Big Bend Veterans for Peace

HONK TO IMPEACH NOTED BY CBS7 in ODESSA

2008-06-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

Protest In Alpine 06/06/08CBS 7 Staff
June 6, 2008

A protest in Alpine today called for West Texans to take back their political power.

The Big Bend Veterans for Peace meet every Friday during the lunch hour to encourage people to impeach President Bush.

The group of about a dozen protestors says out of 500 cars, they get a 30% to 40% positive response from the community.

Joseph Goldman, a member of the Big Bend Veterans for Peace, said, “We’re trying to make it clear to the citizens that pass this intersection that they have the power to impeach the president and his administration if they feel the president is not doing what they want him to do in this country."

Goldman also says they plan to continue their protest every week until changes are made in the current administration

A Brighter Tombstone Adopted by Garza Family in Memory of Their Son Damian (KIA Afghanistan)

2008-05-04T19:11:00.001-07:00

Denise and Jaime Garza, parents of Damian Garza (KIA - Afghanistan), visited Arlington Southwest in late April with the CBS Midland affiliate's reporter. The Garzas were moved by the memorial and donated a dozen U.S. flags which we, with them, wired to the fenceposts along Highway 90 by Arlington Southwest. The Garzas, who built their son a memorial at their home and learned many construction skills in the process, offered to help us with welding or other skills we might need. See the film at http://www.cbs7.com/video/index.asp?ID=4712

VFP collaborating with Nonviolent Peaceforce North America to train domestic peace teams

2008-05-03T12:28:00.000-07:00

NONVIOLENT PEACEFORCE NORTH AMERICA - DOMESTIC (LOCAL) PEACE TEAM TRAINING OF TRAINERS
MAY 9-14, 2008, DETROIT, MICHIGAN

Eve Trook, a Big Bend VFP associate member, will participate in the Detroit training. Training modules for local community peace teams in our border region are being developed. Our chapter has formally endorsed the training and implementation of a regional peace team.

Re-dedication of Arlington Southwest on MLK Day

2008-01-20T19:24:00.000-08:00

At sunrise on MLK Day, about 50 people came together to re-dedicate Arlington Southwest as a memorial to the consequences of war. The tombstones face into the morning light and produce a startlingly strong light effect when reflecting the sunrise. Joe Goldman first read the names of Texans who had died in Iraq subsequent to the initial dedication on Veterans Day 2007. Then he read excerpts from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech “BEYOND VIETNAM: A Time to Break Silence”:

As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace … throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world.

Peace Bus Spreads message at NH Primary

2008-01-07T12:12:00.000-08:00

NH Peace Action Presidential Primary
January 7, 2008

SALEM, N.H. - Paul Schaefer of Alpine talks softly while standing in front of The Woodbury School, Sunday afternoon. He is not chanting loudly or carrying a sign. Yet this Vietnam veteran is an anti-war protester who has traveled from the Big Bend area of Texas to advocate peace.

Schaefer and Jim Goodnow, also a Vietnam veteran, are part of the Yellow Rose Peace Bus and are members of the Big Bend Chapter of Veterans for Peace. They are volunteering with New Hampshire Peace Action and the American Friends Service Committee, traversing New Hampshire during these days before the Jan. 8 primary - the nation’s first.

“The group has three objectives - get candidates to commit to withdraw from Iraq within one year; use diplomacy with Iran and use funds that would be used in the war back home and in reconstruction of Iraq,” Schaefer said.

As for becoming an activist, Schaefer said it’s been in the past four years that he has gotten more involved.

But, Schaefer, who was in the Navy during Vietnam, said he didn’t support that war, “even when I was in it.”

Since 2003, he said, he’s seen the country go into “an attack mode. Personally, I consider the war in Iraq an illegal war. A criminal war. So … I’m doing my part.”

The Yellow Rose of Texas bus is a traveling billboard, with steer horns in front.

“It’s Texas-style,” Schaefer said. “We’re trying to do it in a big way.”

