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FRIDAY NIGHT VIGIL
By Steve Nebel (with a postscript by Jim Robbins)

United for Peace of Pierce County (WA)
October 21, 2006

It was Friday yesterday. We have been doing vigils at least twice a week for three years now. There are now five opportunities a week for a person to show his/her disgust/general unhappiness about the war in Iraq here in Tacoma -- six, in fact, if you could be in two places at once. Fridays on the freeway overpass near the Tacoma Dome may be the best, as we use REALLY BIG banners, and there are THOUSANDS of cars who see you on their way home, out of town, doing their business etc. I guess it’s for people who like really big things. There’s also a vigil down on the waterfront near Johnny’s Seafood, on Ruston Way that goes from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. I like that one as well, as there is a visual aesthetic to the water. You can usually count on a closeup encounter from someone who doesn’t agree with you there, although experience tells me, that may have changed by this time. I mean . . . I’ve not been to the vigil on Ruston Way in months, but I’ve been at the Farmer’s Market, where we have close up encounters as well, and it’s been mellow of late. Of course, I’m not counting the guy who threatened to cut off Dave's head for him. I didn’t see, or hear that, as I was out of town when that happened. Joe T., a regular at the Thursday vigil, wrote to me in the U.K. with a report.

We weren’t sure we were going to vigil over the freeway, not that we didn’t want to, but we DO have other things to do, and had been distracted most of the day already, and were generating a backup of an agenda of things that needed to be done. Our good friend, Mario, has been in the hospital getting his head repaired, and we had been for a visit, ended up visiting for a good long time Friday afternoon. He was feeling well enough to offer us a glass of wine, which may be what led us down the road to McKinley Way. I couldn’t say that for certain, but at certain times in the afternoon on certain days it doesn’t really take very much alcohol to change one’s general demeanor, and this was exactly the right time, and apparently exactly the right day for alcohol to have that profound effect. Frances had gone to buy groceries, said she would be out for a minute, not mentioning where, and we were verging on boredom. Now, that’s not to say that Mario isn’t perfectly good company. It’s not to say that he can’t entertain a person for hours. To tell the truth, he is a juggler, mime, comic kinda guy, and he can shine in the spotlight for a good long time if you let him. We were letting him. You know, he is in recovery, and he did offer us a glass of wine. I will say, we had the good judgement to not drink two glasses of wine.

When we arrived home from the Lorenz’ and our glass of wine, we had decided that my wife, Kristi would start dinner, and I would occupy myself performing other tasks hypothetically as productive as food preparation (assuming there is such a thing). I had just finished performing such a task when the phone rang. It was a good connection and Marty W. was on the other end of it. There was a slight note of panic in her voice as she explained to me that she was at the home of Jim Robbins, who is the captain of Friday night antics over the freeway, and Jim was nowhere to be found. The banners were on the porch, the other things needed to perform the vigil over the freeway were out, and available, but Jim was nowhere to be found. I immediately thought of his friends from planet Xenon whom he visits with disciplined regularity.

It can take him awhile to get back from these visits, and it always looks like he has left some task in midstep when he goes. I wasn’t at all surprised, or disturbed by the lack of Jim’s presence until Marty explained to me that she really couldn’t put the banners together herself, and could I help?

As I just explained, I had committed myself to accomplishing something. I was on a path of righteousness, and would not be deterred. However I told Marty that Kristi and I could get to the vigil, leaving at 4:45pm, and would be pleased to be of service at that time. I told her I would consult with Kristi and get back to her shortly. This I did. Kristi was in the kitchen with large balls of dough that she had already produced. She was focused, and not in a mood to be deterred from her food preparation. This she confirmed when I told her of Marty’s plight. She was not going to rescue Marty in sacrifice of dinner. At that point, my mission was less than clear, but was about to be cleared up. I called Marty back. When I told her that Kristi was committed, and couldn’t leave sooner than 4:45 p.m., Marty explained that that would be too late. The vigil would just have to be abandoned. My heart fell.

Of course, there was only one course of action for me to take. It was a bit of a sacrifice, but not the first time I had been called on to sacrifice for the cause of justice and peace in the world. (What the hell am I talking about? There’s not much of that around at any time.) I would have to help Marty IMMEDIATELY! I offered to walk over to Jim’s, as it’s not more than five minutes from our house, but Marty, being a transplanted Californian, and in possession of a new automobile, offered to come and get me. I suppose it may have just been her level of panic that drove her to drive here. I met her in the alley, and we drove to Jim Robbins’s magical place on the planet. By the time we got there the aliens had dropped Jim off, and some level of normality was restored. Of course he had to tell us an alibi -- that he had been helping a friend. We understand, Jim. You can’t just go around talking about your friends from planet Xenon all the time. People will be jealous. They’ll wonder why THEY weren’t included/chosen to be friends of aliens from Xenon. The truth of this can go on for a few pages, so I think I’ll move right past it to truckloads of corpses.

