Aiken SC Women In Black
forwarded to us by Gita:
Thought you might like to read this column by our local peace vigil group, Aiken Women in Black. It was written in response to a letter about us which accused us of being motivated by politics, not by objective opposition to war, and of having stopped our protests when George Bush left office. (We not only didn’t stop, we never lessened the frequently of vigils.) The letter’s author said that protesting war was a slap in the face to members of the military. While that is a view anyone is certainly entitled to hold, it is not one we share.
Fortunately, the newspaper’s staff person in charge of letters to the editor was great to work with. Our piece exceeded the word limit for letters, so when I asked if it could be published as a guest editorial, she got that approved–and suggested we might want to expand even beyond our original submission, if we had more to say! (It should be noted that numerous letters have been published over the past couple of years making exactly those same accusations against us, but we had never responded to any of them.) She also got approval to include all twelve signers (one got dropped from online version), whereas only one name had ever been allowed before. Yippee! This is pretty remarkable, given how archly conservative this area is, a culture faithfully reflected in the newspaper. And it was the letters editor who initiated inclusion of our Women In Black logo, which we designed specifically for Aiken…something I wouldn’t even have thought to ask for! The logo appeared in the print form of the paper but not online, so I’ve attached it.
Peace.
Brenda/bg/Aunt Gail
http://www.aikenstandard.com/Editorial/0606-Column-protester
