In today’s charged political climate, many of us choose to remain silent, anticipating that anything we say, no matter how well-intentioned and reasoned, will cause grievous offense and that the ensuing rage would cost us dearly. We are careful with whom we share our thoughts and if we dare, signal in subtle ways our honest leanings.
While in London this past weekend, I’ve figured out how I can show my true colors. Not red, black, white, and green. Nor blue and white. Not even red, white, and blue.
With Remembrance Day approaching, people had on red poppies in honor of military casualties from the many wars waged since the first world war when this practice started. Citizens of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries pin facsimiles of the blood-colored flower on their clothing and lay red wreaths at war memorials.
Although I’ve seen remembrance poppies before, I’ve never seen white ones. Yet there they were, not as plentiful as the red ones, but present, here and there.
Like the red ones, white poppies are worn around Remembrance Day. In 1933, members of the Co-operative Women’s Guild, many of whom had lost loves ones in World War I, distributed white poppies as a reminder of the vow made by nations after the bloodshed, “never again.”
White poppies symbolize three things. First, the remembrance of all war victims: civilians and members of the armed forces, as well as refugees and victims of colonial conflicts. Second, the objection to war and militarism, along with their justification and normalization. Third, a commitment to peace and nonviolence.
Peace Pledge Union, one of the UK's oldest pacifist organizations declare, “In wearing white poppies, we remember all those killed in war, all those wounded in body or mind, the millions who have been made sick or homeless by war and the families and communities torn apart. We also remember those killed or imprisoned for refusing to fight and for resisting war.”
As I wear a white poppy, I will think of the ongoing conflicts in Gaza, in Ukraine, and in many other places of drug wars, terrorist insurgencies, ethnic conflicts, and civil wars, where countless innocent children, women, and men have been killed and more than 114 million displaced. And I will ask myself, what can I do in my own small way to foster peace?