The peace symbol -- which has had wars aplenty to rub up against since it was created 50 years ago -- is one of the most recognizable emblems in the world. And some peace symbol standard-bearers are using its 50th anniversary to highlight five years of protest since the war in Iraq began.
Among them are peace veterans who marched when the symbol came into its own, spreading with the flood of protest some 40 years ago during the Vietnam War.
The symbol was a much more sensitive subject then, said Ed Mulready, a member of Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth), a Wilmington-based peace organization that for almost five years has been holding twice-weekly vigils to urge the return of troops from Iraq.
"At times during the Vietnam War, that logo meant you were taking sides," said Mulready, 62, of Newark, who also crusaded for peace during that period. "I don't think people remember how ferocious the opposition to the violence was."
As a faculty member and adviser to the student newspaper, The Rocket, at Slippery Rock State College in Pennsylvania, he helped make the bold decision to run the peace symbol at the top of the front page almost every day in 1970 and 1971 as a protest against the Vietnam War.
"In the middle of a war, we were saying, with that peace symbol, that we were taking sides," he said. "It was an incredibly divisive thing. But it was also, I think, idealistic and decent."
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