It is surprising how much information a person can gather in a short amount of time. It only took a few minutes to get the banners into Marty’s car. By the way, her car may be new, but the seatbelt in the back doesn’t work in back of the driver’s side. Marty may have engineered that, as she had quite a bit of valuable stuff on the floor there that I wasn’t supposed to “put my big feet on.” Marty’s hubby, Mike, is in California right now. She talked about Mike, and what a quiet guy he is, not surfing in San Diego, the possibility of being a Californian again, and other things. I’d tell Kristi I wasn’t surfing if I were in San Diego, too. But I’m being slow getting to what you’re really interested in, truckloads of corpses. Sorry about that, it’s just that there’s so much to say, and so much space to say it in.

I had to hold my seat belt buckle in the slot where it was supposed to catch, but doesn’t, in order to keep the car from talking to us, and explaining to us the error of our ways. It’s a good thing the car had so little information, or it really would have had to talk to us for a long, long time about a number of subjects, humans being the imperfect creatures they are. I kept her mouth shut, but I’m glad we weren’t driving to San Diego.

I don’t know what there is about peace that pisses some people off, but there must be something. We put the “mother of all banners” together (Saddam Hussein named our 26-footer, Jim is special friends with him as well as aliens from Xenon -- Jim’s just a friendly guy). There were only three of us. We NEEDED four to display the “mother of all banners.” As though she were psychic, Kristi drove up at the last second. Well, actually she got there early enough to help us assemble the “mother of all banners.” Marilyn the stalwart came just after setup. But I digress. I was going to write about why peace pisses some people off.

The truth is (in this particular situation) that there are thousands of people that drive under the Lt. Watada banners on Fridays. I have guessed that as many as a million people could come by there in an hour on I-5. I don’t know if it’s that many ever, but it’s a lot of people, in vehicles of every imaginable shape, and size, and people who can barely fit in the front seats of their cars, and people who bounce around inside the cab of their cars like nerf balls in a wind tunnel. There are people who didn’t finish the 4th grade, and who would be pleased to have a job at a McDonald’s restaurant, and people with four Ph.D.s who know almost everything who would be glad to have a job at a McDonald’s restaurant. I don’t want to work for McDonald’s, unless it’s Old McDonald’s organic farm. There are people driving really big trucks, and folks who just barely had the cash to have any transportation at all, and are driving tiny jalopies. And then there are Jim’s friends from Xenon. He pointed them out to me as they drove under us, but I was going on a bit about why some people just don’t like peace, and how it pisses them off, and I missed seeing them.

You just wouldn’t believe the language that people use when addressing us with our “mother of all banners.” I suppose it’s shocking to see people on a freeway overpass advocating peace and justice. I’m sure it can be a bit obnoxious to some people. It IS something of a foreign concept these days, and there is very little peace and justice, or if there’s much of it, it isn’t much in comparison with the war and injustice that seems to be spreading around the world, spread by the United States like we were farmers, and war and injustice were fertilizer, spreading them all around the planet with our giant spreader. I think Uncle Sam must be asleep at the switch, as the war and injustice are knee-deep in some places, and there are places on our planet where he has just let the thing run until some people are up to their necks in them, are having difficulty breathing, are experiencing great bouts of panic, thrashing around, having seizures, throwing up, and threatening to spread the war and injustice in their maneuverings to escape.

As I was saying, you wouldn’t believe what people say to us, screaming from the windows of their automobiles, gesturing madly, even stopping sometimes to deliver impromptu speeches with all the expletives that were deleted from the Nixon White House tapes filling up the spaces between their meaningless words. I suppose love is somewhat obsolete in this world of today. It seemed like it was almost catching on at one time. I suppose that’s what’s wrong with all of us. We haven’t forgotten love. We should have by now, with all the bad things that have happened in the world. Maybe we should have taken up arms, invented a new bomb, blown things up, killed a few people, then maybe someone would believe in peace and justice. I guess that’s what folks are saying to us when they stop along the freeway, standing by the road, gesticulating madly, screaming words that get lost in the wind, and the sounds of the cars and trucks. I suppose that’s what they are talking about. That they DO believe in love, and dammit, if we don’t start loving right now, this very minute, they are going to have to come up there and kick our hippy asses. This is such a confusing world. Maybe they are right. The four of us vigiling last Friday night didn’t think so.

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POSTSCRIPT
By Jim Robbins

The corpses never came. They usually do on Fridays. Draped conveys of death coursing down our freeway. They come in big trucks, those too-big-for-side-streets extra-long trailers with faceless pilots sitting behind the wheel. Long beds with sheet metal sides and no roof on top. Only from our special perch on the overpass you can look down and notice the disquieting cargo inside. Large boned carcasses. Oxidized burgundy red meat. Air dried to deep browns and burnt scarlet reds, the color of flesh deprived of its skin. Maybe Dick Cheney thinks it’s funny. We’re only mildly amused.

You can join us on Friday nights at 5:00 p.m. on the freeway overpass on McKinley Way near the Tacoma Dome. Come watch the sunset over the interchange of freeways 16 and I-5. Join us as we act up for democracy and peace on earth.

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--Steve Nebel and Jim Robbins are members of United for Peace of Pierce County. On UFPPC's support for Lt. Ehren Watada, see its statements of June 15, 2006, and August 24, 2006. For more than 100 articles on the Watada case, search the UFPPC web site for "Watada."