Somebody explained to me that each of the little blue flags had a while label with the name of a Californian soldier that had died in Iraq on it. People were taking one of them and then lining up to take a turn reading the name of that person on the PA.



I decided to chime in. Standing in line was a short but quietly reflective experience.

  

I read "Sargent Lawrence J. Carter" and it was only a few steps later that Grannie Ruth wanted me to put my flag in her bucket. It was a while before I stopped wondering what there was to know about Carter.

  

The dead Californian soldiers were respected as individual names. I remember Mike telling me that his image of Iraq is a burly Marine with "IRAQ" tattooed across his chest in big, fancy letters lying on a bed in a stateside hospital. He has bandaged stumps where his arms and legs had been before those and most of the flesh on his face got blown off by a roadside bomb. He survives because we have made a science out of keeping people alive if at all possible, but he will never again be what he was before that day. He is only one of 23,417 (so far). Don't get me started on the Iraqi civilians...

     

     

There were also memorials to our fallen. I think Larissa died in Kenya as an activist on a Global Exchange mission.

     

  



When Barbara announced that we had read all of the names she passed the mike over to Karen who said "It took us about half an hour to read the 3211 names of the Californians who had died so far. Yesterday the Mountain View Voices for Peace read the names of all the Americans who had died, and that took about four hours." Then the Raging Grannies led us in a final song.