This is what I wore...



I was not the only person who dressed up like this, there were over one hundred people protesting the event and about twenty of us wore orange jumpsuits. While we were standing out there one man came to offer us tickets, those of us who wore the jumpsuits would never be allowed in so we remained outside. There were a few people who did not get dressed up however and a few of them made it inside, I have not heard a report back from them yet but I know one of the people who went in and you better believe that he was more than ready to confront Condi face to face.

Posted in full with permission from the author...

"Golden Shield" Doesn't Cover Condi's Torture Role
by Coleen Rowley

On Oct. 12, 2003, the Star Tribune published an op-ed I wrote responding to a speech in the Twin Cities by U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft in which he boasted on his "Patriot Act Victory Tour" that Americans were "freer today than at any time in the history of human freedom." Although I pointed out that his remarks strained credulity, no one--not even I, an FBI field-intelligence agent at the time--could have appreciated the depth of his delusions: Americans did not yet know that Ashcroft's Department of Justice (DOJ) had, in 2002, sunk so low as to sign off on waterboarding and other forms of illegal torture.

Now, fast forward six years and the Twin Cities will play host to another "victory tour", this one by Condoleezza Rice as Beth El Synagogue "proudly presents" her speaking Sunday (November 8) at their big bucks fundraiser. It's been said that Americans have short attention spans so here's a reminder for persons attending Rice's speech event about her recent leadership role instituting illegal torture.

According to the narrative timeline prepared by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee this past April, it was Condoleezza Rice, then serving as President Bush's national security adviser, who verbally approved the CIA's request to subject the first alleged al-Qaeda terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, to waterboarding in July 2002. (Zubaydah underwent the simulated-drowning technique 83 times before interrogators acknowledged he didn't really have much valuable information to provide as he wasn't as highly placed in al-Qaeda as originally thought.)

The Senate timeline indicates that Rice played a greater role in green-lighting torture than she had admitted in written testimony she previously gave to the Senate Armed Services Committee. And it suggests that the CIA's euphemistically named "harsh interrogation program" was conceived at the highest levels of the Bush White House--predating the series of legal memos issued that were aimed at providing a "golden shield" for CIA interrogators and their supervisors.

Written in the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), the series of memos began with John Yoo and Robert Delahunty's January 2002 document asserting that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Although that first memo is what opened the door, the memos written after Rice's verbal approval and authored by John Yoo and Jay Bybee in August 2002 were the famously shocking ones--now called the "torture memos"-- that narrowly defined torture as "acts inflicting . . . severe pain or suffering, whether mental or physical . . . equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

This veneer of concocted legalese was applied as cover, for a time, to buck up CIA operatives who were made nervous by engaging in such brutality and who worried they would be blamed when the scheme was exposed. But while its fraudulence is now commonly acknowledged, the "shield" is what Rice and some other Bush Administration torture enablers still attempt to hide behind.

A spokesman for Condoleezza Rice declined comment when her more extensive role in conveying the order to conduct waterboarding was discovered even before the "torture memos" were in place. Later, on April 27th of this year, Rice made a blanket denial to a group of Stanford University students: "We did not torture anyone." Then when asked if waterboarding is torture, Rice responded: "Uh, the President instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations, under the Convention against Torture. So that's, and by the way, I didn't authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the Administration to the agency that they had policy authorization, subject to the Justice Department's clearance."

I dredge up these bits of Rice's history in order to help inform those who will hear her speak at Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park this coming Sunday evening--some of whom paid $1,000 and more for tickets. Perhaps some will want to ask Rice a probing question or two during the "unscripted Q and A" that the synagogue advertises will be part of this event. Of course, there will be many in the audience willing to look the other way and let bygones be bygones, wondering what use there is in asking hard, painful questions regarding torture.

Former Vice President Walter Mondale, who as U.S. Senator served on the Church Committee, which in the mid-1970s investigated CIA abuses by the Nixon administration, recently offered what is perhaps the best reason for posing such questions. "Holding people responsible in some way for what happened," he said, "is very important. If the verdict here is that you can do these kinds of things and there are no consequences, then that leaves a precedent. . . . It's like leaving a loaded pistol on the kitchen table. You don't know who is going to pick it up and pull the trigger."

The decision by Condoleezza Rice and others in the Bush Administration to authorize torture represented a terrible self-inflicted wound on American law, one with dire implications. Torture will continue to be used to a much greater extent, including upon Americans captured in war and/or in countries controlled by totalitarian regimes, if those at the top, like Rice, are not made to see the error of their ways but are instead handsomely paid for continuing--despite all evidence--to deny the truth.

In any event, law enforcement authorities including the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office have also been notified of the evidence against Ms. Rice via the following letter. Shouldn't law enforcement get its chance at some "unscripted Q and A" with her too?



For those not supportive of Rice's torture role, please join the peaceful candlelight vigil on behalf of all torture victims as well as an anti-torture rally to be held on Sunday at 5:15 p.m. outside Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park. The Anti-Torture Rally is sponsored by Women Against Military Madness, Veterans for Peace-Minneapolis Chapter, the Anti-War Committee, and the National Lawyers Guild-Minnesota Chapter.

Every week I attend a peace vigil outside the office of my Congressional Misrepresentative John Kline (R-MN). While we have a lot of people drive by and honk in support of what we are doing every week, we have also had some people who would extend their middle finger to us. Here is my friend's brilliant response to those people...

