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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

Friday, October 19, 2007

Stories from the Station: Support from the Homefront to be continued

I cannot forget to write about all the little, unique, and very important ways people are stepping forward to support our work as they start to realize there actually IS a recruiting station in Berkeley.

A womon has brought us bottles of water; another came by to give us quarters for the meters; another feeds the meter by my truck every afternoon before she walks past; a fellow on a bike comes and brings us home-made sushi and once he brought us home-made truffles!

Another time I went into the coffee shop and a womon jumped up and asked if she could by me whatever I was having; another time a womon came by with food and another womon came by to take me across the street and buy me a sandwich for lunch.

Amy comes almost every day and makes a mandala peace symbol on the sidewalk, although she says its not really a mandala, not so brilliant and creative she claims - but her mandalas are stunning, beautiful, and inspiring - and all made from nature, things she collects as she walks around.

The coffee shop, People's Cafe, let's us keep the protest bag in the corner there, overnite, over the weekend, so it is available for whomever wants to come and protest, even if we're not there.

The copy owner is gracious, discounts our copies, and allows us to lean posters, photos of the Real Faces of War against his building.

"Jump Ship" and STOP shipping to Iraq

Our "APL: Jump Ship" action aimed at American President Lines, huge war profiteers operating out of the Oakland Ports, took place today, Friday, Oct 19th, which is also Iraq Moratorium day.

Slight drizzle but mostly mild, white, gray & black cloud-filled skies with sun peaking through accompanied us on a beautiful march from the West Oakland BART station down 7th St through the ‘dangerous’ streets of West Oakland to APL headquarters downtown Oakland Friday: lots of folks were in costume, carrying various props as a Bush mask, a small boat with fake money sprouting from the bows, and a large replica of an APL cargo ship with “War Profiteers” painted on it and pictures of the Real Face of War attached.

Dressed as the perpetutors (wealthy war profiteers) or victims of war (soldier, iraq womyn and baby), we sang and chanted as we marched, dialogued with neighbors and store-owners, passed out flyers about war profiteer APL, and gave peace symbols to passers-by honking and waving.

When we reached the APL office (and the Bechtel Office housed in the same building) at 1111 Broadway, we spread out on the raised plaza in front of the entrance to the building and continued chanting.

When it was time to go inside to speak with APL representatives, we placed our banners, props, and signs in a pile and about 8 hot-pink-clad womyn started toward the entrance. Security guards, seeing us coming, raced to lock the doors preventing our entrance!

We attempted to negotiate with the guards and a smiling white male who identified himself as the owner of the building, entreating them to allow us to visit APL, then to at least call to allow us up. They refused to allow us to come inside or give us the APL number, and ended up calling the Oakland police on us!

An extremely polite, friendly Oakland cop eventually showed up, wanting to know if everything was okay with us, making sure we were not hurt. We reassured him we were not hurt physically but wanted access to the building. He seemed very surprised that they would not allow us entrance to the building but they can keep out whomever they want!

We continued to demonstrate out in front until all our flyers were handed out and the slight drizzle threatened to turn into rain!

APL is one of the biggest war profiteer shippers from the Oakland Ports making 6 billion last year!!! They are willing to ship ANYTHING, including nuclear materials as well as weapons.

We have a call into their media person, asking for an appointment to speak with him so we can write a story about what is being shipped from our port!

We are intending to eventually organize a left-coast picket of all the docks that house war-profiteers that continue to ship supplies and weapons to Iraq and supply war!

Fabulous media coverage

We bid adieu around 2:00p.m. to the dusty feathers - smattering of pigeons, as Medea would say - as they swooshed back to their nests in the nether parts of small-minded California this past Wednesday. The ugliness and hatred that characterised most of their faces was difficult and terribly sad to witness as the predominantly white and male with a scattering of several well-dressed & make-up caked faced women counter-protestors screamed obscenities and made lewd gestures.

But folks who are willing to kill to get what they want are not know for the ability to reason let alone communicate non-violently.

We got GREAT press coverage with several stations linking our story with the 'news' that Bush intends to call up an additional 8 units of our National Guard members soon. There are more U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq now then ever before. Remember, Bush stated in the spring that he intends to have 200,000 U.S. troops in Iraq by December of 2006.

Here are several of the news links:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/18/4668/

SF Chronicle - FRONT PAGE!!! (aka sfgate.com)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/18/BA54SRJLE.DTL

Berk Daily Planet
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?issue=09-28-07&storyID=28097

CBS NEWS
http://cbs5.com/local/local_story_276204539.html
(video link also)
Associated Press/Yahoo News
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/071017/480/582e4cd51ee04a1d9f5bf2c3f53618ec
Berk Daily Cal
http://www.dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=26463
Anti-War Protests on Yahoo! News Photoshttp://news.yahoo.com/photo/071017/480/582e4cd51ee04a1d9f5bf2c3f53618echttp://cbs5.com/video/?id=27333@kpix.dayport.com

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=5712926
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_7212106?source=most_emailed
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200710/CUL20071018b.html
http://www.dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=26479
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_7204629
http://www.zombietime.com/code_pink_vs_marines_10-7-2007/
http://video.nbc11.com/player/?id=168904
http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=7227888&nav=menu191_2%20And%201=2
http://blogs.eastbayexpress.com/92510/2007/10/pro_and_antiwar_demonstrators.php