Oct 20, 2007

Driving the peace point home

Peninsula caravan organized to protest war

By Mark Abramson / Daily News Staff Writer

Anti-war activists piled into their vehicles Friday afternoon and drove up and down El Camino Real to spread their message of peace and to urge the government to withdraw from Iraq.

The peace procession started at points in Burlingame and San Jose and ended with two caravans meeting up at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Palo Alto, where former CIA analyst and outspoken Iraq war critic Ray McGovern spoke. He blasted the Bush administration.

"Be disgusted, but don't be discouraged," McGovern said. "You know (the war) was based on lies."

Some of the peace activists McGovern addressed were veterans; others had lost loved ones in the war; and some just wanted to speak out against the country's involvement in Iraq.

"The whole idea is to keep it in people's consciousness that people are dying over there and we don't have much to show for it," said Mike Caggiano, president of Peace Action of San Mateo County.

Other procession participants included Veterans for Peace and Gold Star Families, which counts as its members people who have lost loved ones in the war.

The vehicles in the procession displayed signs with anti-war slogans such as "out now" and "no blood for oil." Some of them were adorned with black ribbons to memorialize those who died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. A count by organizers indicated that 43 vehicles took part in the procession.

Sandi Spires and her 9-year-old daughter, Rhiana Ferguson, of Sunnyvale, were among the peace activists. Rhiana came along because she is also against the war, Spires said.

"I can only hope that it gets through to people," Spires said.

"I think it's a good idea," Rhiana said. "No blood should be spilled for oil."

One of the speakers at the procession's Palo Alto rendezvous was Mountain View resident and Gold Star Families member Karen Meredith. She shared her experience of losing her only child, Army 1st Lt. Ken Ballard, in Iraq.

"Most people in this country are not affected by the war," Meredith said before the procession. "I look around at people and wonder how often they have to think about the war. For me it's every day, every minute that I think about it."

Meredith said she was initially told that a sniper shot her son, and it took more than a year for the military to tell her the truth about his death. Ballard was killed when a machine gun on a tank accidentally went off.

"If I can stop one more family from experiencing the phone call I got on Memorial Day 2004, that's why I do what I do," Meredith told the peace activists.

Former Army National Guardsman Stephen Edwards, of San Jose, survived running over an improvised explosive device in December 2004. He told the audience he has survivor's guilt because he lost three friends in Iraq.

"I applaud you for being here and doing this," Edwards said.



E-mail Mark Abramson at mabramson@dailynewsgroup.com.