Arrest the war criminals not the young people

The following was posted at milwaukee.indymedia.org on March 27.

This letter is in response to the article “Damage blamed on frustration.” In the article you state that 21 young adults and teenagers were arrested while protesting in front of an army recruiting office.

I am myself, a Mom who lost a son when he was fifteen. The reason he is no longer with us is because his cardiologist could not give him a particular test. The insurance company requires that he only have the test once a year. So they did not administer it. If they had they would have detected the blood clot in his heart, and he would be alive today. It is really funny how we are so interested in using our dollars to fund the war, but we could care less about our very own young people, or people in our country period. I’m talking about the every day, run of the mill people, who work hard, and pay taxes, and still don’t have what they need to support their families.

So what choices do our children have? They can follow in their parents’ footsteps, and struggle to support their own families someday, or they can join the military, and make lots of money, be provided for, and possibly lose their limbs, or their lives.

Are our young people angry? Yes and understandably so. Should they have been arrested for breaking a window? Well to be honest I really don’t think all twenty-one could have joined in to break the window in the first place, and what’s one window compared to all the young people we have already lost to this senseless war. Why don’t we arrest all the people who are responsible for that?

Come on people, let’s put this into perspective: Is a window truly more important than a life?

—From a concerned Mother in Wisconsin