connecting*the*dots

(originally uploaded by Major Clanger)

(originally uploaded by MatthewBradley)

From an email I received the other day:

[…] “Our hope is to learn things that we can pass along to other people doing civil disobedience — turn this whole experience into a template that will make it easier for the next round. Our inspiration is the “barefoot lawyer” movement in China and Uganda.” [..]

- Liz Seymour -

Liz was one of the brave group of local protesters that were arrested at the Greensboro anti-surge rally a few months back. After I read Isabella’s post about why she decided to be arrested, I immediately signed up to grab the bus down to DC for the protest in late January.

On the way back from the march I met Liz for the first time.

We’ve gotten to know each other a bit more over the past few weeks at the Monday night Food not Bombs dinner for the homeless at the Greensboro Public Library. You see, Liz spends her days walking the walk — living in a collective house with six friends while making meals all week for folk around town who might otherwise go without.

Yeah, I can already hear what that little voice is saying in the back of your head:

“What a hippie!”

You need to tell that voice to shut the fuck up.

If you’d like to meet some real people — people who both stand up for what they believe in and live their lives accordingly — Liz and her co-defendants plan on holding a rally and press conference at 5pm outside the Greensboro courthouse tomorrow following their trial for civil disobedience.

Good luck, Liz, Isabella and everyone else involved.

Everyone.

Andy just put together a very compelling, personal account of his experience to DC and back last weekend.

Check it out.

Ruby Sinreich of lotusmedia reports on a successful Second Life war protest yesterday.

A bit too geeky for my tastes, but hey, the more the merrier!

flickr tag: j27sl

UPDATE: Another first person account of the event from Kevin Makice.

Full set of protest shots…

The above photo is of a 3′ x 3′ charcoal or rubber marking, found about 30 feet from the steps of the Capitol in Washington D.C. It was one of about five in the area, with the rest of the bunch all smaller and no more menacing than this particular marking.

I took the picture around 2pm, as my brother and I participated in and covered the anti-war protest.

Now, a number of conservative blogs — with large threads of clueless readers — are referring to this benign event as protesters vandalize Capitol building! In the posts, there are references of “spray paint” as the protester’s media of choice “to spray their dissent all over the steps of the U.S. Capitol building.”

Take a look at the picture above — it looks like someone busted out a rubber heel of a bar stool and rubbed the mark to fruition.

In any event, for the two hours we spent on the steps of the Capitol, as far as I can report, nothing worthwhile regarding violence or destruction occurred. At least nothing to dent the taxpayer’s wallet.

I can report, however, that there were some awkward, interesting, funny and stunning expressions of free speech just a few feet away from the steps of the Capitol:

The Soldier’s Wife

Man, this scene was rough.

This poor girl — she looked no older than 19 — just stood in place for an hour while completely releasing her frustrations regarding her husband’s deployment to Iraq.

It was great to see the wife of a soldier at the steps of the Capitol, releasing her pent up anger and frustrations, but man… I actually felt for the fuzz. When she finally left, after an hour of non-stop venting, the cops sort of looked at one another, took a deep breath, and stood at attention once again.

It’s too bad she can’t get 5 minutes on the floor of Congress — speaking directly to the people who can actually put an end to this madness — instead of spending an hour shouting into the wind directly outside.

To The Capitol! (Where’s The Capitol, Dude)

While the soldier’s wife vented, a huge group of punk rock kids walked over the grassy knoll to the right of the steps, chanting different things at different times — though I have to say the funniest was, “To the Capitol! To the Capitol! (followed by the guy in the lead with “Dude, where’s the Capitol?)”

We were standing right in front of it.

Various members of the group attempted to look menacing, but it was obvious that they were a bunch of students — a remnant of the 60’s radical organization, the SDS — who seemed to be looking for something to do on the fly.

They might have been the party guilty of tagging the pavement earlier in the afternoon (again, I don’t know for sure, but it seemed to fit their vibe), but by no means were they violent or radical.

The above picture isn’t showing a guy with a bullhorn working a crowd into a fist-raising frenzy; the leader of the pack simply asked the kids to raise fists if they wanted to join the “normal protesters in the march” or, and I quote, “just go do other stuff.”

They decided to join the marchers.

Dance, Dance, Revolution

This girl had me cracking up.

As the SDS broke off to meet up with the “normal” protesters, she moved directly in front of the officers guarding the steps and before you could say, “Michael Jackson,” she had already started to bust a move.

That was funny by itself — the bandanna covered revolutionist dancing her ass off — but as she continued to gyrate, she started a one-way conversation with the officers in front of her:

Come on, dance! Dance! It’s good for you! Dance! I see you smiling, come on, why can’t you dance?!…

That went on for at least 20 minutes. Somewhere in the midst of her bopping and prodding, someone screamed, “Dance! Dance! Revolution!” and as if on cue, she emulated the dance moves on the floor interface of the arcade game with the same name.

