in the moments before the strike; report from the trenches in LA
Thursday morning.....
hastily written from the battlefield for peace and justice.....
we have all held our collective breath for so long. those of us in the peace movement however, have refused to exhale. we, like our misguided soldiers, have a job to do.
yesterday....such a long horrible day.....an even more terrible night with more surely to follow.
yesterday at the emergency convergence protest at the federal building in west LA, i sat on the sidelines watching about 35+ of my brave comrades from NION (not in our name) get arrested for sitting down in the middle of Wilshire Blvd. we had sat down earlier on a different section of Wilshire before the cops threatened to arrest us. my dog Billie sat down too. as much as i would want to participate in a CD, i cannot let myself get arrested with her there. she is, you might say, my get out of jail free card.
today, word is the SF financial district is once again shut down, a cog in the machine, blockaded by the "human shields" who did this as a dry run on Friday the 14th. there will be another protest at the federal building here today. that was the plan.....5 PM the day of or the day after. there will be more over the weekend....in Hollywood on Saturday, outside the Oscars on Sunday. nothing else in my day to day life seems as important. mundane tasks all seem so trivial. sometimes i forget to eat, forget to brush my teeth. laundry and dishes will surely pile up. like people caught in the strange twilight of a political campaign, we seem to subsist on coffee and whatever else we can throw in our backpacks. as the bombs are now illuminating the Baghdad nighttime sky......we all, no matter what our persuasion, are living in a bunker mentality. many will just watch our TVs in detached fascination, like some gruesome video game. but others of us must work to stop this any way we can.
i know that things will get worse and worse as the tension ratchets up.....like how the number of cops (in full riot gear) had mysteriously multiplied yesterday. and not since 1968 has this country (and the world) been so divided. i am getting hate mail on a daily basis now. my mother refused to talk to me for 2 weeks because i threatened to buy bottles of French wine. this really IS an all out war between "us"
and "them" again....and once more over an unjustified war and two opposite sets of idealogies. this time however, the right is more meglomaniacal, more organized and more dangerous than Nixon and his henchmen ever were.
i was driving down Sunset Blvd. later in the evening when it started. it
was 6:44 PM. i stopped the car in traffic and held the car horn down for
almost a full two minutes....sounding the alarm. i didn't care if
anybody knew why i was doing it. i just didn't know what else to do.
there had been much talk of blocking intersections the moment war
started....just get out of your car and stop. stop everything. sounding the horn was what spontaneously happened for me. my vehicle had become an embarrassed extention of my grief and anger. in an alternate universe, her horn seemed to say....i am sorry i haven't yet been free to run on renewable sources of energy! i am sorry i have not been liberated from the yoke of fossil fuels! and as i sat there surrounded by petrol fumes, i was deeply saddened and disgusted by my country, a country with the knowledge and resources to change this scenario for all future generations. they could but they won't. not with these oil men bent on complete and absolute power. and they will stop at nothing to stop us.
hell will rain down upon children on the other side of the world and
although i am here, seemingly so far away....i must bear witness. we must all bear witness.
salaam, shalom, peace, shanti om....
Jamie in LA
Original: long days journey into night