During the course of the day I would
pick up one bean and tell somebody else "all of my tax dollars are only
a
small percentage of the money that went into this bean." Then I would
point to the whole stack and say "this is how many tax dollars have
gone into the Iraq war so far." We would give people flyers like the
following to take home and think about.
I still wonder why the USA needs to spend as much on military as the
rest of the world put together...
What I remember about
the day were the comments people made to me. One guy looked at the pile
of beans and said "I don't care beans about it." A number of people
said something like "those tax dollars go to me." I guess they were
federal employees, or maybe employees of Lockheed Martin or some other
government contractor. Late in the afternoon a guy came by and told me
"a bad day in
Blacksburg, VA isn't as bad as a normal day in Bagdad." It put the days
headlines about the campus massacre (33 dead, including the gunman) at
VT in perspective.
A few days later the following article was in the Mountain View Voice:
It was in the left
column on page 5 of the Mountain View Voice for 4/20/2007. My only
correction would be that Frances didn't mention Mike, John, Lois, and a
few other friends that helped out.
