Update: The Oregonian wrote about Coen
Among Saturday’s more poignant images was a tiny 4-year-old boy who held a sign that said, “This war’s older than me.”
Link to article: Five years of duty, dissent and war
Go Coen!
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And thus the sign we made him, This War is Older than Me! He also thought ‘Poop on the war’ would be a good one.
I shipped my family off to the protest in downtown Portland today (still editing), and was awfully proud watching them go.
It’s very depressing to think that he has never known a time where we aren’t at war. Since we listen to a fair bit of radio, he has often inquired about such-and-such market bombing, and we’ve taken care with the language and have begun to censor the radio a little. At any rate, at just over four, he’s well aware of the war going on on the other side of the world and how we feel about it - and of course he’s also quite familiar with Adel Hamad/Project Hamad and thus Guantanamo. Not that each age doesn’t have its craziness, but these are strange times to grow up in.
At any rate, just for fun we did a search on Flickr tonight to see if he turned up anywhere, as Laura said quite a few people took his photo.
What do you know, he’s here:
http://flickr.com/photos/36254855@N00/2336481760/
and here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomlechner/2336714908/
side note: I’m sort of mixed about posting photos of Coen - I probably won’t do this a lot. There are various opinions from other blogs I respect - Tim Bray’s ongoing makes a point of not naming children’s names or posting photos, and the Granades are very open about this sort of thing. I like the idea of being open about it, but I’m naturally secretive and again I think this is a strange time to be growing up. But since this seems like an exceptional case and many others took his photo, and, I admit, I’m proud to think of him carrying a protest sign, I’m going for it.
