Bearing Crosses for Peace

By Ann K. Williams and Gene Williams
Staff Writers

August 17 -- A row of 800 plain white crosses recedes down the side of a hot dusty Texas road, a far cry from the foggy Santa Monica beach where they’d been displayed every Sunday morning for the past 16 months.

They are some of the 1,800 crosses that form “Arlington West,” a grim reminder of the human cost of the war in Iraq that has become a familiar sight to Santa Monicans.

But local peace activists felt the crosses were needed outside President Bush’s Crawford Ranch to support bereaved mother Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq. Sheehan came to Crawford a week ago and vows not to leave until the President agrees to meet and pray with her.

(Photos courtesy of Woody Hastings)

“When people see these crosses stretching out from Cindy, maybe they will stop and think,” said Woody Hastings, a founding member of the Topanga Peace Alliance.

In a hastily concocted plan, Hastings and his girlfriend June Braschares came up with the idea only a day and a half before hitching a trailer to a borrowed truck and driving 24 hours straight to bring the makeshift memorial to the doorstep of the President.

“We were talking a week ago Sunday, what can we do to help Sheehan,” Hastings said. “In the space of 24 hours we pulled everything together to bring the crosses out there.”

After a warm reception from anti-war activists Wednesday afternoon at “the Crawford Peace House,” they set up the display two miles from the President’s ranch.

“There were a lot of Veterans for Peace out there,” she said, referring to the organization that sets up the crosses in Santa Monica each weekend. “They had a big presence.”

The protesters were restricted to a narrow easement between the road and private property where they braved chiggers, fire ants and mosquitoes, mud, dust and wind.

“There was a lot of media out there, and we thought it would make a good backdrop,” Hastings said. “As you drive in, you are greeted by these crosses.”

While they were there, Braschares heard a local radio station trying to round up people for a counter demonstration.

But only a busload of people showed up and left a half an hour later after the radio host did his spiel.

“It was really anticlimactic,” Braschares said.

(From left: June Braschares, Woody Hastings, Cindy Sheehan, April Fitzsimons and Kathleen Hernandez)

By Saturday some 1,000 demonstrators had come to show their support for Sheehan, Hastings said. But the protesters didn’t want to take all the credit for bringing the crosses to Crawford.

“This whole thing is George Bush’s idea,” Hastings said. “We would all rather not be doing any of this.

“What inspired this is just the insanity and unjustness of the war,” he added. “It’s not about the crosses. It’s a demand for accountability from the President.”

But apparently, President Bush was unmoved.

“On his way to and from a noontime fundraising lunch at a neighbor’s ranch, he did not stop or slow down,” according to the Dallas Morning News last Friday.

Those interested in finding out more about the organizations behind these protests can visit www.topangapeacealliance.org , www.veteransforpeace.org and www.ivaw.net , the website for the Iraq Veterans Against the War.