Vandalism no match for protester

When Julie Balaban’s house recently was hit by vandals for the second time in two months – its entire front side pelted with raw eggs, the lawn and bushes strewn with toilet paper – the oldest of her three daughters posed the tough question.

“Mom,” she asked, “did you really think you’d get off easy with this?”

Until the vandalism started, Balaban and her husband, Alan Garber, both physicians, actually had little reason to think otherwise about turning their Orono house into a symbol of public protest against the war in Iraq and a memorial to all those who have died in the fighting.

In the fall of 2004, a friend from the Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine asked the Orono couple if they would agree to having small, red flags planted on their front lawn, each one representing an American soldier killed in Iraq and the tens or hundreds of other lives affected by the loss.

The memorial was supposed to remain for only a week, but the couple decided to make it a permanent fixture at their house on tree-lined Main Street.

“I figured it should stay here,” Balaban said Tuesday evening. “Certainly for me and my husband it was a form of protest, but more particularly it meant something to us on a very personal level. When you go out there and plant a new flag, you think of it as a person, and that can’t help but touch you with the enormity of the loss.”

The flag-studded lawn, along with a sign listing the American death toll and another asking “How many dead Iraqis?” drew some local media attention at the start as well as the curiosity of a Massachusetts documentary film company that stopped by to interview the couple about their very public stand against the war.

The red flags eventually grew so numerous, covering the whole lawn, that the couple has had to plant them in ever-tighter rows to make room for the others that are sure to come. On Tuesday, the sign on the front porch read 2,548.

Public reaction to the vivid display has been mixed, of course, as befits the national division over the controversial war. Some people honk as they pass, and others have stopped to drop notes in the mailbox. One writer took issue with the couple’s home-grown protest, asking them to think instead of all the people killed on Sept. 11.

But the most touching expressions of all, Balaban said, have come from the troops themselves. Instead of vilifying the family for undermining the efforts of the U.S. military in Iraq, they’ve stopped to thank them for remembering their fallen comrades in so intimate a manner.

“There have been six soldiers or so who have come by to express their gratitude, and I always cry because they do understand what we’re doing, they do take it the right way,” said Balaban, who protested the Vietnam War as a teenager and recalled the hostility so unfairly aimed at those who had to fight it. “I feel regretful, as lots of people do, that this war happened, so we’re honoring and respecting and memorializing those who have died in it.”

Until the vandals struck, people who disagreed with the couple’s anti-war position always did so respectfully, which is all Balaban could have asked for. The purpose of the red-flag array is, after all, to make passers-by think about the tragic consequences of war and perhaps to generate discussion among people who might otherwise feel no connection to it in their daily lives.

But one night in early May, that message was violated in the foulest way when one or more people sneaked onto the property and smeared dog feces all over the front door, the porch and on one of the signs. The bold and calculated nature of the crime was both surprising and disturbing to Balaban, who, having lived in New York, and Massachusetts before moving with her husband to Maine, felt unsafe in her home for the very first time.

And, despite the second despicable raid on her house last Thursday night, more confident than ever of the need to stand up for her beliefs in the face of cowardice and ignorance.

“No, I never thought of giving it up,” she said. “In fact, I thought it was even more important to keep it going. There’s no way to know what the thinking is behind this. I guess they’re saying they disagree with our position, but I don’t understand why they think that assaulting us would make us stop. Yes, I do have a responsibility to my kids, and if I felt they were in danger I’d have to rethink. But at this point, our small act of protest is so little compared to what others are sacrificing in this war.”