Today I walked down to the Winter Democratic National Convention at the Washington Hilton to meet with the Vets for Peace. When I arrived Dean was speaking to a room full of cameras. I had a hard time finding the veterans I had come looking for until a man smoking by the door said, "I saw a guy up on the corner with a hat that said Veterans for Peace." I met up with veterans Kevin, Doug, and Ruth. They chose an area of Connecticut Ave with high visibility to bring both the Public and the Democratic National Committee members' attention to their cause. Unexpected attention was recieved from the Reserve Officers' Association of which its members were beginning to gather for their own convention. The signs they held pleaded with Dr. Howard Dean the newly elected Democratic Chair to stop the us of armor piercing depleted uranium munitions. Kevin McCarron, a spokesperson for the Vets for Peace in Washington, D.C. said that being a doctor, Dean should be a standing voice against these weapons whose radiation deformed a young generation of Iraqis born after its use in the first Gulf War.
I have been printing a lot of old negatives from the first year I was in the Marines. I have never seen them in print and I want to try and remember the differences in my photography between now and then. I don't really know what I've come up with as far as an answer to that question yet. But between prints I have a lot of time to stare down the hallway and think about it.
