Protest In Alpine 06/06/08CBS 7 Staff
June 6, 2008
A protest in Alpine today called for West Texans to take back their political power.
The Big Bend Veterans for Peace meet every Friday during the lunch hour to encourage people to impeach President Bush.
The group of about a dozen protestors says out of 500 cars, they get a 30% to 40% positive response from the community.
Joseph Goldman, a member of the Big Bend Veterans for Peace, said, “We’re trying to make it clear to the citizens that pass this intersection that they have the power to impeach the president and his administration if they feel the president is not doing what they want him to do in this country."
Goldman also says they plan to continue their protest every week until changes are made in the current administration
WELCOME
Photo: Tom Curry
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Sunday, May 4, 2008
A Brighter Tombstone Adopted by Garza Family in Memory of Their Son Damian (KIA Afghanistan)
Denise and Jaime Garza, parents of Damian Garza (KIA - Afghanistan), visited Arlington Southwest in late April with the CBS Midland affiliate's reporter. The Garzas were moved by the memorial and donated a dozen U.S. flags which we, with them, wired to the fenceposts along Highway 90 by Arlington Southwest. The Garzas, who built their son a memorial at their home and learned many construction skills in the process, offered to help us with welding or other skills we might need. See the film at http://www.cbs7.com/video/index.asp?ID=4712
Saturday, May 3, 2008
VFP collaborating with Nonviolent Peaceforce North America to train domestic peace teams
NONVIOLENT PEACEFORCE NORTH AMERICA - DOMESTIC (LOCAL) PEACE TEAM TRAINING OF TRAINERS
MAY 9-14, 2008, DETROIT, MICHIGAN
Eve Trook, a Big Bend VFP associate member, will participate in the Detroit training. Training modules for local community peace teams in our border region are being developed. Our chapter has formally endorsed the training and implementation of a regional peace team.
MAY 9-14, 2008, DETROIT, MICHIGAN
Eve Trook, a Big Bend VFP associate member, will participate in the Detroit training. Training modules for local community peace teams in our border region are being developed. Our chapter has formally endorsed the training and implementation of a regional peace team.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Re-dedication of Arlington Southwest on MLK Day
At sunrise on MLK Day, about 50 people came together to re-dedicate Arlington Southwest as a memorial to the consequences of war. The tombstones face into the morning light and produce a startlingly strong light effect when reflecting the sunrise. Joe Goldman first read the names of Texans who had died in Iraq subsequent to the initial dedication on Veterans Day 2007. Then he read excerpts from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech “BEYOND VIETNAM: A Time to Break Silence”:
As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.
We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace … throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world.
As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.
We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace … throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Peace Bus Spreads message at NH Primary
NH Peace Action Presidential Primary
January 7, 2008
SALEM, N.H. - Paul Schaefer of Alpine talks softly while standing in front of The Woodbury School, Sunday afternoon. He is not chanting loudly or carrying a sign. Yet this Vietnam veteran is an anti-war protester who has traveled from the Big Bend area of Texas to advocate peace.
Schaefer and Jim Goodnow, also a Vietnam veteran, are part of the Yellow Rose Peace Bus and are members of the Big Bend Chapter of Veterans for Peace. They are volunteering with New Hampshire Peace Action and the American Friends Service Committee, traversing New Hampshire during these days before the Jan. 8 primary - the nation’s first.
“The group has three objectives - get candidates to commit to withdraw from Iraq within one year; use diplomacy with Iran and use funds that would be used in the war back home and in reconstruction of Iraq,” Schaefer said.
As for becoming an activist, Schaefer said it’s been in the past four years that he has gotten more involved.
But, Schaefer, who was in the Navy during Vietnam, said he didn’t support that war, “even when I was in it.”
Since 2003, he said, he’s seen the country go into “an attack mode. Personally, I consider the war in Iraq an illegal war. A criminal war. So … I’m doing my part.”
The Yellow Rose of Texas bus is a traveling billboard, with steer horns in front.
“It’s Texas-style,” Schaefer said. “We’re trying to do it in a big way.”
January 7, 2008
SALEM, N.H. - Paul Schaefer of Alpine talks softly while standing in front of The Woodbury School, Sunday afternoon. He is not chanting loudly or carrying a sign. Yet this Vietnam veteran is an anti-war protester who has traveled from the Big Bend area of Texas to advocate peace.
