Morningside Marks Fourth Anniversary of War in Iraq

Samantha Gorbirs was looking for the future of civic engagement when she came to the Iraq War candlelight vigil at Straus Park last night. Gorbirs, a resident of Morningside Heights, came to the event with her two children, ages 3 and 7. Several such vigils were held Monday night in observance of the fourth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, but many participants in the area were troubled by the lack of young people at the events.

The vigils were held to "show respect for the soldiers and the families who were affected," said Rani Charary, an organizer with Moveon.org. She was overseeing a vigil at 116th Street and Broadway in which participants held candles and read several letters from the families of soldiers killed in Iraq. Charary said that over 1,000 such vigils were being held across the nation, with almost 60 in Manhattan alone.

As of Friday, the Pentagon had reported 3,197 deaths of American troops in Iraq.

Further down Broadway, at Straus Park on 106th Street, Moveon.org held another vigil in conjunction with the Three Parks Democrats. Here too, candles abounded, and a list of names of all the soldiers from the five boroughs killed in Iraq was read aloud. The organizers of both vigils said that turnout was high-almost 50 people were at 116th Street, and at least 130 people crowded in at 106th.

But the vigils were not passive memorials-they also served as protest against the American occupation. "We want our leadership to listen to the people" outside of the usual institutional means, Charary said. She explained that the Bush administration has misread the personal mind-set of the majority of Americans. "We are not that kind of people, that we can destroy others [without consequence]," Charary said.

Lynn Max, another of the Three Parks Democrats' organizers, hoped that the vigil would "bolster the action of Congress to cut out funds for the war."

Gorbirs said she brought her children because she sees civic action as expanding in the coming years "especially because of the Internet-I know a lot of people who get involved through e-mail," she said. Gorbirs believes it's important to incorporate civil politics into the mass culture and globalized system that children are growing up in.

But many of the participants felt that activism had a ways to go, especially among young people. "The first thing I noticed was that everyone is around 50 or older," said Dick Gaffie, a Morningside Heights resident. "It seems to always be the same crowd." Gaffie said that protest may intensify as the war drags on, but it may not spread to different segments of society.

Caroline Heard, also a Morningside Heights resident, said that a draft would have to be instituted before the student activism of the Vietnam era occurred again. She said that the American national consciousness is "not involved with the land [Iraq] as a whole." Until America sees Iraq as a larger entity, and not just a political issue, youth especially will not work "in a proactive way," Heard said.