Code Pink Journals CodePINK Journals

Work 4 Peace,Hold All Life Sacred,Eliminate Violence! I am on my mobile version of the door-to-door, going town-to-town holding readings/gatherings/discussions of my book "But What Can I Do?" This is my often neglected blog mostly about my travels since 9/11 as I engage in dialogue and actions. It is steaming with my opinions, insights, analyses toward that end of holding all life sacred, dismantling the empire and eliminating violence while creating the society we want ALL to thrive in

Monday, January 31, 2005

waiting for the sun!

we spend 2 nites in the motel, waiting for the roads to get passable - we're told there's no snow removal equipment in georgia - such freezing rain & snow are anomalies & the city doesn't have $$$ for such rare occurrences - so we stay put until the temperature rises, which it does sunday. i only have one good discussion before leaving the hotel - in the work out room, an older white womon asks me where i'm from & how come i'm in georgia. i tell her i'm on my way back from the counter=inauguration. she looks a little startled. i ask her if she was aware of all the protests that occurred this past week. she said she heard there were a few demonstrators but she didn't think one would be staying in this hotel. i told her there were thousands of demonstrators, representing the 56 million u.s. americans that want this war to be over.
she told me she tolerated protests but she thought the saying 'somewhere in texas a village is missing it's idiot' was not productive - that offended her. i asked her if she was aware of the level of displeasure, to put it mildly, with this president that exists in this country. she thought she was.
she asked me if i didn't think we should support our president once he made a decision. i asked her if she thought the german people should have supported hitler once he made a decision; or the iraqi people for that matter should have supported hussein once he made a decision. she got my point.
then she told me they all lie - there's no one to believe. i told her my standard line: we are not stupid, no matter what they say to us. we can tell a lie from the truth - it might take some thinking, some analyzing, some research - but we can ferret out the truth. she asked me where i get my truth from, if i listened to npr & believed them. i told her i listen to many sources & read many sources, including corporate-run media. i spoke about how the media has become owned by a few corporations, how michael powell made that possible by first ignoring the law & then trying to change the law. i told her i thought the public funded alternative media sources at the very least attempted to present both sides of the issues. in the very least, the left media sources do not tend to misquote & lie about what people say. i gave her an example i recently heard on air america where rush limbaugh claimed kofy anin said one thing - al franken played both quotes, from limbaugh & annan.
she dismissed the left and the right media, saying they both lie & we just chose who to believe. i said, yes but we can chose who to believe on a tiny bit of information, or on a great deal of information. we all make choices who & what to believe - but those choices can be based on a well-informed mind or a closed, uninformed mind - it's up to us.
she asked me what i would have us do. i told her i'd have us wimmin take over. i told her it was time we led the country. she gaped at me - at least she didn't laugh, grab her privates, and run. she conceded, well maybe it would make a difference if wimmin were in power. i said, you're damn right it would.
i told her this war has to end - we have to end it, no matter what. her cell phone rang & that was the end of that.
sunday morning the ice had melted from the roads so we took off to the garage where we left the
truck. a friend of tessie's drove the 60 miles from atlanta to pick us up & bring us back to tessie's - what a great guy! now we wait for ray to let me know what's wrong & what it'll cost to fix. peace, sam



preliminary codepink 2005 resolutions

10 cp resolutions for 2005:
1. I will encourage a woman to be a catalyst for change.
2. I will learn the meaning of depleted uranium.
3. I will reach out to a woman who is different from me and bring her to CodePink
4. I will work to reduce violence against women & children in my community, including the violence of poverty, racism, sexism.
5. I will defend the rights of others.
6. I will make one major change in my lifestyle that will reduce my negative impact on the earth. The money, time, energy I save from this change, I will contribute to CodePink.
7. I will attend at least one CodePink Peace vigil per month.
8. I will take responsibility for organizing one CodePink Action.
9. I will find & engage a woman, who is "non-political" or who supports Bush, in a political discussion once a week.
10. I will chose an area of concern (from the following list or other) that deeply touches me; research, be cognizant and informed about this concern; and I will write a quarter page info sheet for CodePink:
* iraq
*social security
* trees in California
*anti-war toys campaign
* walmart
*voter bill of rights
* prisons
*ex-felon disenfranchisement
* roe v wade
*racism in CodePink
* hummers in my town
*living wage
* defeating a president, governor, senator
*drilling in Alaska
* welfare
*nuclear weapons program
* alternative energy
*taxing the rich
* water
*global warming
* abolishing "no child left behind"
*teachers’ rights
* patriot act
*outsourcing jobs
* bush's latest executive order
*sweatshop labor
* military recruiters in high school, colleges, malls
*corporate political support
* my repesentative's votes
*glass ceiling
* my newspaper's news
*universal health care