Veterans Day at Arlington Southwest

2007-11-15T19:04:00.000-08:00

Veterans Day at Arlington Southwest By Cindy Perry / cindyperry@alpineavalanche.com

All stood or sat quietly, many with hats in their hands, as the six people read 354 names, one for each of the tombstones spread out along a slope east of Alpine. The breeze was negligible, the heat was palpable. The tears were many.

The Big Bend Veterans for Peace were dedicating their memorial, Arlington Southwest, on Veterans Day - and dedicating the day to Texan military fatalities in Iraq.An estimated 150 men, women and children of many ages stood in a rough semicircle at the foot of the memorial, which was created in the spirit of, and resembling, Arlington National Cemetery. A few of the more frail audience members chose to sit in chairs provided by the Veterans for Peace.

Some of the organizers said more tombstones will be added if more Texas servicemen and women die in the Iraq war.

After the six - Eve Trook, Joseph Goldman, Mimi Smith, Susan Curry, Gail Shugart and Jackie Siglin - read the names, a haunting, echoing rendition of Taps was played.

Some attendees stayed for light refreshments, others wandered off to a nearby hillside to reflect.

And so was Veterans Day observed on a plot of land near Alpine.

Grave Expression

2007-11-10T16:44:00.000-08:00

By Greg Harman

ALPINE — Forgetting is easy.

Names, faces, numbers, they slip from our mind unnoticed every week like a thousand gentle deaths.

Some things we are despairingly desperate to un-remember, but like fighting a mud-sunk tire, the harder we strain the deeper that memory sinks.

For most Americans, the events in Iraq these last four years have sung through our minds like the loosest of trivia, a to-do list, a weather report, a half-time score.

That is what inspires groups like Big Bend Veterans for Peace to construct psychic bogs like Arlington Southwest, an unoccupied cemetery on the eastern edge of town. Three hundred and fifty-four tombstones, the number of Texas war dead.

“Veterans for Peace wants to make aware to the public the cost of war, which is not always very obvious,” said Vietnam veteran and VFP member Paul Schaefer. “People just aren’t aware of the injuries, the damage, even for those who come back alive.”

War protests have been a regular event in this town of 6,000. Like many larger cities in the U.S., including San Antonio, a weekly gathering at a prominent downtown street corner brings an irregular stream of honks. Fingers sometimes spring up, too. But what has occurred on the edge of town is unique, and haunting.

While similar installations have gone up across the country, including a weekly installation on the beach of Santa Barbara, Alpine’s offering is the first permanent installation of its type. It is also the first sculptural display.

The site along Highway 90 started generating buzz when construction began months ago.
“One guy saw it and he thought we’d uncovered an old pioneer cemetery or something,” said local artist and U.S. Army veteran Tom Curry. “Another guy thought we were selling plots.”
Passing motorists are left to their own devices when it comes to finding meaning here. A sign raised recently reads simply, “Arlington Southwest” with “Veterans for Peace” in smaller lettering, Curry said.

White crosses are typically used by Veterans for Peace chapters to mark rising war deaths. However, with a smaller pool of volunteer labor to draw from, folks here ruled out constructing a daunting 4,000 crosses, choosing instead the number of Texas’s fallen. This allowed them to consider other options.

They settled on short tombstones of a recycled paper slurry known as papercrete. The result is an ethereal monument that plays to its setting of rock-strewn hills and distant mountains. Arlington Southwest communicates the essential void of war that transcends the current engagements. By forsaking crosses, the anti-war activists have also created a space more conducive to personal epiphany, the crux of the movement’s purpose.

“The general response is somber,” said Veterans for Peace office manager Sherie Eichholz, who has watched the public’s attitudes toward such displays over the years. “When you think about the enormity of just exactly what that one cross represents, it’s pretty moving.”

For Schaefer, Arlington Southwest is the perfect way to remember those who have died — both U.S. troops and the estimated one million Iraqi civilians killed. Despite the few complaints he has heard, at its core he believes it is true to the patriotic edict: Support the Troops.

