Monday morning, 6/5/06, as the workforce was
on their way to work and lamenting about how tortuous their traffic
conditions were going to be, they got a glimpse of what REAL torture
looks like. World Can’t Wait Atlanta organized a reality check for
them. We chose a very busy intersection near downtown Atlanta at 7:30am
and had 5 people dress up in orange jumpsuits with black hoods kneeling
together on one corner of the intersection. We wanted to make the
message simple, so alongside the image of the torture victims we
displayed a huge, 8 ft. x 2 ft. wood board with www.worldcantwait.org
painted on it. We had someone holding the sign and another person
passing out flyers to the few pedestrians passing by. (In Atlanta we
have way more cars than pedestrians.)
The response was powerful. Many cars slowed
down to stare at the grouping, some rolled down their window to ask for
a flyer, and there was a lot of rubber-necking going on. Three
pedestrians stopped and thanked us for doing this, and another person
gave us a donation. I asked one of the pedestrians what they thought
the cars passing by would get from this, and they responded “Get on
their computers and go to www.worldcantwait.org”. It was a very
powerful action with our message very clear with a way to hook up with
the movement that is determined to stop these crimes against humanity
by driving out the regime that is responsible.
We are planning to continue to have this
presence at different intersections throughout the city over the
summer, and as we go, the plan is too acquire more jumpsuits and people
to have our presence grow.