A man is facing 90 days in jail for honking outside John Kline's Burnsville office and we need people at the Burnsville Peace Vigil tonight to stand up for free speech. We will be on the corner of Burnsville Parkway and Nicollett Ave at 4:30 until 5:30. If you would like more details on why this is so important please read this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

Yesterday one of my friends learned that he was facing three months in jail and a $1,000 fine. His crime? Improper use of a car horn. You may think that people don't go to jail for honking their car horns, you may think that there must be an additional charge on top of the honking offense because we have all heard people use their car horns in non-emergency situations but most of us have never heard of a person going to jail for such an offense. There are no other charges however, the only charge against him in the police report is that he was “honking the vehicle's horn repeatedly approximately five to ten times.” If you have ever honked when you drove past a wedding or sounded the horn when you wanted to capture the attention of someone you knew who was walking down the street then you have committed the exact same crime they are charging my friend with, but I am guessing you never thought about the possibility that people who honk in celebration of a wedding would face serious jail time. You don't need to worry about such a possibility because the idea that the state would use their resources to lock people up for honking outside a wedding is absurd, but my friend was not honking outside a wedding he honked in support of protesters outside the office of a powerful Republican Congressman while he was driving to a parking spot so he could join the protest.

For almost two years now protesters have gathered at 4:30 every Tuesday afternoon in Burnsville, MN to hold a peace vigil on the corner of Nicollet Avenue and Burnsville Parkway. One of the buildings at this intersection houses the office of Republican Congressman John Kline, a man who showed great loyalty to the Bush agenda from the time of his arrival in Congress in 2002 and as a result of that loyalty he achieved a prominent position in his party. While Kline is not the most well known Republican member of Congress he holds a great deal of influence behind the scenes with his seats on the Intelligence and Education and Labor Committees, and those committees make him the most powerful Republican in Minnesota's congressional delegation.

Kline has never been good about holding public town hall meetings to listen to his constituents, but the Burnsville peace vigil has ensured that every week the people working inside John Kline's office are reminded that many of his constituents oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that he has been a major supporter of. Not only do they see the people participating in the protest directly but they also hear hundreds of honks from the people who drive by that support ending the wars, and they have no doubt wished that we would go away.

Well over a year ago Burnsville Police confronted the participants of the peace vigil about complaints they had received over the honking and threatened to arrest them if people kept honking in support of their vigil. The police argued that the “Honk 4 Peace” signs encouraged an illegal activity as they said honking was only legal if used to give an audible warning in emergency situations. The police were quickly informed that it would be unconstitutional to arrest protesters simply because someone honked at them so instead they decided to try a different tactic by pulling people over and ticketing them for improper use of the horn. Prior to this the Burnsville Police had never ticketed anyone for honking, and when the ACLU defended one of the drivers who had been ticketed this fact helped them show that the people were not being pulled over based on public safety but rather on the basis of politics and the law was not being enforced when political speech was not involved. The ACLU was not only able to get the ticket of the woman they were defending dropped, but they also succeeded in getting the police to sign a consent decree stating that they would not ticket anyone for honking unless there was a threat to public safety. It seemed that the battle had been won and people would once again be able to honk in support of the protesters without fear of being ticketed, but it was only a couple months later that Bob Palmer received a ticket in the mail for improper use of the horn.

The ACLU was notified of the ticket and began the process to get approval from their board to take the case up again, while this process was underway they advised Bob to request a formal complaint at his hearing in traffic court. Bob did exactly that and we waited for several weeks without receiving the complaint or any news on the case. We had started to wonder if the police realized they were going to lose in court and receive a great deal of bad publicity in the process, the story had already received some media attention and it was looking like they could be stepping into a major controversy that would damage their reputation. For a few weeks it seemed as if the police may have been backing down, but yesterday that changed. Yesterday Bob Palmer was notified that he would not just be facing the couple hundred dollar fine that the other people faced for improper use of the horn, he is now facing serious jail time simply because he honked his horn.

Everyone who has been in a protest knows that it is a time honored tradition for people to honk in support of protesters when they drive by. If people start receiving jail time for supporting protesters in this way it will put a chill on free speech as not only will drivers be afraid to show their support, but the protesters will be afraid of participating in something that could result in the arrest of their supporters.

No one goes to jail for honking at a wedding, and if they do not send people to jail for non-political use of the horn then it is clearly unconstitutional to send people to jail for the use of the horn to express support for a political position. Please help get this story out and let people know about this outrageous charge, the idea that a person should be locked up in a cell for three months for doing nothing more than honking their horn is absurd. It is time to stand up for the first amendment, and it is time to make sure that no one is sent to jail for supporting peaceful protest.

Remember back to the days in which you were in high school. For many of us those years were very difficult, we were in that awkward stage between childhood and becoming an adult and we had not yet grown comfortable with who we were. Whether we were ever bullied or not we all knew that those who were different were torn down and harassed by many of their fellow students, and so we were all very self conscious because we did not want to be the victims of those bullies. Those who were bullied no doubt remember what it was like to face harassment from your fellow students, but think about what it would be like to be bullied by a teacher.

