CHECK OUT WHAT THESE TEENAGERS ARE DOING!!!

FourScore

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Tue Jul-10-07 12:52 AM
Original message

CHECK OUT WHAT THESE TEENAGERS ARE DOING!!!

Edited on Tue Jul-10-07 01:07 AM by whereismyparty

For those of us who are sick of the apathy and the ignorance and the complacency in this country, this is a wonderful, heart-warming story (although, admittedly, these kids were a little grand in their initial vision)...Let's cheer these kids on!!!!

ANY DU'ERS NEAR THEIR PATH WHO COULD DRIVE THEIR PACKS AHEAD OR OFFER THEM A MEAL OR A PLACE TO CAMP/STAY?

Peace Marchers of the Loneliest Kind
by Colleen Mastony

LOVELAND, Colo. — Against the majestic backdrop of the Rocky Mountains, in the far eastern corner of Colorado where the land begins to flatten into a vast golden prairie, two teenagers trudge along the weed-bitten edge of an isolated highway. Blistered and sunburned, they endure wind, rain and searing heat. But still, they slog forward in what has become a quixotic journey across the country in an effort to end the Iraq war.

Ashley Casale, 19, and Michael Israel, 18, are walking 3,000 miles from San Francisco to Washington in a trek they once had hoped would rally the nation and lead thousands to join them in their epic March for Peace. But, nearly halfway through their trip, the teens remain alone, wandering the vast landscape of America, where few have paid them any attention.

“It seems like the country is asleep,” said Israel, a rail-thin young man with deep-set blue eyes, walking the roadside on a recent morning, his voice sometimes drowned out by the roar of huge trucks zooming past. “A lot of people we meet are against the war. But it doesn’t seem like many people are doing anything about it...”

SNIP

...Their youthful idealism comes in stark contrast to a sense of complacency in America, where polls indicate that a majority of Americans oppose the war but relatively few of them have taken to the streets in active protest. Even Cindy Sheehan, the longtime face of the anti-war movement, has abandoned her quest, saying she feared her efforts had been in vain. “I shudder to think what it is going to take, after everything that has happened in this country during the Bush administration, to get the country to rise up,” she said...

SNIP

...As they travel the highways, they have glimpsed the nation’s conflicting and complex feelings on the war. One woman working on a road crew in Colorado choked back emotion as she told them her son was shipping out to Iraq. “I don’t like war either,” she said before handing them her last few dollar bills. A Vietnam veteran selling produce at a roadside stand offered the travelers a free bag of cherries. “The government is sending those boys to die just like they did in Vietnam,” he said.

But the marchers also have faced the nation’s anger. An Army recruiter said American soldiers were making the real “march for peace” over in Iraq. And a farmer who initially had agreed to let them stay on his land abruptly asked them to leave after they told him they were protesting. At the entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park, rangers refused to let the pair enter until they put away the signs that read “March for Peace.” And on July 4, a driver in a passing car yelled: “Bunch of hippies! Bomb Iraq!...”

READ IT ALL:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/09/2400/