Long Vigil for Peace Grinds On

At the end of a week that saw the lives of 50 young Americans erased in a reinvigorated war 7,600 miles away, a playful wind kicked through the intersection of Garfield Avenue and Main Street in Alhambra.

It was Good Friday, 5:30 p.m. Traffic was a little lighter than usual and some drivers shielded their eyes from the low-angled sun in the west. On the northeast corner, peace activist Al Maldonado and half a dozen others from San Gabriel Valley Neighbors for Peace and Justice had to keep propping up the placards (“Liberate Iraq from Halliburton,” “Bush Lied, 640 U.S. Troops Died,” “These Colors Don’t Run the World”) that the breeze kept flattening.

However dire the week’s news or earnest the protesters’ message at Garfield and Main, they had to compete with the natural buoyancy of an emerging weekend in a peaceful, thriving place.

The mosaic-inlaid concrete fountains at the Alhambra Renaissance Cineplex Plaza splashed and gurgled. Lines began to form at the box office of the 14-screen Edwards theater, which offered such fare as “Starsky & Hutch” and “Scooby-Doo 2.” Pedestrians strolled, rather than hurried, through the plaza. The conversation of early diners at the outdoor tables of chain restaurants rang with gaiety. Even the bleating horns of motorists signaling their sympathy with the demonstrators seemed festive.

The peace demonstrators, who have been coming to this spot every Friday evening for 17 months, were convinced that public sentiment -- as measured, however imprecisely, by horn honking -- had swung their way. Like participants in the 45 other weekly neighborhood vigils that have been in continuous operation in the Los Angeles area since well before the Iraq war, the Alhambra demonstrators endured long periods of public indifference after it seemed that invading American troops had the Iraq situation well in hand.

“The public doesn’t react very quickly to news,” said Maldonado, a blocky, graying man of 51, as he righted another blown-down placard. “But a lot of people who support Bush are starting to think in the back of their mind that something smells, that something isn’t right.”

By 6:15, the number of protesters had grown to 13, and cars blasted sporadic, sometimes prolonged, honking through the intersection. The noise was punctuated by constant bursts from a small bugle blown by demonstrator Raul Orozco, a 33-year-old, erstwhile elementary school teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

A middle-aged woman in the backseat of a worn Toyota shook her fist at Orozco. “Those guys in Iraq are giving you the right to do this!” she shouted.

“We better bring ‘em back alive because Bush will bring ‘em back in body bags!” Orozco yelled back.

“Get a life!” the young man driving the Toyota shouted.

“Get an education!” Orozco called as the car pulled away.

Angel Gonzalez and Nini Sanchez, a young couple walking through the plaza on their way to see “The Alamo” at the movie theater, stopped to consider the extra peace placards propped against a bench. After a moment, they picked up two, carried them to the curb and joined the demonstrators.

The casualty figures of the past week had been behind his impromptu action, said Gonzalez, a 22-year-old film and art education student from Long Beach. “It’s been bad, but now it seems really, really, really bad,” he said. “I totally agree with these people -- and it looks like a lot of fun.”

A little later, a red dune buggy pulled up to Orozco on Main. The driver, a suntanned, middle-aged man with short blond hair, seemed jovial enough. He pointed to a placard calling for American troops to be brought back from Iraq and told Orozco, “Yeah, bring ‘em back -- and send you.”

“I ain’t dyin’ for anybody’s oil.”

“All right,” the man said, laughing as he pulled around the corner onto Garfield.

Then the man and his companion emptied squeeze bottles of mustard and ketchup at a line of demonstrators standing cater-corner to Orozco, hitting three and leaving gloppy trails of yellow and red on the sidewalk as they sped away.

Fred Krauthammer, a 74-year-old retired teacher from Monterey Park, took the brunt of it. The shoulder of his coat bore a thick smear of ketchup; his khaki trousers were splotched with mustard.

“I guess we finally found them -- condiments of mass destruction,” quipped demonstrator Adam Quintanilla, a 52-year-old tax specialist.

Krauthammer, a soft-spoken man, said, “It shows the type of person in that car -- destructive, negative, wanting to harm people. It’s basic disregard for human value.” He smiled. “And it’s environmentally wasteful. I’ll have to wash my clothes.”

Twenty demonstrators had arrived by 7 p.m., as darkness began to thicken over the intersection.

The amplified voice of a female singer began to throb through the plaza. She had bright blond hair, played an electric guitar and wore a black hat.

Knots of teenagers formed at benches close to the demonstrators. Some played Hacky Sack, kicking a small fabric orb among them. One group of girls teased one another in high, tittering voices. A slender boy clattered on his skateboard among the protesters, doing tricks and making exaggeratedly graceful hand signs.

“We kind of create a little culture here,” vigil coordinator Maldonado explained. “We have artists come out sometimes, and sometimes people with little baby toddlers will be out. Also the kids with that little ball thing they kick around. It’s comfortable and they don’t feel threatened.”

One of the girls, 14-year-old Anita Ho, a ninth-grader at Wilson High School in El Sereno, confided that she paid some attention to events in Iraq, “but only to the big stuff.” The peace demonstrators, she said, “are always telling us what’s going on.”

Another girl tried to express her opinion of the demonstration but quickly ran out of words.

“Oh, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Ho said, as the group dissolved in laughter and walked away.

The skateboarder, 17-year-old Ryan Beckstein, balanced on his conveyance and pondered his feelings about the peace demonstration.

“I kind of support them because the government isn’t telling us the truth,” he said at last. “I don’t like it when people throw stuff at them. They’re not causing anyone any harm.”

Beckstein took his leave. He scooted up Garfield and nearly wiped out trying to glance off a fire hydrant on the skateboard.

Now it was 7:40 p.m., past time for the vigil to end. Maldonado and others began collecting placards and stacking them. “We try to stop at 7:30 because we don’t want to interfere with the restaurant-goers. Also, we don’t really want to dialogue with people who’ve been drinking.”

A car pulled up and the remaining demonstrators loaded their placards into it, then left for Maldonado’s nearby apartment to have wine and snacks and plan more peace activities.

The demonstrators gone, Garfield and Main surrendered to the weekend.

There was no more horn honking. The streetlamps and headlights of cars glowed brightly in the full darkness. The blond singer sang a song about hopeful love.