Imagine what it would be like to have a couple of homophobic teachers who believed that you were gay and would stand in front of the classroom and make jokes about your sexuality. You may or may not actually be gay but when a homophobic person believes that you are gay they are going to treat you the same way they treat all gays. Think about what it would be like if your teachers told your entire class that you were gay and the bullies heard every word of it. After leaving the classroom these bullies would go a step beyond what the teachers said and start threatening violence against you, not only would you have to deal with losing friends but you also had to deal with the death threats that you received.

The thought of teachers doing something like this to their students seems unfathomable. You would think that any teacher who would make jokes about a student's sexuality in front of the entire classroom would be fired immediately, and you would think that the school would take action to try and protect students from the homophobic attacks that began occurring as a result of the harassment of those teachers.

In Minnesota's largest school district it seems this is not the case however, it appears that even after being sued and having to pay out a $25,000 settlement the Anoka-Hennepin school district is still fine with having teachers who publicly make homophobic jokes about their students.

Alex Merritt recently won a lawsuit against the district after two of his teachers made repeated jokes about his sexuality in front of the classroom. Merritt is not actually gay but two teachers perceived him as being gay and they made remarks in front of the classroom such as “he enjoys wearing women's clothing” and “he has a thing for older men”. On at least one occasion they suggested there may be sexual activity between Merritt and another unnamed student who was perceived as being gay when they said "Would you like to have go with you so he can sit in the stall next to you and stomp his foot?" The harassment and death threats Merritt received because of his perceived sexual orientation forced him to leave the school and travel twenty-five miles every day so he could attend a new school.

It is hard to believe a school district would stand by teachers who made comments like this in front of the class especially after those comments result in a lawsuit, but not only are Diane Cleveland and Walter Filson still teaching in the district but it appears there was very little disciplinary action taken against them.

Here is what the Minneapolis Star Tribune had to say about the consequences the teacher's faced for their actions:

The district reacted in January 2008 to the allegations by briefly reassigning Cleveland, 39, a social studies teacher, and placing her on two-day unpaid suspension.

Her reassignment included working on a "social studies curriculum development and reflecting on equality and diversity in the classroom," according to the Department of Human Rights. However, the department said, Cleveland completed only one day of the assignment, calling in sick the remainder of the week. When a new semester started on Jan. 22, 2008, she was back in her classroom, according to the department's report.

It is not known what, if any, disciplinary was taken regarding Filson, 56, a law enforcement teacher.

link

There is no evidence that Filson received any disciplinary action, and Cleveland called in sick for work when she was supposed to be developing a curriculum on equality and diversity so the district did not make her complete the curriculum. I don't think you can even call this a slap on the wrist yet the district believes the disciplinary action was adequate. One of their students was forced to go to a different school because he received constant harassment and even death threats and they want us to believe that a two day suspension is enough to send the teachers a lesson.

It gets worse however. Not only is the school district allowing these teachers to get away with making homophobic jokes about their students in front of the classroom, but they are refusing to provide any diversity training to their staff.

Despite complaints, and a resulting investigation by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, the district recently rejected a local gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) advocacy group's offer to help train staff in the district's recently revised policy on discussing sexual orientation. Until February district policy directed staff members to refrain from discussing homosexuality "as a normal, valid lifestyle" in health education classes.

"There are so many advocacy groups out there that you could have one for every social concern there is," said Michelle Langenfeld, associate superintendent of the district, which is the state's largest with more than 40,000 students. "What we've tried to do is create policy around a neutral stance, focusing on respect, appreciation of diversity, responsibility, integrity and compassion."

OutFront Minnesota, the group that offered to help, doesn't see it that way.

"When they say, 'We don't need to train our staff on how to deal with GLBT students,'" said Phil Duran, the group's legal director, "I'm thinking they've got a problem."

link

According to Merritt other students have faced the same harassment that he has, while he is not gay himself he faced major emotional problems as a result of the homophobic attacks on him and he knows of at least one other student in the class who is gay and has to listen to these words coming out of the mouths of his teachers.

Merritt was right to sue the school district for the harassment he faced, but by refusing to take serious disciplinary action against the teachers or providing diversity training the district has shown they have not learned their lesson. If they don't make major changes another lawsuit seems very likely, and unfortunately it is the students who will end up suffering as a result of the funds the district loses by protecting homophobic teachers.

Please contact the school district here and let them know what you think about their refusal to provide diversity training and their commitment to keeping homophobic teachers in the classroom.

Today I got to work and opened up a copy of the Star Tribune and found the following letter...



http://www.startribune.com/opinion/letters...

I am part of the group that holds the weekly peace vigil outside John Kline's office that this letter refers to. Our group is a very peaceful group that stands out on the corner with signs protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for one hour every Tuesday evening. We have tried getting town hall meetings with John Kline not to disrupt them but to have an opportunity to be able to civilly speak our thoughts to a man who is supposed to represent us. John Kline has been unwilling to hold any town hall meetings however, many of his supporters seem to think they should have the right to disrupt the town hall meetings of Democrats but they say nothing about the fact that Kline won't even meet with his constituents. Today I sent a letter to the Star Tribune in response to the attacks that were launched on my group in today's paper. I do not yet know whether or not my letter will be published, but here is what I wrote...

As a person who has been involved in a good amount of political activism I know how difficult it is to get the media to pay any attention to what progressive activists are doing to bring about change. Not only does the corporate media ignore the work that progressives are doing in the community, but it seems that even progressive blogs dedicate very little time to covering the work of citizen activists who are out there every single day trying to move this country in a better direction.

Why is it that progressive activists are largely ignored while the Teabaggers and Birthers are able to sustain national media coverage? Even progressive blogs seem to have given the Birther movement far more coverage than I ever remember them giving to the progressive activists on our own side and I find this very troubling. I understand that the Birthers are so obviously delusional that it can be very entertaining to poke fun at them, but the fact is that Orly Taitz has absolutely no chance of succeeding at convincing the courts that her forged Kenyan birth certificate is real. Why is it that the citizen activism of a crazy right-wing dentist is able to get more coverage from progressive blogs than activists on our own side who have had a far bigger impact than Taitz will ever hope to have? Why can’t we give people like Medea Benjamin, Ann Wright, Kathy Kelly, Coleen Rowley, Naomi Wolf, and the many other citizen activists who have taken a stand on important issues as much publicity as we give to Orly Taitz?

Probably the biggest failure of the progressive movement is that we have not been very good at inspiring people on our side of the issues to walk away from the computer and get involved in their communities. We need to hear the stories of progressive activists so we can inspire others to follow in their footsteps, and because the corporate media does not want us to get involved they are not likely to start giving us additional coverage unless they are under a lot of pressure to do so. This means that it is up to us to get these stories out there.

Please go out into your communities and engage in civic action and then come back here and write about your experiences. Tell us about the challenges you faced, tell us about the people who inspired you to overcome those challenges, tell us about any victories you had no matter how big or how small those victories were, and most importantly tell us what we can do to help bring about change.

If you want to continue to write about Orly Taitz and the Teabaggers that is fine, it is important to raise awareness of what the opposition is doing so it is good to have some stories about their actions. What I would like to see however is for every person who writes about the Teabaggers to also dedicate themselves to writing at least one piece about progressive activists for every story they write about right-wing activists. While there is nothing wrong with attacking the other side, we need to put more focus into building up our own side so that we can inspire more people to get out there and make change happen. Democracy begins with you, so please go out there and get involved so that the next time you write about the Teabaggers you will be able to tell us what you did to publicly challenge those Teabaggers.

Every Tuesday afternoon a small group of peace activists stand at the busy intersection of Burnsville Parkway and Nicolet Avenue , just a couple blocks away from the largest park and ride in the southern suburbs and outside the offices of Republican Congressman John Kline.  For over two years now they have been coming to this spot in Burnsville , Minnesota to exercise their first amendment right to speak out against the war that Kline is a big supporter of. Over the course of those two years the peace vigil has received a great reception from many in the community and the protesters have received a large number of honks of support from those who pass by.



The Burnsville Police Department never seemed to like the idea of a peace vigil outside Kline's office however.   From early on, it appears they needed to find a way to build a case to show that these people represent a threat to public safety.


 
The police decided to target a sign that was frequently held at the peace vigil that said “Honk for Peace”.  There is a law on the books which states that a person can not honk their horn for non-emergency purposes.  It is a law that the Burnsville Police were not enforcing in the past, but now people were honking in support of peace and so it was time for a police crackdown.

Officers approached the participants at the vigil and told them that their “Honk for Peace” signs were encouraging an illegal act and if anyone honked the participants of the vigil would be held responsible. Of course there is no legal precedence for prosecuting protesters when people honk in support of them and so the participants of the vigil asked the police to show them the law that prevented them from holding their signs at the intersection. In the words of Coleen Rowley who is a regular participant at the Burnsville peace vigil, “we're not disturbing the peace, we're disturbing the war.”  The city of Burnsville had no laws on the books prohibiting anyone from disturbing the war however, and so they tried a different tactic in an attempt to get the protesters to go away.  Instead of targeting the protesters, they were going to target the motorists who expressed their support with honks.


 
Police set up a dragnet at the intersection one afternoon to catch and ticket those who honked while going through the intersection.  Over the course of a few weeks, they were able to ticket two or three different motorists.  One of those ticketed was very supportive of the vigil's message but was also very upset that the vigil continued after the activists knew police were going to be pulling people over and ticketing them. The vigil participants felt very strongly that the first amendment not only allowed them to be at the intersection but also allowed people like this woman to show their support.  Eventually the Burnsville woman who was ticketed sought and received the help of ACLU volunteer attorney Howard Bass.
 
Bass took up the case to defend our first amendment rights and after a several month battle, he was able to get the city of Burnsville to not only drop the charges but also get a consent decree issued which affirmed the right of all motorists to honk for peace.  The police agreed that they would stop pulling people over for honking and allow the peace vigil to continue.  It seemed free speech had prevailed and the participants of the vigil breathed a sigh of relief.
 
For several weeks the vigils went on without police harassment, but then on June 23rd the police showed up and started photographing the peace vigil participants. Greg Skog who is a participant in the vigil had his camera along so he took some pictures of the police to document their actions and then asked them what was wrong.  The police said they knew about the consent decree and they were not going to be pulling anyone over, but they did not explain what anyone at the vigil was doing wrong or why they were being photographed.



When the vigil participants arrived on June 30th, the police were already waiting for them. At least one officer was in the parking lot of Kline's offices monitoring the peace activists the entire time. Officers appeared to be recording driver's license numbers on notepads.
 
