Editor, Daily Nexus,

I am an employee of the Boys and Girls Club located on campus at UCSB. I made a personal decision not to participate in the war protest, but I feel my experience at work on Thursday proved just as valuable. I was able to hear a different perspective on the war protest: the perspective of kindergarteners. Three of our vans that transport the children from their schools to our program were caught in the protest on Highway 217. When the vans finally arrived at our site, one child got off the van visibly shaken and crying. He asked me why all those people were so angry, what they were doing and why they had to have the police let them through. He then told me that he was scared because he thought the war had come to America and that he thought he was going to get killed by all the people. Later on we were having a sharing time and all the five-year-olds wanted to talk about the protest. The protest, in some ways, seemed to have had the right effect on the children as a way to establish dialogue. However, they mostly were just stating how afraid they were and how much they did not like protests. On the one hand, the children were thinking about the war and discussing its meaning, but on the other hand, these children’s minds were too young to rationalize the situation and consequently were gripped by their fears of the violent nature of the protest. Should an antiwar protest feel like a war zone – even if it is the mind of a five year old?

Print