Pacific Views

Pacific Northwest War On Terrorism Encounters

So what's going on in the Pacific Northwest? Wandering the blogosphere today, I found two stories from the Seattle area that were quite disturbing.

The first was from Bainbridge Island where it was said a returning disabled soldier was booed in the Fourth of July parade. Evidently he set off the passions of a strongly anti-Bush neighborhood marching in the parade while carrying a sign saying "Veterans for Bush". The article reports catcalls from the observers calling him a murderer and booing as he passed. In a country split so badly over this war, it would be better to devote our passions and anger at Bush and crew and do our best to send him back to Crawford rather than to target the soldiers with the frustrations caused by this horrible war.

The other story was by an artist who was photographing the bridge in the park near his home in the Ballard neighborhood. Did you know that photographing bridges can make you a suspicious character and cause you to be questioned by the homeland security crew? Especially if you are young and brown. Froomkin's suggestion that we might all want to carry cameras in solidarity is something we should consider. It would be hard to question all of us. (via Michael Froomkin)

Posted by Mary at July 11, 2004 04:19 AM | War on Terrorism | Technorati links |