It is unclear what kind of case the police are trying to build, what is clear is that this peace group has been at the intersection for nearly two years now and every single week they have remained very peaceful and law abiding. The Burnsville Police Department is targeting and harrassing peaceful protesters and their community supporters by using intimidation tactics, but fortunately the participants in the vigil are not going to give up on their free speech rights.  They are intending to be at that intersection every week, rain or shine, until the wars come to an end. Let's give them our support.



A special thanks to Coleen Rowley, Sue Skog and Greg Skog for their assistance with this post.

So Mark Sanford tells us that he was having an affair with a woman in Argentina. He wants us to believe that he was so deeply in love that he abandoned his state for nearly a week without telling anyone where he was going just so he could spend a final few days with the woman he loved. He wants us to believe that he spent the last days crying at her side because he had to leave her. He wants us to believe that this affair was what his whole trip to Argentina was all about. Well I don't buy it for a minute.

When Sanford came back from Argentina this morning he had to have a cover story, his staffers had just told us that he was on a hike on the Appalachian Trail and it was obvious to all that this was a lie. There is no way that Sanford could have spun this story in a positive way, if he had tried no one would have believed him and people would be digging very deeply into his story. And so Mark Sanford “came clean” and admitted to an affair. But did he really come clean? How do we know that he is telling the truth about the affair? Is it possible that he may have been involved in something much worse than he is letting on but is trying to distract us? Why should we believe that this woman was so important to him that he would risk his political career to travel to another hemisphere to be with her? If he wanted to be with her so badly why didn't he fly her to this country where he would have been much less likely to get caught? Is there a reason that she couldn't have traveled here? Or perhaps more importantly is there a reason that Mark Sanford had to go to Argentina, and if so how do we know the reason he had to go down there was solely about this woman?

There are some serious questions that need to be asked here. First we need to find out if this woman even exists, because as of right now I have seen no direct evidence that she does. If she does exist then who is she? What financial connections does she have? Does Sanford have any financial interests in Argentina? What was Sanford doing on his trade mission last year?

We know that Sanford referenced Argentina in many speeches that he has given in the past, he obviously had an interest in Argentina's economy and I want to know why. We need to look beyond the sex scandal and try to get to the bottom of what really happened because this story stinks, and I don't think it is about sex I think it is about money.

Just one day after the announcement that George Tiller's clinic would be permanently closing James Von Brunn entered the Holocaust Museum and opened fire. Just hours before today's shooting it was announced that the anti-choice group Operation Rescue is considering buying the clinic and making it their new offices. Terrorism appeared to have won, and through cold blooded murder Scott Roeder had not only succeeded in shutting down the clinic but it even looked like people that were pushing the agenda he murdered for would be taking over the clinic.

Does anyone really think that it is just a coincidence that the shooting at the Holocaust museum came so quickly after the announcement of the closing of George Tiller's clinic? Is it not possible that maybe Von Brunn thought that he could shut down the Holocaust Museum in the same way that Roeder shut down Tiller's clinic?

It is time to stand up to hate groups like Operation Rescue who would seek to use the Tiller assassination as a means of pushing the same agenda that the terrorist who killed him was pushing. And make no mistake about it by even suggesting they will purchase Tiller's clinic Operation Rescue is clearly trying to use his assassination to their own advantage, and is in effect promoting this sort of terrorism. What Operation Rescue is doing is perfectly legal because as long as they don't directly incite violence they are well within their rights under the law, but that doesn't make their actions any less sickening.

We need to remember that Operation Rescue and hate radio talk show hosts are not the only groups with First Amendment protections however, we also have the First Amendment on our side and we need to fight back against the hate groups.

We have listened to them talk about the sanctity of life in one breath while celebrating the taking of life in Iraq in the next. We have listened to them vilify women, gays, immigrants, Muslims and welfare recipients. We have listened to them spew hate for far too long, and now we need to make sure they start listening to us.

Every time they lie we need to expose their lies not just to those who read the blogs, but to those in the general public who would be outraged if they knew what was being spewed about on right-wing hate radio. Picket their offices, boycott their advertisers and financial supporters, hand out fliers, write blogs, and expose to the world the kind of filth these people are pushing. We all have the power to speak out against Fox News, hate radio, and extremist groups like Operation Rescue, let's use that power to expose these people before they inspire yet another murder.

This afternoon I stood in front of the doors to the House Chamber at the Minnesota State Capitol with a group of citizens who wanted to make sure their voices were heard. Our Governor Tim Pawlenty had once again used his veto power against the most vulnerable people in the state so that when he runs for President in 2012 he will be able to brag to the wealthy campaign contributors that he did not raise taxes.

The organizers of the rally believed that we were only two votes shy of getting the legislature to override the veto so about seventy five of us stood at the door loudly chanting “Override! Override! Override!” as members of the house walked into the chambers. Some of the representatives cheered us on, others walked quickly by with their head facing towards the ground trying not to look at us, but whether they acknowledged us or not we made sure they at least heard us.

When I got home later this evening I learned that despite our efforts the House had come up three votes short of overriding the veto. I was of course disappointed, and my first response was to think that we had lost this battle. It didn't take me long however to get over that thought when I remembered some words that I heard in a speech I heard Ramona Africa deliver a month ago.

