Many people spent the holiday wearing red, white and blue clothing and cooking hamburgers on the grill. Others wore pink and fasted, calling for “troops to come home fast.”
Thousands of CODEPINK peace activists gathered Tuesday in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., while about a dozen people from all over Carroll County met at Bishop?s Garth Park in Westminster for their own CODEPINK Iraq war protest.
“This means everything on the Fourth of July. It?s poignant ? it makes me want to weep,” said Margaret Jones, a Westminster resident, as her eyes filled with tears.
“People go on with their lives without any awareness of what?s going on in Iraq,” she said.
CODEPINK is an anti-war grassroots movement started by women in 2002 to protest the United States? pre-emptive strikes on Iraq. It counts activist Cindy Sheehan among its ranks, according to the group?s Web site, www.codepink4peace.org.
The color pink, organizers say, is a distinctly female dismissal of the Homeland Security Department?s color-coded threat levels.
The Independence Day event, held along South Center Street, was the first for Carroll County?s chapter, started last month by Westminster resident Rebekah Orenstein.
Wearing pink T-shirts and Hawaiian leis, women and men ? including a priest, an artist and a teacher ? were brought together by the singular belief that Americans should question their own country even on the most patriotic of days.
Michelle Barattucci, a Westminster resident, decided not to eatthe entire day in protest of the war.
“I think it?s time we find a nonviolent culture of peace,” she said, holding a sign that read “Peace” in Swahili. “But people have a difficult time changing. This is a way to instill different perspectives.”
Most of the cars driving past, filled with revelers heading to the town?s Fourth of July celebration at the Carroll County Farm Museum, honked and flashed peace signs in support.
But one man yelled out his car window: “Do something of value ? we got people over there!”
