Unpublished letter to Newsday

Dear Newsday:

I also went to the anti-war demonstration in Washington D.C. on Saturday, September 24th. Unlike Stephanie Baum ("Some differences, but not about war" 9/25/05), I did not at all find myself surrounded by "tattooed freaks and hippies and radicals." To the contrary, I met ordinary people who could have been my neighbors. Here are the people I met along the way who participated in the march: a husband and wife who work in publishing in Manhattan, a young woman in her twenties who works in a cheese shop in Brooklyn, a woman, originally from Texas, whose father was in the military, a professional man from Rockaway, a Kentucky military mom, a professor from George Washington University, a New York City teacher, a woman from Minnesota whose daughter teaches on Long Island, a college student, a woman from Wisconsin who came on one of 50 busses from Minnesota and Wisconsin, a number of senior citizens, even some children. Most people I talked with came on their own or with a family member and were not part of a group or organization, although some were also part of peace groups or political clubs. The people I met along the route were every day people who wanted our boys brought home to safety and wanted our resources used to benefit Americans. Most touching was the woman from New Orleans that I met in Penn Station who said she couldn't go to the march because she was a recent evacuee, but she liked my sign which said, "Money for levees, not for war."


To read the article in Newsday which prompted this letter, go to
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uswar254442421sep25,0,1453414.story