Dear Peace Rally Coordinators...

Please take a page from the "How to Organize a Peace March" handbook apparently used by coordinators in Portland and Eugene. When organizing and advertising a "peace march through downtown Corvallis," it would really have more of an impact if you would obtain a permit for an actual march. Hundreds of people strolling down the sidewalks, being forced to stop at every intersection to wait for traffic, and weaving back and forth basically to make the march last a full hour doesn't really seem that different from the wine walk a couple weeks ago, with signs instead of wine glasses. Until the rally at the end, you couldn't find a group of people larger than 20 or so in one place, mainly because the sidewalks are too narrow for this sort of thing. It would've been preferable to just have a giant rally on the courthouse lawn for the duration.

Ah well, at least our town did something. The organizers claimed 500 participants today, but I would guess 400. Lots of kids and pets, lots of familiar faces from the daily vigil, lots of names of dead soldiers strung up in a sad memorial created with cloth and string. Even more sad were the cloth strips indicating Iraqi deaths. There have been too many to list individually, so each strip counted as 1,000 anonymous Iraqi civilians.

We were behind some little kids chanting, "We want peace! No more fighting! Donald Duck for president!" That was fairly charming. I'll admit that we left before the planned musical acts at the rally. I love being around peaceful people, but I don't want to hear "Blowin' in the Wind" anymore.

Here's hoping that the event in Portland draws a lot of Corvallis residents as well. The crowd tomorrow should be 10,000 strong, not including the small and furry: