Her name was Polly. A straw hat shielded her wrinkled face from the sun as she paced up and down the bridge. Her words were kind, yet full of compassion and urgency. She wasn’t the kind of woman who is content to retire and play shuffleboard. She smiles like my grandmother, yet carries a protest sign and is going three days without food. All for some children she’s never met halfway around the world.

5,000 children die every month in Iraq because of the U.N. sanctions. These sanctions are mainly kept in place by the United States as an effort to oust Saddam Hussein. The decade of sanctions have resulted in a million children dying while Saddam continues to maintain control of the country. The sanctions aren’t effecting him at all. Instead the innocent are dying.

And so Polly takes up a protest sign and marches along the Lake Street Bridge between Minneapolis and St. Paul. The gospel has an answer to war: Love your enemy as yourself. You are your brother’s keeper. But nobody really believes it. Except for Polly.