“The way it’s been used in the past, it’s meant if you support our troops you also support U.S. foreign policy. What we’re trying to make clear is that that’s not true. We do support the troops and we want them to have support when they come back,” Schaefer said. “It’s just a strong reminder, a physical reminder, that these represent men and women, many of them very young, who don’t have a future. They are dead. They are gone.”

For most of us, the Occupation of Iraq has been a most avoidable war.

On one road in West Texas it is no longer so. •

VETERANS FOR PEACE MEMORIAL DEDICATION IS SUNDAY

2007-11-09T16:40:00.000-08:00

By MEGAN WILDE

ALPINE – Just east of Alpine off Highway 90, hundreds of white tombstones now cast small shadows onto a grass-covered hill.

This memorial, called Arlington Southwest and fashioned after Arlington National Cemetery , was created by the Big Bend Veterans for Peace chapter as a reminder of the human cost of the Iraq war. Other Veterans for Peace chapters have created similar memorials in California , Massachusetts , Washington , Minnesota , Pennsylvania and Florida , but the Alpine installation is the only permanent one. The 11-member Big Bend chapter invites the public to a dedication ceremony at 2 p.m. on Sunday at the memorial site, on the north side of Highway 90 four miles east of Alpine.

“Out here it can be very peaceful. It can be very scenic and beautiful,” said Paul Schaefer, a Vietnam War veteran and Veterans for Peace member from Alpine. “We wanted to work with that, but also to bring home to people that the war affects this beauty as well. We’re not trying to throw anything into peoples’ faces, but it is a memorial. It is a remembrance. We do want people to remember the sacrifices that have been made both by American military and by Iraqi citizens.”

The tombstones at Arlington Southwest represent the number of Texas troops killed in the Iraq war; their names will be read and Taps will be played during the Veterans Day dedication ceremony. Last Thursday there were 354 tombstones, another was added this week, and more will be installed if other Texans die in Iraq , according to chapter member Eve Trook of Alpine.

“Hopefully this occupation will end and we can stop,” Schaefer said.

While Veterans for Peace supports ending the Iraq war, Schaefer said Arlington Southwest is not intended to be an anti-war statement. “The people that have helped in building this memorial have a wide range of political understanding,” he said. “And since it is a kind of a spiritual, artistic experience, each person I’m sure perceives it in a slightly different way. That’s what we would like to be possible for everybody.”

The group welcomes anyone, regardless of their political views, to remember, honor and grieve for those lost in war at the memorial, he explained.

Offering a place to grieve and feel sadness is especially important, according to chapter members, because the American government, by banning photographs of soldiers’ bodies being returned to the U.S., has made it harder to remember the lives lost in the Iraq war. That’s one reason why Brian Kokernot said he and his family decided to offer their land for Arlington Southwest.

“We felt it important to memorialize the deaths that war always causes, its inevitable consequences,” Kokernot said on behalf of his family. “This tribute is not just in honor of the Texas deaths but for all the deaths of this war. We need to be very thoughtful about these awful losses.”

Aside from Texan casualties, Schaefer said Arlington Southwest is also meant to be a remembrance of all the thousands of Americans and Iraqis who have died or been wounded in the Iraq war. According to Department of Defense estimates, more than 3,850 American troops have died and 28, 450 Americans have been injured. One study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated last fall as many as 654,965 Iraqis had died in the war.

That sentiment was echoed by another Veterans for Peace member, Tom Curry of Alpine. “The reason for making Arlington Southwest, to me, is to show in a clear, dramatic way the cost and consequences of an unnecessary and illegal war started by leaders who have never seen military combat,” Curry, a Vietnam War veteran, said in a statement. “If we could have made tombstones to represent all the U.S. troops lost and all the Iraqi civilians lost, it would probably cover most of the Kokernot ranch.”

Curry and Mark Battista, another Alpine artist-builder and chapter member, suggested using papercrete for the memorial. Since June, about 55 Veterans for Peace chapter members, family, friends and supporters have spent two to three hours, two to three times a week, making the tombstones.