Ramona Africa is a member of the MOVE organization and in 1985 she was inside the MOVE residence when it was bombed by Philadelphia police. Ramona was the only adult survivor of that bombing, and eleven people including five children were killed by the police that day. It is hard to even imagine how traumatic it would be to go through something like that, but Ramona said something to us in her speech that showed her enormous strength. I am going to have to paraphrase somewhat as I am going off my memory from what I heard a month ago but the words I remember Ramona saying are “If you stand up for what you believe in and confront those who are doing us harm you will always be victorious. The people in power may continue to do great damage, they may bring harm to our planet, they may land a blow against the cause you are fighting for, they may take away your job, they may beat you, they may arrest you, they may even kill you, but as long as you stand up for what is right they cannot defeat you if you do not give up. If you give up then you have lost, but if you keep fighting for as long as you are physically able to fight then you will never lose.” What you think about Ramona Africa's politics and beliefs is not the issue here, this is a woman who watched her friends and family die at the hands of police because of their politics and despite the extreme pain she was dealt she never accepted it as a loss and she kept fighting.

Thankfully most of us will never have to experience the same level of extreme brutality that Ramona Africa had to endure, but we can all learn from her words and apply them to our own lives. Many people will lose their health care coverage because of Pawlenty's veto, and poor and disabled Minnesotans are going to face very tough times because of his insistence that we don't tax the rich. We could accept this as a defeat and move on, or we could keep fighting. If we accept this as a defeat then we lose, but as long as we keep fighting then we haven't been defeated.

This principle can be applied no matter what issue you are working on, when the other side thinks they have won we need to stand up and let them know that they did not defeat us and we are going to hold them accountable for their actions. We need to continue to protest, and we need to make sure that we succeed in making the people in power squirm.

Democracy is not about accepting the decisions of the powerful, democracy is about ordinary citizens standing up for what they believe in and refusing to hand power over to a small group of people. If we want a better world we can not leave it up to the politicians, we need to take charge in holding the politicians accountable. This is our democracy and we are not going to stop fighting for it.

This afternoon I stood in front of the doors to the House Chamber at the Minnesota State Capitol with a group of citizens who wanted to make sure their voices were heard. Our Governor Tim Pawlenty had once again used his veto power against the most vulnerable people in the state so that when he runs for President in 2012 he will be able to brag to the wealthy campaign contributors that he did not raise taxes.

The organizers of the rally believed that we were only two votes shy of getting the legislature to override the veto so about seventy five of us stood at the door loudly chanting “Override! Override! Override!” as members of the house walked into the chambers. Some of the representatives cheered us on, others walked quickly by with their head facing towards the ground trying not to look at us, but whether they acknowledged us or not we made sure they at least heard us.

When I got home later this evening I learned that despite our efforts the House had come up three votes short of overriding the veto. I was of course disappointed, and my first response was to think that we had lost this battle. It didn't take me long however to get over that thought when I remembered some words that I heard in a speech I heard Ramona Africa deliver a month ago.

Ramona Africa is a member of the MOVE organization and in 1985 she was inside the MOVE residence when it was bombed by Philadelphia police. Ramona was the only adult survivor of that bombing, and eleven people including five children were killed by the police that day. It is hard to even imagine how traumatic it would be to go through something like that, but Ramona said something to us in her speech that showed her enormous strength. I am going to have to paraphrase somewhat as I am going off my memory from what I heard a month ago but the words I remember Ramona saying are “If you stand up for what you believe in and confront those who are doing us harm you will always be victorious. The people in power may continue to do great damage, they may bring harm to our planet, they may land a blow against the cause you are fighting for, they may take away your job, they may beat you, they may arrest you, they may even kill you, but as long as you stand up for what is right they cannot defeat you if you do not give up. If you give up then you have lost, but if you keep fighting for as long as you are physically able to fight then you will never lose.” What you think about Ramona Africa's politics and beliefs is not the issue here, this is a woman who watched her friends and family die at the hands of police because of their politics and despite the extreme pain she was dealt she never accepted it as a loss and she kept fighting.

Thankfully most of us will never have to experience the same level of extreme brutality that Ramona Africa had to endure, but we can all learn from her words and apply them to our own lives. Many people will lose their health care coverage because of Pawlenty's veto, and poor and disabled Minnesotans are going to face very tough times because of his insistence that we don't tax the rich. We could accept this as a defeat and move on, or we could keep fighting. If we accept this as a defeat then we lose, but as long as we keep fighting then we haven't been defeated.

This principle can be applied no matter what issue you are working on, when the other side thinks they have won we need to stand up and let them know that they did not defeat us and we are going to hold them accountable for their actions. We need to continue to protest, and we need to make sure that we succeed in making the people in power squirm.

Democracy is not about accepting the decisions of the powerful, democracy is about ordinary citizens standing up for what they believe in and refusing to hand power over to a small group of people. If we want a better world we can not leave it up to the politicians, we need to take charge in holding the politicians accountable. This is our democracy and we are not going to stop fighting for it.

Ahoy Mateys! Today thar be a pirate on th' low seas o' Minnesota, and he wasn't jus' any pirate but he be the worst kind of pirate. This be a swashbuckler who steals from the poor to give to the rich mateys, but today we took our boat to the low seas o' White Bear Lake to confront this cutthroat.

