By Pat Jenkins The Dispatch It started with a hundred and now is down to one. Peace. That's the wish Michael Hill is still conveying every week from a street corner in Eatonville. The think-global, act-local movement started four years ago, when Hill and like-minded friends and community members decided to take to the streets in a peaceful but visible way. They started congregating on Fridays at the corner of Center Street and Washington Avenue, the busiest intersection in town. They held signs urging an end to war. Part of the their motivation was Cindy Sheehan, the Texas mother of a soldier who was killed in the Iraq war. In 2005, she protested the war by standing outside then president-George W. Bush's ranch, sparking heavy news media attention. "There were 100 of us the first time," Hill proudly recalled of the Eatonville group. The number dropped to 24 within the next couple weeks, and on some ensuing weeks "it was just me," he said. And that's how it is now for that one-day-a-week vigil -- Hill standing quietly, almost stoically, just him and a couple signs with messages like "Peace NowGÇ¥ and "Wave for Peace,GÇ¥ and a flag emblazoned with the peace symbol. Some of the motorists who streamed by on a recent Friday afternoon honked and waved in support. Most drove by without any visible reaction. Occasionally GÇô more like rarely, Hill says -- they'll say or do something derogatory. But presumably, most or all of them notice him, and that's all he hopes for. "It's not me that people are reacting to. It's the sign: 'Peace,'" he said after someone shouted a comment that he didn't quite catch, but didn't take personally. "I'm just standing up for peace. It's not political,GÇ¥ Hill said. "I just want people to think about peace, about what kind of world they want to live in.GÇ¥ Hill, who was born in 1943, noted that he's like many Americans in that their country has been at war somewhere on the planet virtually as long as they've been alive. Enough already, he said. Hill, who lives in Elbe, has spent time in Kitsap County participating with an anti-war group that's based there and has staged organized protests of nuclear weapons at the Navy's nuclear submarine base in Bangor. He said he was among demonstrators who once blocked trains carrying equipment to the base. These days, his focus is on an intersection in Eatonville where he wants people to think about a question that he believes has an obvious answer: "Who doesn't want peace?GÇ¥
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