"On the way to deja vu." That's what I was thinking
as I headed downtown for our 'Take A Stand' event. Yeah.
Deja vu, dammit. Double dammit. Then, of course, it started
to rain. Great. But then I remembered another event many
years ago; it rained then, too, and the paint ran on some of
the signs we carried. But we kept holding them up, soggy
though they were, and made sure they were seen by as many
people as possible. That was the point, after all. And after
many such events in many towns and cities over seemingly
endless bloody months and years, somebody finally listened,
and they began to let our soldiers come home. Too many didn't
come home, though, and we have already lost way too many in
this new war that should have never happened.
So, we stayed there today, in the rain. And we listened to a
young man who was part of our forces when we invaded Iraq. We
listened as he told of the things he saw and heard and did,
and when he talked about the Iraqi children none of us
pretended that those were mere raindrops coursing down our
cheeks. We listened as he described what it was like seeing
eleven of his friends put into caskets for the trip home. We
listened as he described another friend who will never
function as an adult thanks to the lack of proper headgear in
that combat area. We listened as he described what it's like
being so young and facing a lifetime of psychological
disorders as the result of criminally flawed planning.
The one person who didn't hear him was our Congressional
"representative," whose office is across the street
from where our event was held. She had been in town all day,
and even spent part of her afternoon at our food bank, handing
out food boxes for the needy; other days, lately, she's been
spotted pouring coffee at local diners and pumping gas at
local gas stations. She's been very, very busy prettying up
her image. And she's known about this event since the day it
was planned, seeing as how she was invited. But, alas, she
had to do something really, really important in Denver. So,
listening to that young soldier and listening to people who
reside in the district she claims to represent took a back
seat to listening to people in a city that isn't in her
district. Some new image. But we left messages with her
staff. Hand-written messages. Lots of them. We can always
hope that something really, really important won't keep her
from reading them.
On the upside, it was good to be among people who are
determined to be heard, who will not be silenced even when met
with unrelenting silence from those who are supposed to be our
voice but aren't. By her conspicuous absence, our
"representative" may have tried to rain on our
parade. Instead, we got a bit of God's own rain, and in this
agricultural area we appreciate how rain makes good things
grow. And I'm thinking that good things will, in fact, grow
out of our event and others like it. I guess some deja vus
are just better than others.
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