by R of the Northeast L.A. Radical Neighbors
Friday, Nov. 27, 2009 at 3:06 PM
People were reminded--again--of American aggression and overconsumption, food was given to local homeless, and food scraps to coyotes/raccoons.
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Over the last several years the Northeast L.A. Radical Neighbors ("bad-asses who care"), often in collaboration with the Montrose Peace Vigil, has held one-hour peace vigils on holidays such as and Easter and Xmas. However, this was our first Thankstaking demo.
Obviously, vigils such as this are not stopping America's many wars, but they seem to be reminding people that horrible things are going on. (Personally, I grew up during the Vietnam War totally unaware of that abomination. Had there been community vigils such as this, my world view would have been different.)
We got a lot of positive response from adults and children. One city employee read all of our signs aloud over a p.a. system on their vehicle.
As we have done in the past, we brought food for the local homeless people. It was alarming to see how much the local homeless population had increased. There seemed to be about 10 people in addition to the ones we have known over the years. Fortunately, a church group came after our event ended and distributed much more food.
As for the holiday itself, readers will likely have varying opinions of it. (In the past, this author has fasted for 24 hours on this day.) However, we felt some good came of this event: besides keeping imperialism on the forefront of people's minds and feeding homeless, some food scraps that no humans wanted will be left out for local coyotes and/or raccoons.
