Thanks to all of you who phoned the Sacramento City Council, or came to the meeting last Tuesday. Thanks to good work by Council member Ray Tretheway, and the many who called in, the Coalition to End the War was given a permit to display 120,000 small red and white flags on Capitol Mall – that’s not the Capitol grounds! It’s the grassy stretches of Capitol Avenue that stretches west from 8th St. to the Tower Bridge.

Maybe altogether 50 of us worked at various times throughout the day Saturday (still “today” as I write this) putting the flags on the first, and largest, four blocks of the Mall, maybe 80,000 of them. Mostly white flags, each representing approximately 5 Iraqis, children, mothers, grandparents, killed, mostly by accident, since the US invaded Iraq in 2003. And nearly 4000 red flags (so far put up) on the corners of each block, each red flag representing an American who died in this war.

And we need your help tomorrow (Sunday 5/25) to finish the job. It’s about 2/3 done, but those of us who worked today will be pretty creaky tomorrow. But even if you’re not up for “stoop labor”, we have knee pads and kneeling pads, we’d appreciate even only a few minutes of help, and if you can’t do that, we can use someone to sit at the table and guard our donation can and the thermoses, cookies, water bottles, backpacks, jackets and etc.

Today we placed flags on each block from 9th street to 5th street. Tomorrow we’ll start at 5th and go west to the Tower Bridge. Come by and take a look (Northbound light rail stops at 8th and Capitol. Southbound light rail stops at 7th and Capitol There are bus stops for many lines nearby. Parking meters are not in effect on Sunday. It’s easy, com on down.

And next Saturday, 5/31, we’re taking the exhibit down. That’ll be a lot easier than putting it up! Again, all you have to do is show up, or call me (try my cell first, because I’ll be downtown) if you want to make sure we are working (we will be!)
In between we could use volunteers to sit for a couple of hours each day at our table somewhere amongst the flags or on the sidewalk lining the mall. Please volunteer to help! For Information, and to volunteer to help: Debra Reiger, 698-8131 - Daniel Costa, 613-1106 - John Reiger, 456-4595

And finally, once again (I only repeat this because apparently one person misunderstood the earlier email), the exhibit is NOT on the Capitol grounds! It is on the MALL, that is, Capitol Avenue, going west from 9th street. While we had four TV and two Radio stations come out to interview us today, if you haven’t heard about it, you can help make sure the rest of Sacramento knows by calling the Bee, calling any TV station or radio station you listen to at all regularly, and ask them, “Hey, what’s going on on Capitol Mall? I was driving past and it’s all covered with little white flags, and a few red ones. What’s up with that? Does it have anything to do with the I-5 repairs?”

Just be Ms. Joan Q. Public, innocently asking them.

Thanks!

Ellen Schwartz
Sacramento Valley Branch WILPF
916-369-5510
916-835-4330 (cell)