To the Protestors

For protestors who came from out of town:

Thank you for coming to our city. This a mean place, and you got a "welcome" that was even meaner. Fear does things to people. However, you are very, very welcome with many of us.

Thank you for the puppets and the street theater. L.A. in the summer is hot, humid, ugly, and boring. You made it one of the best weeks we've had since I was too young to appreciate any of this. For six days, this city has been alive.

Thank you for the imagination, and the simple, clear music, and the love of the earth, and the sincerity. We don't get much of these here.

Thank you for hating corporate hype, and for wearing clothes without logos. Thank you for not running over flower beds in SUVs. Thank you for raging against the machine.

Thank you for the art, and the beauty you brought to the ugly streets around $taple$, a vile building meant for the rich sticking up like an obscene gesture in a poor district long abandoned to its fate.

Thank you for the bravery, facing down an army of wannabe Darth Vaders, without even a light saber. The Force is definitely with you.

Thank you for coming to our city.

To protestors that live in L.A.:

Thank you for being in our city. Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for saying, "Yes, I will get involved, damn it." You know how rare this is in L.A..

Thank you for showing me that the spirit is not dead here. Thank you for amazing me, almost hourly, with wisdom, insights, and thoughts that could have come from one of my own anguished cries for sanity. Thank you for showing me that I am not alone in this city, and that this city is not alone in the world.

Thank you for changing this place forever. Like me, you'll walk around Figueroa and Olympic, you'll go to the Con Center, you'll stare at the dorky corporate supergraphics on the walls, and like me you'll always remember 2000, the year the movement came back in Los Angeles. There is a door here, one that can't be closed no matter how much the totalitarian media try to close it.

Thank you for helping me remember, even for a week, that there is more to life here than car stereos, X-treme sports, movie publicity, and dumb TV. Thank you for the epiphany that magic is alive, that together we can make things beautiful in L.A..

To all the protestors:

Thank you for the dedication and committment. You are beautiful people. Don't be discouraged by the vicious repression that the Man will surely bring, and know that I'm beside you in the fight, if not always offering my body, then still always completely committing my quite formidable creative and mental resources.

I love you.

Hugh