New York State Marches for Peace

Pete and I drove up to join the Utica wing of the walk on Sun., Mothers Day.  There was nine of us at the start of day, About half the amount of the Ithaca walk, but it’s not a competition between the three walks, right –}} Anyway  the three wings will join up on Wed to head up together to Ft Drum.

Two women were from the small  towns on the North side of Oneida lake they stopped walking after a few miles saying the would see us at 6pm at the potluckat the local UU Church, our end point for the day.

We continued with six walkers and a support vehicle for the rest of day.  We had many interactions with people as we went past. One women came walking up to us from her yard, With great emotion she told Jim and I that her son had been just deployed to the War for the second time. she blessed us and thanked us and say we need to end this war and bring our boys home. two teenage kids were playing golf who we passed around 3 pm shouted out to us, “hey you passed our house this morning, where you walking to”. When they heard we were walking to Ft Drum to support the IVAW they seemed  sincerely impressed.

Not every encounter was so nice. We had stopped outside a local restaurant to decide if we would eat lunch there around noon. As  we were trying to decide what to do a man drives up, jumps out of his car and begns yelling it us. “What the hell are you doing outside my store with those damn signs. You can’t protest in front my store. We tried to explain to him that we weren’t protesting but walking to support bringing the Vets home he didn’t really hear anything we were saying. We just left rather than argue with him, some members of the walk, especially Pat and Bob from Utica were very upset. ” We should write a letter to the local paper saying what just happened. We are not the bad guys, all we want is peace.

As we staggered into the parking lot of the UU Church around 5pm. to be honest, I was in the support vehicle by that point with pretty bad back spasms, we congratulated each other on our 15 mile walk for peace, a job well done.

The dinner at the local UU Church was great, but more so the welcome and hospitality of the six UU women who made the food and took care of us. The talk after dinner was intense, Wally, from Military Families Speak Out talked of his two sons who had been to War, some of what they had seen and gone through and his transformation from a pro military suburbanite into an  anti-war activists. He said ” I never liked people like you, now I am one of you for life”. John, a Native American Indian elder spoke of the sweat lodge and the healing ways of the native people. He volunteered to do a sweat for the walkers the next night when they stayed at his place and spoke of similar walks the his Onondaga people have done, sacred walks he called them

If anyone can walk, even for part of a day, it goes on till sat, I really encourage you to make the effort. Give Jim a call to find out where they are  Jim  518 859-5873