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g ” DATELINE TEXAS hotographer Caroling Lee and Observer intern Jessica Chapman have p spent much of the past few months talking to people around the state about the war in Iraq. The photographs and interviews that appear in this photo essay are part of a larger project documenting Texas peace activists from the Panhandle to the Rio Grande Valley. Lee and Chapman met veteran activists, like 91-year-old Thaddeus “Spike,” Zywicki in McAllen, who was influenced by Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement. But they were particularly interested in the stories of people we don’t expect to be part of a “movement.” During their travels they sought out the stories of first-time activists like 13-year-old Anya Reyes, who helped found an antiwar group in an Austin junior high school, and Texas A&M students Kristin Wilbourn and Jonathan Steed, who have been defying tradition, trying to organize protests in College Station. This essay is based on work conducted from March 23 through April 26. Editors At 13, Anya Reyes is one of the founders of United Students Against War at Austin’s Kealing Junior High School. “We had about 10 people in the groupnow we have 40. And that happened since the war started,” she says. “People started piling into that classroom. Actually the meeting started out just being four peopleit was me, Katie, and Ava and Leah would come in sometimes and then we started telling other friends!’ Anya recalled a recent conversation she had with her father: “He told me, `You’re 13 years oldno one cares’ . You know, it cracked me in half’ Anya plans to continue organiz ing around issues of war and peace. 8 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 5/23/03