Peace Vigil

Jean Stockdale
Special to The Mirror

Every Saturday morning, Dottie Ji comes to Highland Park from East Brunswick and helps roll out the now 19 banners that bear the names of the 4,300 US soldiers killed so far in Iraq. “In such a distressful time; this peace vigil keeps me sane. I don’t know what I would do if the group wasn’t here,” she says. Sandra Adickes from New Brunswick, wearing a button of the “Central Jersey Granny Peace Brigade,” holds a sign showing a photo of a wounded Iraqi child. The caption reads “Bombed with Your Tax Dollars.”

This peace vigil, organized by Central Jersey Coalition Against Endless War, has taken place in Highland Park every Saturday morning for the past four years. “I am here because we have to raise people’s consciousness to end this war. It is incredible that it is still going on,” said Barbara Howard. The retired social worker from Piscataway holds a sign that reads “Occupation is the problem, not the solution,” as she strives to make eye contact with the passengers in cars on Route 27.

Sam Friedman, an AIDS researcher and poet who lives in Highland Park, has attended regularly since the first vigil in April of 2004. “In the beginning, there was still considerable pro-war sentiment. But I noticed that people driving trucks tended to be supportive of our efforts, as well as people who were poor, and minorities. By now, people are almost universally supportive.”

As if offering the exception that proves the rule, a couple in a passing car rolled down the window to yell “Murderers!” at the demonstrators.

Aaron Todd, a Highland Park resident since 1974, is often the one who conducts the simple ceremony at the end of each vigil. He reads the names of soldiers who have been killed in the past week, their age, rank, and hometown, as the group observes a moment of silence for them.

The banners, made of black silt-fencing with white lettering, list in chronological order the members of the US armed forces who have died in Iraq since the war began in March of 2003. On days when it is too windy, the banners remain rolled, looking like body bags as they lean against the familiar wall.

Mary Walworth, who founded the vigil and adds on the names each week, says she never dreamed the banners would stretch all the way from the corner of Adelaide Ave., down the long hill to the cross walk at Lincoln Avenue.

“Let it not cross that bridge,” Walworth says. “All the people whose names will be on that wall if it extends across the river are somewhere walking and talking right now, holding their babies, chatting with their moms—let us stop this war before those people are names in white letters on these banners,” Mary said.

The Central Jersey Coalition Against Endless War invites anyone to come stand with them, every Saturday morning from 11:30 to 12:30, rain or shine, until the war ends.