A crowd of less than 25 people came Friday night to a Fort Bragg Town Hall forum on Mendocino County”s Measure Y, which would call for an immediate return of troops from Iraq.
By the time a five-person panel took the stage just a dozen people remained.
Those involved gave a variety of suggestions as to the reason for the low turnout, ranging from a busy election to failure to communicate what purpose the measure can serve.
“I would like to think that everyone has already decided to vote yes on Y,” said Faith Simon of the sponsoring group Mendocino Parents for Peace.
Simon told how the group has been getting a much more positive reaction recently at tables in front of post offices in Mendocino County.
The evening started with a showing of the documentary “Iraq for Sale.”
The film is an investigative effort into the role of corporate contractors in leading the war effort. Egregious examples of over-billing by companies like CACI and Kellogg, Brown and Root accompanied interviews with disgruntled veterans of the war. The film questioned the accountability of contractors in history”s most privatized war, claiming at one point a contractor can kill an Iraqi civilian, be sent home and come back the next week for another company, while a soldier who did the same would be court marshaled and imprisoned. Soldiers told how they trained contractors and then lost their jobs to tasks like guard duty.
The small crowd came at a time when opposition to the war is bigger than ever. A recent CNN poll showed 61 percent of Americans now opposing the war. Optimism about the outlook for the Iraq war fell to 20 percent, compared to about 45 percent in June, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll of 1,006 registered voters, Bloomberg News reported. However when the question is for immediate withdrawal of troops, less than 40 percent of Americans supported that idea, in two national polls.
“Bring the troops home now” measures by other local communities, although they have no “teeth,” are also spreading, organizers said.
Chris Skyhawk, a member of the Parents for Peace panel, said such measures aren”t confined to the “blue states” or activist communities only.
“I was pleasantly surprised to see that it wasn”t just Santa Cruz and Mendocino County and San Francisco and Berkeley,” he said. “It is truly a national movement. It is Gary, Ind., and Chicago, pretty much every state in the union had at least one place where this resolution passed.”
Critics of such measures say they don”t make any difference. Skyhawk agreed that troops probably are not coming home for years, but said that was why the message about the real reasons for the war needs to be broadcast now.
“Initiatives like this are extremely important in the face of what I see as a fairly hopeless situation,” he said. He said it was important to inform young people who are thinking about enlisting, or who have done so, that there are those who are working to end the war. They also need information like that presented in the film, even if they do choose to enlist, he said.
“The situation is filled with despair, and yet it is a wonderful time to break the silence that faces us, not be swept under by a tide,” Skyhawk said.
Rafael Borras, who participates in most peace marches, said the Measure Y dialogue needs to be broadened to include support for homecoming soldiers and their families.
“I think we are missing a lot of the opportunities given to us by the people who got this onto the ballot,” he said. “Winning the election is important, but elevating the dialogue and talking about some of the issues being faced by families and soldiers coming home is also critical. We need to take this on in a strong and ferocious way, not just to talk about the war being bad, but how do we reintegrate these people into our community? How do we prevent trauma to their families?” Borras said.
The panelists included Nancy Milano of the Coast Democratic Club, Fort Bragg City Councilman Doug Hammerstrom and Wanda Windsor, pastor of Evergreen United Methodist Church in Fort Bragg.
Hammerstrom traced the history of wars to show how the percentage of civilians killed has gone up with modern wars.
“War obviously is not working,” Hammerstrom said. “What is called collateral damage” is a foreseeable effect of war. I think it is immoral to call it collateral.”
“I would like to encourage you to engage in a real subversive act. Talk to people you know and those you don”t know about this,” Hammerstrom said.
Milano said just 13 people showed up when Democrats gathered to vote on Measure Y, out of hundreds of Democrats who could have come. The club voted 11-1, with one person abstaining, to back Measure Y.
While participating in the Women in Black monthly vigils to promote peace, Milano says she has seen the attitude of the community change. Angry responses have lessened, as people have learned the women are not seeking to make a political statement, she said.
“I believe we have dramatically raised people”s consciousness,” she said.
To revive interest in Measure Y and make it a vigorous effort like Measure H, which county voters passed banning GMO”s, Borras said those in the small crowd must really work to spread the message.
“I urge people to get out and talk to people. I call 10 people, you call 10 people, even if it falls on skeptical ears,” Borras said. He got laughs when he said he had tried to organize such enthusiasm in the Anderson Valley where he lives but people were too busy “drinking pinot noir and eating goat cheese.”
The Rev. Windsor said Measure Y is an opportunity for people to join their hearts and minds together. “We need not to try harder but to try smarter, with more risk and telling each other the truth” she said. “We are learning to do that on the coast, Measure Y is one way to do it. I can think of 100,000 other ways to do it.”
To Windsor, the crowd wasn”t too small if hearts were big enough.
“It only takes one person to change the world. Look how many of us there are here.”
There was apparently nobody in attendance who opposed Measure Y.
The Bouldin family property north of Fort Bragg on Highway 1 is festooned with patriotic signs from people supporting individual servicemen and women.
Marlene Bouldin wasn”t aware of the forum and didn”t want to give her full opinion about the ballot measure to bring the troops home now.
“Let”s just say they can”t. There is no way they can come home right now,” she said.
She said she is proud of the troops and what they are doing for the people in Iraq. She has a son-in-law who has been serving in Iraq.
“I go by what the men and women over there tell me and not by what I read in the newspaper,” she added. “I trust what comes out of their hearts more than the news reports we get.”
“None of us, I don”t care who it is, want to see a war … 9/11 has been forgotten too much in this country,” Bouldin said.
Measure Y reads, “Should the United States end the occupation of Iraq and bring the troops home now?” Voters are asked for a yes or no.
The next Measure Y event will be this Friday at 7 p.m. at Safe Passage, 208 Dana St. Mendocino Parents for Peace will present a talk by Fernando Suarez Del Solar whose son Jesus died when he stepped on a U.S. cluster bomb while fighting in Iraq. The meeting will be conducted in Spanish and English, with childcare offered. Call 962-9213 for more information.
