Tomorrow is another marks another day of ENOUGH! rallies for impeachment and ending the war in Iraq. I know diaries on the subject have been light, and we don't garner nearly as much attention as when Wes Clark Jr. writes about the protests he helped inspire. But we're still out here each weekend calling for accountability from the administration. Can you join a protest in your area, or start a new one? Below the fold, I've got two tables showing ENOUGH! protests around the country, one for tomorrow, September 30th, and one for the following week, October 7th.
In addition to promoting the ENOUGH! protests, there are a few loose ends from some of my past diaries that I'd like to bring up and a random thought or two.
ENOUGH! SF for Sept. 30th
Right now, it looks like I'll once again be standing alone in San Francisco. If you're around and can join me for an hour or so, please do. Tomorrow is also the Folsom Street Fair, so I'm curious how that will affect traffic at 7th & Mission. At 1:00 I'll be heading over to the Heart of the City Farmers Market for 30 minutes to an hour, and then will probably head back to get some photos of the Street Fair. Great opportunity for a little political protest followed by some uniquely San Francisco culture!
Be aware, if you're in San Francisco and planning on being around the SoMa District, there will traffic re-routes, including Muni. Also be aware if you don't know about the Folsom Street Fair, that you might see an unusual number of people clad in leather or in various states of undress on their way to or from the street fair.
ENOUGH! SF Next Week: Beach Impeach 4 in Berkeley
Next week, I will be participating in Beach Impeach 4, so I won't be standing at 7th & Mission as I usually do. Though the Beach Impeach events don't have speakers, this time Brad Newsham has lined up some special guests to join us, which should help generate more media attention: Cindy Sheehan, Cynthia McKinney, and Michelle Shocked.
Beach Impeach 4
Sunday, October 7th 11:00-12:30
Berkeley Marina Green
Register and find additional details at http://www.beachimpeach.org/
ENOUGH! SF Last Week
Last week, I had someone new join me, and had one of the most active ENOUGH! protests yet in San Francisco. I have to say, I think it really helps to have a diversity of people joined in protest, and especially having women stand up in protest. On September 16th, I had four women from Texas join me, which I think helped to increase the energy of the protest and boost the responses. Last week, an attractive women roughly my age joined me, and I feel she also helped to boost responses.
First, she hit it off with the former Vietnam vet I previously mentioned in ENOUGH SF: Whether One or One Hundred. We had another good conversation, during which I learned his name is Phil. While we were at 7th & Mission, it occurred to me for the first time the importance of having simple, clear signs. While I had thought that my sign saying Enough! with bullet point reasons for impeaching and concluding with Impeach was pretty clear, more than a couple people had to stop and think about what it was saying. For the first time, I became aware of how little most people pay attention to politics at any level, whether local, national, or international.
The real action started when we moved from the mainly vehicle traffic at 7th and Mission to the foot traffic at the Heart of the City Farmers Market at Civic Center. This is where I think the fact that Dawn is an attractive young woman had the biggest impact. I think she made it much easier for people to approach us (unfortunately, at least one or two approached mainly to hit on her, which she handled with great grace in my opinion). I have drawn people into discussion one or two at a time in past Enough protests, but with Dawn, for the first time, we drew a small circle of about three or four people who stood with us in conversation for a significant period of time. Here and with a couple of others who approached, I came into a broader appreciation for the diversity of political thought in San Francisco.
We experienced the full gamut from an apparent 9/11 conspiracy theorist to a full bore right-wing nutjob, with several scenic stops along the way. One on the conservative end of the spectrum was articulate and open to reasonable discussion, but in the end didn't seem particularly persuadable. One of the scariest to me was the wingnut who challenged us sayingamong other things, "I bet you weren't out here protesting Bill Clinton's lying". He spoke mainly to Dawn, and she engaged him a little, but for the most part we let him rant. One of the funny things about this encounter was his wife getting impatient with him and urging him to come along, they had other things to be doing. The little challenge I mentioned above happened in a moment when he had approached us a second time without his wife. On the left, other than the 9/11 guy, an encounter that stands out was with a man who talked to us for a bit, left, and then came back about half an hour later having changed into clothing that included orange. Aside from his changing cloths to participate more fully, what struck me about his perspective was that we were not confrontational enough, nor were we positioned properly to draw a large crowds such as has occurred in past protests - referring to Gulf War I, Vietnam, and civil rights I believe.
While I'm not going to go into any great detail about it here because my thoughts about what to take away from this are still percolating, I want to say that I think this small, quiet grassroots protest can be effective. Whether one, one hundred or thousands. With that, let me get into some random thoughts and loose ends.
Random Thoughts and Loose Ends
Developing Blog Project:
For anyone participating and writing about your protest efforts in any form, I would like to invite you to join a new blog project I am working on: Enough. As great as Daily Kos is, it is easy for protest and action diaries to get lost among the hundreds of great diaries published daily. My hope is that even if you don't want to generate entirely original content for Enough, you will cross-post protest-oriented material. The purpose of this project is to serve as a gathering place for people who want to increase citizen participation in holding our representatives accountable to those they represent. Daily Kos serves that function through its stated purpose of promoting the election of more and better Democrats. I hope to highlight protests, letter-writing campaigns, alerts to upcoming legislation impacting progressive ideas, focusing less on upcoming elections than on current events and mobilization. I will also break up the large roundups that I have written here into smaller chunks by subject, hopefully to serve as a more managable resource than those lengthy posts (which I hope to continue posting here, btw).
The first goal I want to promote is impeachment, especially for Vice President Cheney. Even more, I want to promote the ideas of reversing the abuses by the Bush/Cheney administration, re-establishing movement for open government and public accountability, ending the march of the unitary executive, and adding more resources to break through the Beltway Bubble. I must admit that I think my efforts are still in an alpha/beta stage, but I think I'm at a reasonable starting point. I anticipate and hope to have a small group of registered contributors, tens to hundreds rather than the thousands on Kos, but who knows.
Re: Putting My Future at Risk
In one of my diaries on impeachment, I wrote about my personal commitment and motivation. I just wanted to say that I passed the last hurdle to enter the final year of my Masters program in Chinese medicine. While I still face risks and have to balance how much time I put into my efforts as an activist, I have a little bit more breathing room, and a lot of stress off my shoulders. Thanks to those who read and commented on that diary.
Re: Scheduling a follow-up with Nancy Pelosi's office
I had hoped to schedule an appointment Pelosi's D.C. office during September, but I never heard back from her scheduler. Which is actually ok, because bills ended up eating up the money I would have used to travel. I may still try to follow-up appointment with her local Deputy District Director here.
A little META
On those occasions when I put together those lengthy roundups, what kind of links do you prefer? Do you prefer to have a link that will open the dairy with comments visible, or a link to the diary only? I know once in a while I include a recommended diary or front page story that has hundreds of comments, and that this will slow page loading for some people. A lot of the diaries I cite often have fewer than 50 comments. I know I prefer being able to read the comments without having to make additional clicks, but I realize I sometimes take for granted the fact that I pay for a high-speed internet connection.
A little more META
How many people use the subscribe link for particular authors, the links at the end of diary titles to mark favorite diaries, or RSS to regularly receive specific authors on Daily Kos (available on individual author's profile pages if you haven't seen the link before)?
I think that's it. Hope I didn't jump around too much. If you have an ENOUGH! protest in your neighborhood and feel so inclined, please join us tomorrow. If you're in the San Francisco area, there's the bonus Folsom Street Fair to look forward to as well. ;)