[Peace-discuss] One Main notes...

[Stuart Levy]

I'll miss part of today's aware meeting, so here are notes
from yesterday's Main Event.

  We handed out about 250 Winter Soldier flyers, and I'll bet
at least 150 AFSC Cost of War leaflets.   Given that there were
only about 1.5 of us handing them out, this wasn't bad.

Very few people seemed hostile (though some did, including one
who said their son was in Iraq now).  This was better than last month
and vastly, vastly better than the month before.  Many cheered us on.

My most interesting leafletting interactions:
  One young man who rolled down his window but didn't accept a flyer
  said, very softly, something that sounded like "I'm just mad".
  Puzzled, I echoed that back, and he repeated it.  But I think what
  he'd actually said was, "I'm just back", as in, just back from Iraq.
  Wish I'd figured it out in time.  He might have been interested in
  the IVAW message.

  Another said he had just lost his brother in Iraq.  I said I was
  sorry to hear that, that our aim was to bring all the troops
  back to the US, and further that we were demonstrating (among other things)
  in support of veterans who opposed the war.   He seemed to take
  that seriously, and civilly said he was already involved in supporting
  veterans in our local community in other ways.  He didn't take a
  flyer either.   I didn't really understand his response -- is
  helping local veterans in conflict with supporting others to oppose the war?
  Or just that he's already taken on one burden and doesn't want to
  shoulder another?  It'd be most interesting to get to talk more with
  people like this.  Our traffic lights switch too fast.