July 09, 2012
On Saturday, July 7, 2012, Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Under the Hood all marched together in the "Welcome Home Iraq Veterans" parade up Congress Avenue in Austin to the Capitol. We were well received by other veterans groups and the crowd along the streets.
VFP Chapter 66 organized a Hiroshima/Nagasaki remembrance on August 6th, with Code Pink/Fran Clark who read from "Jonny Got His Gun" and SOY’s Susan Van Haitsma and others. SOY (Sustainable Options for Youth) is Austin’s counter-recruiting volunteer group that visits area high schools and in which several chapter members take part. Beth Galiger played the flute, just the right touch. Susan gave out some beautiful origami crane earrings made by a woman in Japan. Some paper cranes were set alight and floated out onto Lady Bird Lake. Marilyn White read a poem by a Japanese survivor of the atomic bomb. The visual arts contribution was a Picasso-style dove constructed from cut-up CDs.
On August 18, Hart Viges and Alan Pogue tabled at the Crosby, Stills and Nash concert at the new Austin City Limits venue, 310 W. 2nd (Willie Nelson Blvd.) They talked with folks and handed out some literature. Hart offered to do push-ups, clapping while doing them, for cash and made enough to pay for the parking garage ticket. Alan had made a scrapbook for our table with protest photos from the old Oleo Strut, the Viet Nam-era coffee house near Ft. Hood, and new ones of Under the Hood, today’s coffee house in Killeen, TX, where Ft. Hood is situated.
The AMALA Foundation was very impressed with the video Alan made of veterans telling their stories, using canteens from various eras.
On Saturday, September 8, at Under the Hood there will be an Inter-generational brainstorming session among new peace activists and those of us who have been at it for decades.