 "Photo: Nina Buckalew")
It took nearly four months for two students to walk from coast to coast this summer.
They walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and into Nevada. They walked through a desert sandstorm. They walked past mountain peaks, small towns and endless rows of cornfields.
In the end, they walked 3,000 miles. On Sept. 10, they reached Washington, D.C., with a strong message to the president - violence is not the answer.
Ashley Casale, a sophomore at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., organized the March for Peace. A handful of anti-war activists joined her for parts of the journey. Michael Israel, an 18-year-old from Jackson, Calif., who just graduated high school, accompanied Casale the entire way.
The marchers want nonviolent resistance to war efforts, the end of genocide in Darfur, the end of nuclear weapon holding and proliferation and increased environmental sustainability.
Casale took the Fall Semester off to finish the journey and reflect on her experience. She said she knows a cross-country expedition will not immediately end the War in Iraq, but she still feels a sense of accomplishment knowing she has changed some Americans' impressions of her generation.
"We've had people tell us they were feeling cynical and apathetic but having us pass through their town really excited them and re-energized them to become active in protesting again," Casale said.
The group rested periodically, but they had to stay on target to reach the White House by September. The pair took only two days off.
"We basically had to keep going no matter what," she said.
The route took them from their starting point in San Francisco eastward across the Rocky Mountains, through the Midwest and south of the Great Lakes.
Sarah Ackerman, a University of Delaware graduate student in individual and family studies, joined the two students on the last leg of the trip from Virginia to Washington, D.C., a total of 20 miles.
Ackerman said she has always admired the activists who started the Civil Rights Movement. When she learned about the March for Peace online, she was inspired by the students' determination.
"It struck me that they were all alone," she said. "Most of the people marching with them were older and probably protestors in the civil rights movement."
Few college students are willing to spend free time at sit-ins and protests, Ackerman said.
"People are a little more complacent now," she said. "There's no worrying that you might be called into war like there was in Vietnam."
However, Ackerman said the War in Iraq is similar to the Vietnam War in other ways.
"So many people are dying that don't need to," she said. "It is a war that never had to happen."
Ackerman said her ex-boyfriend was one of many Americans deployed to Afghanistan in the years following 9/11. She said they remained friends since breaking up, but she does not know of his whereabouts.
"I honestly can't tell you if he's alive or not," Ackerman said. "I haven't heard from him in a couple of years. I hope I never see his name on a list of casualties."
She said she is concerned the war will remain unresolved because liberals opposed to the war are disorganized and lack unity.
"People get scared of extreme liberalism and sort of flock to the middle-ground candidate because it's safer," Ackerman said. "It's easier. But the 1960s movement really started with a group of a couple of people who were willing to be brave like these students."
She said, at first, the March for Peace reminded her of Forrest Gump, who spontaneously decided to run cross-country "for no particular reason."
Unlike Gump, however, these marchers have a purpose.
"I want to fight apathy," Casale said. "We are the future. We are the ones who are really needed."
Freshman Audrey Arcuri said her cousin is serving in Iraq, so she has mixed feelings about the war. Arcuri said the March for Peace seems like an effective way to send a message to the public without being offensive.
"I think it's amazing they feel so strongly about something," she said. "Physically, that sounds almost impossible."
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe to our feed
Contact us through email
Be the first to comment on this article!