The Call goes home.
During the past several months, the Call has lived a peripatetic
existence, taking shape in strange apartments and motel rooms and
acquiring an oddly confused aura as it circumnavigated the city in
search of a place to lay its head. I’m happy to announce that it
has recently moved back to its own space in Bernal Heights. The
befuddled air may continue for a couple of weeks, until the boxes
and files supporting the paper are unpacked. But at least, its feet
are firmly planted on the ground once more.
For those of you who were the recipients of
unusually curt responses — or none — to phone calls and letters,
please accept our humble apologies. A lack of stable lodging
shortens tempers.
Please, Mr. President, please. A
number of petitions urging international restraint have been
circulating on the internet. The academic community in particular
has supported one, which can be found at http://home.uchicago.edu/~dhpicker/petition;
in the first week, the petition received nearly 400,000 signatures.
Another, compiled by Foreign Policy In Focus, a
joint project of the Institute for Policy Studies and the
Interhemispheric Resource Center, appears at www.fpif.org/form_terrorsignon.html;
these are the folks who produce the ezine Progressive Response.
A third, drawn up by Helen Fox at the University
of Michigan (hfox@umich.edu),
is entitled simply “A Petition for Sanity.”
Or if you’re so inclined, you can join Pat
Murphy of the Sentinel
and “serenely smile back at the next sermon, the next homily, the
next such soapbox ear splitter...and email Washington (president@whitehouse.gov)
to lock and load.”
Crisis creativity. Protest
takes many forms. Like other activists across the county, Bay Area
residents are building on the methods and alliances forged over the
past years of demonstrations at meetings of the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund. Speakers from Global Exchange, Green
Party, Middle East Children’s Alliance, ADC, International
Socialist Organization, Organizer Newspaper, Solidarity,
Mobilization to Free Mumia, Socialist Action, SWO, Jewish Voice for
Peace, and other organizations sponsored a “town hall meeting to
stop hate & war” last Thursday at Golden Gate Lutheran Church,
the first of many, the group promises. The new coalition can be
reached at stop_bush@hotmail.com.
On
the other hand, local artist Ron Henggeler returned to his old habit
of producing political posters. Old wine, new vessel. Once again, he
has pieced together a series of visual protests, which he posted on
the internet instead of telephone poles.
B.C.
