to home and just made me so sad. it was NOT the child in Irene's class who lost a dad that day, but there was another kindergartner who DID.

just the other day, irene and her friend were having a rough time together - irene's friend hurt irene's feelings and so her friend, in turn, hurt irene's feelings. i think it ended with "Irene, we're THROUGH!" which is pretty strong for 7 year olds! i got them both out of the pool (which is where this was taking place). irene decided that the two of them should talk it out. and kids being kids, they were over their differences in minutes. later, i tried to explained to irene that it was not okay to hurt someone else's feelings just because they hurt yours. even though you are mad inside, it is SO much better to talk about it - whether that's with your friend or with your parents. then i tried to explain the war to her in those terms. i said "the leader of iraq hurt the leader of our country's feelings. we then, in turn, hurt the feelings of iraq. it escalated and now we are at war. people are not dying trying to make things better. this is just not okay. we need to work hard at being peaceful first within our family. and with our friends. it needs to go out from us. we need to try and be the best people we can be. this is something you will work on for the rest of your life. i *still* have to work at it! but the important part is that we try."

hopefully it will continue to sink in. it's something i often have to remind myself as well. we need to work on our little family and hopefully we can be a ripple in the pool and affect others. because, really, why the heck can't we just all get along?!?