Schaefer and Jim Goodnow, also a Vietnam veteran, are part of the Yellow Rose Peace Bus and are members of the Big Bend Chapter of Veterans for Peace. They are volunteering with New Hampshire Peace Action and the American Friends Service Committee, traversing New Hampshire during these days before the Jan. 8 primary - the nation’s first.
“The group has three objectives - get candidates to commit to withdraw from Iraq within one year; use diplomacy with Iran and use funds that would be used in the war back home and in reconstruction of Iraq,” Schaefer said.
As for becoming an activist, Schaefer said it’s been in the past four years that he has gotten more involved.
But, Schaefer, who was in the Navy during Vietnam, said he didn’t support that war, “even when I was in it.”
Since 2003, he said, he’s seen the country go into “an attack mode. Personally, I consider the war in Iraq an illegal war. A criminal war. So … I’m doing my part.”
The Yellow Rose of Texas bus is a traveling billboard, with steer horns in front.
“It’s Texas-style,” Schaefer said. “We’re trying to do it in a big way.”
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Veterans Day at Arlington Southwest
Veterans Day at Arlington Southwest By Cindy Perry / cindyperry@alpineavalanche.com
All stood or sat quietly, many with hats in their hands, as the six people read 354 names, one for each of the tombstones spread out along a slope east of Alpine. The breeze was negligible, the heat was palpable. The tears were many.
The Big Bend Veterans for Peace were dedicating their memorial, Arlington Southwest, on Veterans Day - and dedicating the day to Texan military fatalities in Iraq.An estimated 150 men, women and children of many ages stood in a rough semicircle at the foot of the memorial, which was created in the spirit of, and resembling, Arlington National Cemetery. A few of the more frail audience members chose to sit in chairs provided by the Veterans for Peace.
Some of the organizers said more tombstones will be added if more Texas servicemen and women die in the Iraq war.
After the six - Eve Trook, Joseph Goldman, Mimi Smith, Susan Curry, Gail Shugart and Jackie Siglin - read the names, a haunting, echoing rendition of Taps was played.
Some attendees stayed for light refreshments, others wandered off to a nearby hillside to reflect.
And so was Veterans Day observed on a plot of land near Alpine.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Grave Expression
By Greg Harman
ALPINE — Forgetting is easy.
Names, faces, numbers, they slip from our mind unnoticed every week like a thousand gentle deaths.
Some things we are despairingly desperate to un-remember, but like fighting a mud-sunk tire, the harder we strain the deeper that memory sinks.
For most Americans, the events in Iraq these last four years have sung through our minds like the loosest of trivia, a to-do list, a weather report, a half-time score.
That is what inspires groups like Big Bend Veterans for Peace to construct psychic bogs like Arlington Southwest, an unoccupied cemetery on the eastern edge of town. Three hundred and fifty-four tombstones, the number of Texas war dead.
“Veterans for Peace wants to make aware to the public the cost of war, which is not always very obvious,” said Vietnam veteran and VFP member Paul Schaefer. “People just aren’t aware of the injuries, the damage, even for those who come back alive.”
War protests have been a regular event in this town of 6,000. Like many larger cities in the U.S., including San Antonio, a weekly gathering at a prominent downtown street corner brings an irregular stream of honks. Fingers sometimes spring up, too. But what has occurred on the edge of town is unique, and haunting.
While similar installations have gone up across the country, including a weekly installation on the beach of Santa Barbara, Alpine’s offering is the first permanent installation of its type. It is also the first sculptural display.
The site along Highway 90 started generating buzz when construction began months ago.
“One guy saw it and he thought we’d uncovered an old pioneer cemetery or something,” said local artist and U.S. Army veteran Tom Curry. “Another guy thought we were selling plots.”
Passing motorists are left to their own devices when it comes to finding meaning here. A sign raised recently reads simply, “Arlington Southwest” with “Veterans for Peace” in smaller lettering, Curry said.
White crosses are typically used by Veterans for Peace chapters to mark rising war deaths. However, with a smaller pool of volunteer labor to draw from, folks here ruled out constructing a daunting 4,000 crosses, choosing instead the number of Texas’s fallen. This allowed them to consider other options.