The Pirate Pawlenty has been holding Minnesota hostage for the past six years, and in this time he has consistently protected the wealth of his friends by cutting services to the most vulnerable Americans. Today this cutthroat not only wants to continue to run our state, but he wants to become President so that he can bring his treachery to all the lands and waters of America.

Today the Pirate Pawlenty had one of his biggest press events of the year, it was fishing opener in Minnesota and media from all corners of the state was there to cover Pawlenty's fishing expedition. We needed to expose this swashbuckler for what he was so we prepared to set out to sea to confront the Pirate Pawlenty.





We decked out our ship with banners and signs and we set out to sea, as we approached the docks where the pirate was set to launch from we were spotted by some of Pawlenty's mates who did not like the way our ship was decorated. They told us to go home, but we told them this was our home and we needed to protect the low seas of Minnesota. A few minutes later we saw Pawlenty's boat speed by us and the chase was on. We followed him to the middle of the lake and circled his boat for a while before riding back up close to shore to remind the people on land that there was a pirate nearby. After a bit of a break we returned out to sea, and Pawlenty was still fishing out there. I held up my sword and yelled “AAARRRGGG”, and then I heard some laughs and another “AAAARRRRGGGG” coming from his boat.



But then a few minutes later Pawlenty tried to escape and sped back towards shore where he could fish in a place in which all the press could see him. We followed him and there was a canoe in the waters nearby who were on our team to confront the pirate. We had our boat and the canoe move in on Pawlenty and the sheriffs who were protecting him, now Pawlenty was not laughing any more and he was angry that we were following him. After a few minutes he sped by the canoe and scowled at the mates on board.



We needed to follow him, but we had to get assistance first and there were a couple people who had been on shore with their banners that wanted to join us in our efforts to track down the pirate. We pulled up to the dock and they boarded our ship and we set back out to sea. Soon however the sheriff pulled up to our boat to confront us. They told us that the dock we went to was private property, but it was commercial private property and we had people there all morning and the owner had never complained. But now as we were all off the property the sheriff decided to confront us for tresspassing despite the fact that we were now on public waters. He checked out our boat to see if he could find any reason to fine us, but we were all legal so he could not do anything and he was forced to let us go.



We cruised the waters for a while until we spotted several boats up ahead and we knew that was where Pawlenty was. We started to bring our ship in closer and he got angry and immediately sped off, we followed in pursuit but his boat was a lot faster than ours so he left our sight for a while. We found his boats again a few minutes later but as soon as we spotted them his boat started to speed away, so we turned around to follow it in pursuit. We immediately realized however that something was wrong, the sheriffs boats were not following Pawlenty's boat, and there was one less person in red aboard. Pawlenty must have gotten on a different pirate ship to trick us, and so we turned around to see if we could find him but he was gone. The Pirate Pawlenty had escaped from us, but we had him on the run and we ruined his photo op so we were able to go home with a small victory on our hands.

This morning I returned to Minnesota after spending the weekend in New York for a once in a lifetime opportunity to celebrate the 90th birthday of the legendary folk singer and political activist Pete Seeger. Pete Seeger is a man who not only wrote many of the songs that I was taught in grade school, but he is a man who has consistently stood up for what he believes in and has done more than nearly any other living individual to show us that ordinary citizens can make a difference in this world.

My opportunity to travel to New York arrived a few weeks ago after my friend and fellow activist Coleen Rowley told me that she would be going to the 90th birthday concert at Madison Square Gardens. She was going to be trying to get back stage to recruit musicians to lend a statement of their support to a group of eight young political activists known as the RNC 8 who are currently being prosecuted and threatened with years in prison for nothing more than organizing protests against the Republican National Convention. I wrote Coleen to ask her if she would like me to send letters to some of the musicians who were playing the event to see if I could help get her backstage and she wrote back to tell me that not only would she appreciate my help but that she also had a couple of extra tickets to the show and if I bought a plane ticket I could go. I have not done a lot of traveling in the past and flying out to New York seemed a bit overwhelming to me at first, but after thinking it over for a couple of days I decided that this was too good of an opportunity to pass up and I bought my plane ticket.

I arrived in New York with Coleen, her husband Ross, and another Twin Cities activist named Bob Palmer on Friday morning and we immediately proceeded north of the city to the area near Beacon, NY which is very close to Pete Seeger's home. Upon leaving the city I was immediately struck by the beauty of the Hudson River Valley, it was a beauty far beyond anything I had anticipated with forests stretching for miles over small mountains with very little development visible from the road. I knew that Pete Seeger had been working hard for many years to protect the environment in that area, and to see just what he was protecting with my own eyes only made my admiration for the man grow stronger as we traveled.

We arrived in Beacon to meet up with a close friend of the Seegers who Coleen knew at the Beacon Sloop Club and there was word that Pete Seeger himself might show up as well. When Coleen called Pete's friend on her cell phone however we found out that not only was Pete going to be there, but they were going to be having a private birthday party for him. I could hardly believe it, not only would I be going to Pete's big party at Madison Square Gardens but I was about to have the opportunity to attend a small birthday party with him and some of his closest friends as well.

The Beacon Sloop Club met at a small cabin on the Hudson River, it was nothing fancy at all but it was the perfect environment for a celebration such as this. This was a simple place in which people gathered to play music and organize to protect the river, and there was no sign of big money anywhere to be seen. The food was all brought in pot luck style and it was clear that most of the people there were not wealthy but were rather ordinary working class citizens, it was not what you would expect at a private birthday party for one of the most legendary musicians of all time but it truly showed that Pete Seeger never left his roots and he still stands alongside the ordinary people that he has stood up for all these years.

