the killing of who?

May Day, International Workers Day - the honoring and celebrating of the workers around the world - and a reporter is urgently trying to find out what CodePINK's reaction is to the killing of some guy with a non-english last name

I have to ask: the killing of Who? Or is that Whom?

I tell him we are non-violent. We abhor violence and call for the disarming of EVERYONE. Why would you wonder about how we would react to the killing of anyone?

Especially on International Workers Day and the news that 10's of thousands of people across the nation were in the streets to honor and celebrate this day, to stand in solidarity one worker with another.

STRIKE May 2011: Day Day 1 night - to be continued

There are about 15 or 20 folks waiting for us, as the ferry pulls into Vallejo, holding signs and cheering! What a wonderful welcome!

Marsha suggests we stay with one of our welcomers, a friend of hers named Roger, who has offered the floor of his condo, close to Glen Cove, for the night. We have the church, if we want, but with just about 8 people needing sleeping quarters, she thinks it will be easier staying closer to the Cove. We are caravanning to our beginning march point, so it doesn't really matter where we stay so we decide to go to Rogers.

Roger’s condo is just that – a little concrete and pressed wood building among hundreds of other identical ones in between thick, rounded-up perfect, evenly cut, highly fertilized lawns. Before we agreed to change plans and stay at Rogers, I asked about animals – I didn’t think to ask about smokers.

Roger’s home is clean and sparsely furnished, comfortable except for a disturbed hostile man hanging out on the couch. A couple of us decide to sleep on the little porch, sharing with our gear & food. But that soon becomes barely habitable, as Roger and his friend stand out there smoking into the night.

We finally get a hold of Wounded Knee to let him know we will not be using the church. He is very disappointed and wants us to come right away to the Cove but it is after 10, and we are exhausted and cannot figure out rides there and back. It is late, we are dealing with the challenges of logistics and launching our strike march with much fewer marchers than we anticipated.

We have hope that many will join us tomorrow at the corner of Benicia and Solano and march to Glen Cove ... to be continued

STRIKE May 2011: Day Day 1 - to be continued

May Day, 2011

The day is beautiful: warm, sunny, bright with expectation. 24^th St plaza is filled with signs, drums, bodies. Everyone is flyered and urged to march to Sacramento.

CodePINK brings up the end of the march, carrying 3 huge hot pink banners: STRIKE, END $$$ FOR WAR, END TAX BREAKS FOR the RICH!

The rally has begun by the time we get to the stage. Cindy Sheehan has not yet showed up so I check in. I see many other speakers have not showed up either.

I have arranged to speak last, hoping to inspire the folks to stand up and march with us at least to the Ferry Building. By the time we get on stage, the crowd has dwindled to a couple hundred people maybe.

My expectations are rapidly lowering, as I ponder if we will have enough womyn to hold the banners on the march to the ferry building.

We do! We start of through the farmer’s market working our way to Market St. Looking behind, I see all our banners are being held up! We proceed down Market, shouting “STRIKE, STRIKE to END WAR”

Resting my voice for a second, I hear a guitar and drum start to play; then  a womon’s voice on a megaphone leading a chant: “Everywhere we go, people wanna know…” .

We pause in front of Diane Feinstein’s office, and I see the crowd has swelled. I try to count bodies but I get up to 50 and loose track & have to start again. I think the crowd grows to about 70.

We see a street fair and most of the march detours a block or two, intending to march thru the crowds. We only get to the gate – there’s a fee – but we stand there chanting anyway.

After doing much