For Schaefer, making and installing the papercrete tombstones was a very personal and tactile reminder of the cost of war. “It’s a beautiful spot, particularly when the sun is setting,” he said. “Making the tombstones, painting them, putting them up so they won’t blow over with the wind, really brings it home, the ultimate sacrifice that these people have made.”

“In our lives, we often tend to forget our own preciousness, as well as that of others,” he continued. “When you’re doing something like the memorial, one is reminded that these people, most of them young, don’t have a future. They are gone.”

Big Bend Veterans for Peace plan dedication ceremony

2007-11-01T11:25:00.000-07:00

Special to the Avalanche

Big Bend Veterans for Peace will hold a public dedication of their chapter's memorial, Arlington Southwest, fashioned after Arlington National Cemetery, on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, at 2 p.m.
The dedication ceremony will include a reading of the names of Texan military fatalities in Iraq and the playing of Taps.

The 354 tombstones, made of papercrete and fabricated by chapter members, friends and supporters of the memorial, equal the number of Texan military casualties as of this date.
Mark Battista and Tom Curry, the VFP artists overseeing the construction of Arlington Southwest, said the memorial also honors all victims of the occupation of Iraq.

Local members of the group say Veterans for Peace chapters have established many Arlington memorials, but this will be the only one in the nation that is a permanent installation.
Brian Kokernot donated the use of his family's ranch land along Highway 90 for the Arlington Southwest memorial. He said he hopes it creates a reminder for Big Bend residents and visitors of the cost of war and our responsibilities as citizens to speak out publicly on issues.

"The reason for making Arlington Southwest, to me," said Curry, "is to show in a clear, dramatic way the cost and consequences of an unnecessary and illegal war started by leaders who have never seen military combat.

"If we could have made tombstones to represent all the U.S. troops lost and all the Iraqi civilians lost, it would probably cover most of the ranch."

The Big Bend group, chartered in 2007, is the 151st chapter of the national veterans organization, which was founded in 1986. A group spokesman said there are 55 local members.

Big Bend Veterans for Peace plan dedication ceremony (click for article with photos)
Special to the Avalanche

Taking a stand in Far West Texas for Impeachment

2007-10-25T19:43:00.000-07:00

By Eve Trook and Paul Schaefer

In July Big Bend Veterans for Peace, Chapter 151, initiated a weekly HONK TO IMPEACH action in Alpine, Texas, population 6,000. This fall we expanded the action to include twice a month demonstrations in another small town, Marfa, Texas, population 2,200, 26 miles west of Alpine.

We are a small chapter, 11 of us, chartered in August of 2007, covering three large counties in a remote rural area on the Texas-Mexico border. In a region dominated by cultural conservatism and living in small towns where it seems like everyone knows each other, we’ve had to struggle with our fears about losing friends and jobs if we speak out publicly.

There has been some polarization and there have been moments of confrontation but our peace community has grown. Big Bend citizens, including other veterans, have come to stand with us and hold banners, marveling that there are others who share their beliefs. Tourists from the East and West Coasts have stopped and expressed their surprise and delight at finding that an isolated spot has engaged with issues of impeachment and peace.

Previously isolated people now work with us to make papercrete tombstones, paint them, and help clear catclaw from two rangeland acres for our regional Arlington memorial. They are helping us surround the memorial with an electric fence so that range cattle will not deface the tombstones.

The local public radio station and the local newspapers have interviewed us about HONK TO IMPEACH and Arlington Southwest. None of us expected the local papers to even mention our activities; the reality is that HONK TO IMPEACH made the Alpine front page in full color photo plus text. By our counts, using clickers, 27-37% support impeachment. Less than 1% have indicated overt opposition.

Big Bend VFP believes it has locally pushed back some of the national attempts at fear and intimidation against the peace movement but realizes that local peace efforts must also be connected with regional and national, even international, work.

