That white thing is a list of all the soldiers who have died in Iraq to date, as of the time we were setting up this event there were 2504 of them. Each of the Californians was also represented by a dog tag.

After a while Karen Merideth began a reading of the names of the Californians who had died in Iraq.

Every page or so someone else took over the job. We stood quietly and listened. I got to thinking about how each of those names represented another community of at least a hundred people. Generations of stories coming to an end in some far off event. Probably I would never have heard those names without the Iraq conflict.

After the reading we brandished our signs at the passing cars and talked for a while.

About the time the sun went down we went our separate ways...