They settled on short tombstones of a recycled paper slurry known as papercrete. The result is an ethereal monument that plays to its setting of rock-strewn hills and distant mountains. Arlington Southwest communicates the essential void of war that transcends the current engagements. By forsaking crosses, the anti-war activists have also created a space more conducive to personal epiphany, the crux of the movement’s purpose.
“The general response is somber,” said Veterans for Peace office manager Sherie Eichholz, who has watched the public’s attitudes toward such displays over the years. “When you think about the enormity of just exactly what that one cross represents, it’s pretty moving.”
For Schaefer, Arlington Southwest is the perfect way to remember those who have died — both U.S. troops and the estimated one million Iraqi civilians killed. Despite the few complaints he has heard, at its core he believes it is true to the patriotic edict: Support the Troops.
“The way it’s been used in the past, it’s meant if you support our troops you also support U.S. foreign policy. What we’re trying to make clear is that that’s not true. We do support the troops and we want them to have support when they come back,” Schaefer said. “It’s just a strong reminder, a physical reminder, that these represent men and women, many of them very young, who don’t have a future. They are dead. They are gone.”
For most of us, the Occupation of Iraq has been a most avoidable war.
On one road in West Texas it is no longer so. •
ALPINE — Forgetting is easy.
Names, faces, numbers, they slip from our mind unnoticed every week like a thousand gentle deaths.
Some things we are despairingly desperate to un-remember, but like fighting a mud-sunk tire, the harder we strain the deeper that memory sinks.
For most Americans, the events in Iraq these last four years have sung through our minds like the loosest of trivia, a to-do list, a weather report, a half-time score.
That is what inspires groups like Big Bend Veterans for Peace to construct psychic bogs like Arlington Southwest, an unoccupied cemetery on the eastern edge of town. Three hundred and fifty-four tombstones, the number of Texas war dead.
“Veterans for Peace wants to make aware to the public the cost of war, which is not always very obvious,” said Vietnam veteran and VFP member Paul Schaefer. “People just aren’t aware of the injuries, the damage, even for those who come back alive.”
War protests have been a regular event in this town of 6,000. Like many larger cities in the U.S., including San Antonio, a weekly gathering at a prominent downtown street corner brings an irregular stream of honks. Fingers sometimes spring up, too. But what has occurred on the edge of town is unique, and haunting.
While similar installations have gone up across the country, including a weekly installation on the beach of Santa Barbara, Alpine’s offering is the first permanent installation of its type. It is also the first sculptural display.
The site along Highway 90 started generating buzz when construction began months ago.
“One guy saw it and he thought we’d uncovered an old pioneer cemetery or something,” said local artist and U.S. Army veteran Tom Curry. “Another guy thought we were selling plots.”
Passing motorists are left to their own devices when it comes to finding meaning here. A sign raised recently reads simply, “Arlington Southwest” with “Veterans for Peace” in smaller lettering, Curry said.
White crosses are typically used by Veterans for Peace chapters to mark rising war deaths. However, with a smaller pool of volunteer labor to draw from, folks here ruled out constructing a daunting 4,000 crosses, choosing instead the number of Texas’s fallen. This allowed them to consider other options.
They settled on short tombstones of a recycled paper slurry known as papercrete. The result is an ethereal monument that plays to its setting of rock-strewn hills and distant mountains. Arlington Southwest communicates the essential void of war that transcends the current engagements. By forsaking crosses, the anti-war activists have also created a space more conducive to personal epiphany, the crux of the movement’s purpose.
“The general response is somber,” said Veterans for Peace office manager Sherie Eichholz, who has watched the public’s attitudes toward such displays over the years. “When you think about the enormity of just exactly what that one cross represents, it’s pretty moving.”
For Schaefer, Arlington Southwest is the perfect way to remember those who have died — both U.S. troops and the estimated one million Iraqi civilians killed. Despite the few complaints he has heard, at its core he believes it is true to the patriotic edict: Support the Troops.
“The way it’s been used in the past, it’s meant if you support our troops you also support U.S. foreign policy. What we’re trying to make clear is that that’s not true. We do support the troops and we want them to have support when they come back,” Schaefer said. “It’s just a strong reminder, a physical reminder, that these represent men and women, many of them very young, who don’t have a future. They are dead. They are gone.”
For most of us, the Occupation of Iraq has been a most avoidable war.
On one road in West Texas it is no longer so. •
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