· Chapter members Eve Trook, John Tuck, and Paul Schaefer participated in Camp Casey, Easter 2006.

· Member Jim Goodnow, Terlingua, has been on the road for almost two years with his Yellow Rose Peace Bus (www.yellowrosepeacebus.com), taking IVAW members to East Coast bases, providing transport to marches and demonstrations across the country and creating a highly visible symbol of protest.

· Paul Schaefer, a member of the core crew of Cindy Sheehan’s Journey for Humanity and Accountability, July 10-29, from Crawford to New York City, was arrested in John Conyers’ office with 45 others after Conyers refused to initiate impeachment.

Big Bend Veterans for Peace invite you to join us in dedicating Arlington Southwest (4 miles east of Alpine, Texas, on U.S. Hwy 90), November 11, 2007, Veterans’ Day.

Alpine is 55 miles south of I-10 and 100 miles north of Big Bend National Park. November can be one of the best months for visiting and camping. For information, call Big Bend Veterans for Peace at 432-837-7150 or email pcschaefer@yahoo.com

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"Arlington Southwest" planned by Big Bend Veterans for Peace

2007-10-01T18:32:00.000-07:00

Publish Date: October 1, 2007 Permanent Link (click on permanent link for photos as well as text)

A memorial to Texas troops killed in Iraq – 367 tombstones (the number of Texas military persons killed in Iraq was 349 in mid- September) to be installed four miles east of Alpine on private ranchland fronting Highway 90 – is being planned by the Big Bend chapter of the national organization Veterans for Peace.

Named after Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, the installation, to be known as Arlington Southwest, will resemble a military cemetery and will be formally dedicated on Veterans Day, November 11. Additional tombstones will be added if Texas men and women die in the Iraq war.

Veterans’ groups in other regions have erected similar tributes in Santa Monica, California (Arlington West); Cape Cod National Seashore, Massachusetts (Arlington East); Seattle, Washington (Arlington Northwest); Duluth, Minnesota (Arlington North); Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Arlington North at the Liberty Bell); and Miami, Florida (Arlington Miami).
The purpose of the Arlington Memorials is, according to the national Veterans for Peace organization, “to make the consequences of war real, and to allow people to express their grief, respect and thoughts.”

Brian Kokernot, the Arlington Southwest site landowner, added his hope that “this type of memorial would enhance the possibility of peace for all our children and grandchildren.”
The several Arlingtons are primarily in honor of fallen U.S. service members, the VFP said, but they are also intended, in accordance with the group’s mission, “to increase the public awareness of the cost of war and to seek justice for veterans and victims of war.”

Shoes, photographs, and other appropriate images and symbols accompany the Arlington memorials in remembrance of the Iraqi and other civilian deaths. Artist Tom Curry, Vietnam veteran, and Alpine architect Mark Battista are co-designers of the memorial and the white-painted papercrete tombstones. The two-acre artwork, they said, “honors our fallen Texas soldiers.”

Joe Goldman, a Korean War veteran and another member of the local VFP group, stressed that Arlington Southwest is not a partisan effort, and that it is meant to save the lives of our troops by creating for the civilian public a graphic image of the real cost of the Iraq occupation.
Clarence Russeau, a Gulf War veteran, said he sees the memorial as a way of supporting U.S. troops without supporting administration foreign policy.

Paul Schaefer, a Vietnam veteran, noted that “The war in Iraq was declared an illegal act by the United Nations’ president. Support of our troops requires bringing them home safely from their illegal assignment.”

On Wednesday, Sept. 19, dedicated members of Veterans for Peace gathered in northwest Alpine, at Alan King’s, to work on preparing papercrete tombstones for the installation planned for a site 4 miles east of Alpine along Highway 90, on a ranch owned by Brian Kokernot. While work parties to prepare the tombstones continue, weather permitting, the next steps towards creating the memorial include weed-eating, measuring and marking tombstone placement, and installing an electric fence, “so cows won’t eat our tombstones,” said Eve Trook.