Too damn funny.

Tri-be: Performance Art

Identical triplets from tri-be performed all around Washington D.C. Each square inch of red cloth represented a specific number of casualties in the War on Terror.

• The businesswoman represents the victims of 9/11
• The soldier represents the fallen US service men and women
• The Muslim woman represents the fallen Iraqis and Afghani’s

From the silent execution of the performance to the details of the wardrobe to the absolutely compelling subtext of identical triplets as the participants, I was moved to my core.

Check out tri-be for yourself.

So Did The Protest Make The Slightest Dent In Policy?

I’m not sure if anti-war protests these days have the same teeth that they did back in the 60’s and 70’s. Quite honestly, law enforcement on the scene seemed pretty laid back, almost as if they were babysitting for the afternoon.

I’m not advocating chaos or violence as a vehicle for change, either.

On this day, the crowd was already diversified via organizational groups and each seemed to be focused more than a few degrees away from the next — one would be for the impeachment of Bush, the next for the liberation of Palestine, etc. Without a focused and consistent message — and a organized, regimented march — the message itself became diluted. So instead of delivering a powerful message through the action of tens of thousands of coordinated Americans, protesters, as a whole, opened themselves up to be reduced to “anarchists” and pegged as “anti-American.”

But there is a flip-side to such a perspective.

The internet in 2007 allows like-minded people to not only connect with one another, but to extend discourse beyond letters, meetings and protests — as anti-war activists were limited to 40 years ago.

These permanent hooks of discourse now live in the ether of the web, ripe for furthering conversations and introducing new realities to millions of Americans and global citizens each day.

Four years into the Iraq war, the representative arm of our government has heard the voice of the American public loud and clear and is beginning to at least challenge the administration’s policy. How long, and how many protests, did it take for a similar foothold to take place in the anti-Vietnam war era?

Much more than four years and a protest counter-culture needed to become established.

For numerous reasons, modern day American anti-war protests are an immature brand of past struggles — no centralized and respected leadership; no coordinated approach to physical movement; no single, simple message to sell to the other side — but the unpaved, decentralized streets of the internet just might be the flip to the script that makes the difference in the long-run.

For all our sakes, let’s hope that’s the case.

How’s the above shot for serendipity?

Andy and I rolled into DC at 11am this morning — six hours after packing into one of two buses from downtown Greensboro. We’ve spend the last few hours walking through the crowd taking shots — Andy with his HD camera, while I’m capturing snapshots of the vibe with my old reliable Sony DCS-S85.

I’ll post more tonight and tomorrow.

Peace.

Chuck Hagel may be late to the table on his position against the Iraq war, but he’s damn sure speaking from his soul and showing true leadership.

I have to admit, I was pretty cynical about his dissent in 2005 regarding American’s rights to openly criticize both the war and this president. Who knows, his tenor could still be a political ploy… but I’m leaning towards the position of highly doubting it.

Rock on, sir.

Jill Williams was nice enough to send me a number of photographs from yesterday’s anti-surge protest in downtown Greensboro.

If I could’ve made the protest (I was/am as sick as a dog), my sign would’ve been, well, a little different. It probably would’ve read something like this:

20,000 more soldiers for what?
A death-wish assault on Sadr City?
Training a United Iraqi Army?
Guarding more Halliburton convoys?
Or to buff W’s huge ego and faded legacy?

I need to work on my brevity… and incorporating links into signs, somehow.

UPDATE: Joe Killian has a great behind-the-scenes take on the protest, including the moronic signs of the day.

(originally uploaded by ’stpiduko’)

More Banksy brilliance!

Families visiting Disneyland on their holiday this week saw a life-size Guantanamo bay inmate standing inside the Rocky Mountain Railroad ride at Disneyland in Anaheim California.

The sculpture, consisting of an inflatable doll dressed in an orange jumpsuit with its hands and feet manacled remained in place for one and a half hours before Disneyland’s security staff shut down the ride and removed it amid fears over public safety.

(via Neatorama)

A Red Line Connects Us
by Abby Sher

“I no longer wish to live my life as usual without acknowledging the widespread violence in the world today and memorializing those killed and injured in the many wars and other conflicts taking place. I chose this very public expression of my concerns in order to provide others who feel the same need a means of expressing their concerns too. As you will see on this site, there are many ways to participate in this project – some very private, and some public – but all conducted in silence. My hope is that together, through our shared participation, we can create a shift in consciousness, where no humanity is devalued and human life is held sacred.�

(via ScriptingNews)