In Bangor, activists form human peace sign in war protest

BANGOR – For the first time in her 30 years, Darcey Davenport of Lamoine participated Sunday in an anti-war demonstration.

She joined more than 200 other people at Bass Park on the hill in front of the Bangor Civic Center and Auditorium to form a human peace sign as part of a statewide day of protests. People in more than 100 communities participated, according to organizers.

The events in Maine were coordinated by Ron Greenberg, 60, of Bar Harbor who called it the From Every Village Green campaign.

Originally scheduled to be held Saturday to coincide with a march on the Pentagon, most activities were rescheduled to Sunday due to the winter storm that hammered the state with snow, sleet and heavy rain.

Today marks the fourth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.

“I’m sick and tired of it,” Davenport said of the war. “It’s just been going on too long. I can’t watch any more bodies come home in bags. It breaks my heart.”

The theme of the Bangor event, which drew people from Penobscot and surrounding counties, was: “Not one more dollar. Not one more death. Bring them home,” Doug Allen of the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine told the crowd as snow flurries swirled around protesters’ heads.

“We’ve been told that we have had actions in more than 100 communities in Maine,” Allen, 65, of Orono said. “We’ve been told that the only state with more is California.

“Most polls indicate that 70 percent of Mainers agree with us,” he continued. “With the latest proposed appropriation, about half a trillion dollars has been squandered on this war.”

Allen urged people to sign petitions urging Congress to impeach President George W. Bush for lying to lawmakers and the nation about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction during the run-up to the invasion.

A Hampden Academy senior also spoke at the rally about how she had grown up watching the destruction caused by the war on television.

“I was 14 when we invaded Iraq,” Hazel Stark, 18, of Winterport said. “I’ve gone from being a child to being an adult during this war. I thought I might be part of a generation [in America] that was not part of a war. Now, I wonder who will ever be part of that generation.

“This war must end while I’m still 18,” she declared as the crowd cheered her words

Robert Miller, 52, of Bangor carried a sign that in a round-about way echoed the senselessness of the Iraqi conflict that Stark had articulated.

“This war has lasted longer than the Civil War,” his sign read, “at least we achieved something from that.”

At the end of the war between the states, Miller said, the union was put back together and social equality was made the law of the land, even though it took more than another century to achieve it.

After the protesters created their human peace sign and posed for photographs, teenagers joined parents and grandparents along Main Street in a human chain that stretched from the Paul Bunyan statue to Cedar Street, where the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter is located.

Allen said it was to symbolize the need to spend the money being spent on the war on health care and social services.