Hundreds Gather on Main Street for a 'Patriotic Response'

Author: Megan O'Keefe

Four hundred Addison County residents took part in "A Patriotic Response on Main Street" on Saturday, gathering in downtown Middlebury to demonstrate their opposition to United States military action in Iraq. The demonstration was organized by Netaka White, a Salisbury resident, who along with his wife, Claire Artis, owns Greenfields Mercantile on Main Street in Middlebury. White, who is a member of the Addison County Peace Coalition, teamed up with Patriots for Peace founder, Derrick Senior, to conceive, plan and publicize the event.
Rally participants congregated on the Middlebury Town Green at 11 a.m., gathering around the fountain where White stood and passionately addressed the crowd. He began, "We're here today because we're concerned about the direction this country is headed. We're here to continue to build a positive momentum of awareness. We're here because our conscience dictates that we must find ways to respond to this situation creatively, visibly and passionately."
White's message was one of a personal journey towards patriotic activism. He announced, "I am guilty - I am guilty of being a reluctant patriot. I'm not an everyday stars and stripes kinda guy, but events have forced me to get in touch with my inner patriot, and he is fired up. I am so fired up for peace!" White encouraged others to join in a chorus of voices declaring their opposition to war and their commitment to patriotism. White was emphatic in his declaration that one can be a patriot and support peace. "I have read in the daily news that the pundits and even worse, the President and the Secretary of War have called the millions of Americans who are protesting current policy -- that they are calling us 'irrelevant', 'unpatriotic' and 'appeasers of the Hussein regime'. And I tell you that is no way for a selected president to talk to the people of this community," he said.
The mood of the rally vacillated between gravity and amusement, as White sprinkled politically charged rhetoric with light-hearted humor. Demonstrators broke into applause and laughter when White declared, "I'm not at ease when I hear the President speak. I don't believe he's telling us the truth. But I am very comfortable when it comes to standing up for the principles of our constitution and for liberty, democracy and for the Bill of Rights. And I think Betsy Ross is the first great American artist and she did a cool thing when she made our first flag out of hemp. But that's another story."
Concluding his speech with a call for a great awakening of "creative and collective non-violent response," White then organized a migration of the demonstrators from the Town Green onto Main Street. Participants lined the sidewalk on both sides of the street from the Congregational Church to Otter Creek Bridge, each holding two Patriots for Peace signs. Explaining his conception of this part of the rally in an interview with The Middlebury Campus, White said, "Derrick Senior, the founder of Patriots for Peace, and I were brainstorming ideas that could bring a large group of people together and between the two of us it went from just having the gathering in the park to what I thought would make a strong visual presentation -- getting people on Main Street. We were working with the idea that the values expressed at the rally are shared by, symbolically speaking, the people of Main Street of America. These are not fringe or odd ways of seeing current events."
White has participated in the Addison County Peace Coalition's Saturday vigils on the Middlebury Town Green since late summer but was recently inspired to do something larger. "[The vigils] have been very meaningful for me and I felt like I wanted to bring more people into that effort. My hope for this gathering and the people that helped me organize it was that we could continue with that positive momentum for peace. The way to do that is to encourage people to come out and join those of us that have been doing this for a while. Every day there are more and more people who are comfortable putting the facts together in their own mind and saying no this isn't right and I'm going to add my voice to those voices that are already speaking. That was my hope and it was far exceeded," said White.
White told The Middlebury Campus, "This event was designed to serve two purposes. One is simply to bring together and share these values of love of country and a sense that the administration is not representing our views. We are going to stand together and show that. [It] is just for us -- to feel our strength in numbers. The other thing was to provide a visual show to interest the media -- to show the people who don't know how strong our support is for these values for peace, to show them that we are strong in numbers and will continue the momentum. An event like that which was very positive, non-confrontational left a good mark on the community." White's desire to achieve a positive community was a feeling shared by many of the Patriotic Response participants. Sheila Seles '05 said, "I thought it was cool to see so many people from the community assembled in support of peace. I also liked that the focus was more on peace than on opposition."
White was overwhelmed by the attendance and perceived success of the event. "It may have frustrated people who wanted to move through town quickly in their cars, I can appreciate that. But the overwhelming response that we picked up was positive. People driving by were honking and waving. I want to thank the Middlebury College students who came down and supported the events, we and the other people in the town really appreciated that," he said.