[Peace-discuss] Report from Protest in Snowy Olean

[Barbara Dyskant]

Hi,

Well, we had the first outdoor pro-peace protest out here, and there were
about 30 or more people out in the center of town.  The leadership was a
local group of Franciscan nuns, who stood silently out in the snowstorm
with a beautiful banner and some signs, along with many of the rest of us.
    Nadine (our 11-year-old daughter) had helped with signmaking and
embellished the signs with beautiful roses.   We were greeted with
considerable positive horn-honking.

The "peace coalition" is leading another outdoor action this Saturday
afternoon in the shopping district (near K-Mart, Wal-Mart, etc.), and
hopefully we too will have a large turn-out.  Both groups are supporting
each other well-- ours will probably have somewhat spicier signs (although
we have a policy that they be courteous) and hopefully we'll pass out
flyers.  It seems like many of our group are veterans.   A lot of folks
have said they'd come out-- we'll see.  We've have decent press coverage
and letters to the editor have gone well.   Obviously the backlash is
there-- there was a "pro-war" rally in town that referred quite a bit to
us.    The managing editor of the local newspaper has said he'd be willing
to consider sponsoring a debate between the anti-war and pro-war people
here.   Now if we could just find more artists so we can make our banners a
little more colorful and creative......

Peace,
Barbara 

P.S.  Thanks to Ricky and the rest of you who thought of "guidelines" for
protests-- we"ve borrowed heavily from what you came up with.