There were about one hundred people at the Sloop Club, and while I never had an opportunity to have a conversation with Pete Seeger I did get to walk up to him and wish him a happy birthday as well as sing along with him to some of his songs. My singing voice is horrible, but when you are in the company of Pete Seeger that doesn't matter because he makes it clear to everyone that he doesn't judge them he simply wants people to find joy in music and not worry about how they sound.
It was an amazing experience and a great honor to be able to be in the same room as a man who has stood so firmly throughout the years in support of peace, economic justice, environmental sustainability and civil rights. He is a man who has truly earned his place in the history books as a man who was blacklisted by his own government but did not allow that to silence him and he continued to fight in the years ahead when he sang his song “We Shall Overcome” with those who marched for civil rights and he supported Martin Luther King during the years in which it was unpopular to do so. He later used his music to express his opposition to the Vietnam War and to bring the troops home, and he stood up for environmental protection and had the Clearwater Sloop built because he knew that the Hudson River could be clean again even though people laughed at him and mocked him for his efforts. No one is laughing at Pete Seeger any more however, because he has been proven to be right time and time again even when he was taking very unpopular stances. I never thought I would be able to be so close to a national hero such as Pete Seeger on the weekend of his 90th birthday, and I don't even know how to express my gratitude to him for opening up his small party to people like me who he had never met before.

The next day we had more events on our schedule to honor Pete Seeger, and for the first of those events we attended his weekly peace vigil near Beacon. Seeger himself was not able to attend this week as he was too busy getting ready for the Madison Square Gardens event, but we stood on the same corner as he does holding up our sign that said “Bring Them Home” in honor of Seeger's anti-war anthem of the same name. Beacon is located close to West Point so there are a lot of military families in the area and we received a much more mixed response than we do back here in Minnesota as a result. While we did have a large number of supporters drive by, we also had many people who gave us the finger and yelled out the window at us. I imagine Seeger and his friends go through the same thing every week, and it is great to see that despite the abuse he is able to stand up firmly for his beliefs even as he turns ninety years old.

After the peace vigil we drove south to Piermont to board the Clearwater itself for a sail on the Hudson River. Just as Pete turns ninety the Clearwater is about to turn forty this month itself, and in that forty years since Pete called for it to be built enormous progress has been made in cleaning up the Hudson in large part as a result of Pete's efforts to use the Clearwater to educate people about pollution and help motivate them to work to clean the river. Today the Hudson River is the cleanest it has been in a century, and with a recent court victory that will require the cleanup of many PCBs from the river it is likely to improve even more in the near future. The Clearwater is a truly majestic boat, its sail weighs three thousand pounds making it the second largest sail in North America and it was a great experience to ride on a boat with such a history. There was not much wind that day so we did not travel far, but just sitting out on the river for a few hours and admiring the beauty that surrounded us made for a great time.

What made the ride on the Clearwater even more special however was that all proceeds from the concert at Madison Square Gardens on Sunday were going to benefit the Clearwater Sloop. One of Seeger's close friends told me that Pete usually doesn't like to do big stadium shows and he said that the only way he would allow them to put on this party for him is if they did it as a benefit for the Clearwater so that the work of cleaning up the river can continue for years into the future. None of the artists who played at the show got paid for their performances, they all volunteered yet despite the lack of pay they had no shortage of artists who wanted to perform and they actually had to turn people away because they did not have enough time to fit everyone in. There were a lot of big names on the bill including Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, John Mellencamp, Joan Baez, Dave Matthews, Arlo Guthrie, and Ani DiFranco among many others.

The show was excellent and was a great a tribute both to the life of Pete Seeger and to Clearwater. Many different artists teamed up to do new versions of classic songs from both Seeger and other folk legends such as Woody Guthrie. Highlights of the show included a great solo performance of the Seeger classic “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” by Joan Baez, a surprise appearance by Oscar the Grouch as he got political and sang about the garbage that is polluting our environment, an excellent acoustic performance of “The Ghost of Tom Joad” by Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello, and of course Pete Seeger leading all the performers as well as the audience in signing “This Land is Your Land”.

Aside from the music something else happened at the show however, a letter was read from Barack Obama recognizing Seeger for his ninety year battle for social justice. Here was a man who had been blacklisted by our government a half century earlier now being honored by our President. As Bruce Springsteen said of Pete he had “outlasted the bastards”, and while I am sure Pete knows that we still have a long way to go we certainly have come far and we would have never made it this far if it had not been for Pete Seeger and others who stood up for the things he spent his whole life fighting for.

This vacation was one of the greatest experiences of my life and it was a true honor to be able to go out there to see Pete Seeger, view his hometown and see his accomplishments with my own eyes. Seeger is a true American hero, and I was proud to be able to honor his work. While we never made it backstage we did come out of this event even more committed to fighting in the footsteps of Pete Seeger (and we are still going to try to reach the musicians so if anyone knows how to reach these or any other well known musicians who would be willing to sign a statement of support for the RNC 8 please send me a message). Pete Seeger is still fighting for justice after ninety years, and it is up to us to help him continue his legacy in the years and decades ahead.