Vulgar and Over-Caffeinated

I had 20 minutes of excerpts from Col. Ann Wright's Jan. 24 speech to the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, but the Flip Video erased itself when a button stuck. That sucks. I'll just have to tell you that Wright related a story of being tossed out and permanently barred from the Washington Press Club on Jan. 23, when Rep. Mitch McConnell denounced her organization, Code Pink, as "vulgar and over-caffeinated."

Wright is hardly vulgar. She is an Army warrant officer and former State Department diplomat who has served everywhere from Micronesia to Mongolia, including stints heading up the diplomatic side of the invasion of Grenada. She was in charge of reopening the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan in 2001, but resigned from the State Department 18 months later over the invasion of Iraq.

Wright urged the audience to pay close attention to "embedded" military recruitment that uses school appearances and arcade games to get high-schoolers to practice for standoff warfare jobs, such as piloting UAV drones. She talked about the courage of working for peace organizations in cities dominated by the military. And she expressed concern about Obama being able to handle the Pakistan-Afghanistan quagmire without getting more civilians killed in the process. Wright said she was willing to give the Karzai plan for involving some Taliban elements in government a chance, but added that the Afghanistan-Taliban-Pakistan-ISI mess may be permanently intractable.

Wish you could have seen the humorous excerpts from her funny speeches, but you'll just have to go and see her for yourself!

DNC Day Five: Si, Se Puede

No, I didn't get tickets to the Invesco affair, but the DNC closed on an upbeat note when 1000 people gathered for an Immigration Rights March that went from Rude Park to Lincoln Park, west of Invesco. Wonderful atmosphere, lots of singing.



Further videos of the march are here and here. Cindy Sheehan was raising money for a plane to write "Peace" over the Pepsi Center, and here it was. Indigenous Mexican Indian groups danced at the start of the Lincoln Park Rally.

Finally, I close the week with a short interview with Edwina Vogan, Code Pink organizer for Arizona, who has been a dear friend and mentor since 1978 or so. Boy, Labor Day will seem quiet after this.

DNC Day Four: Rage, Flobots, IVAW March, and Code Pink Fun

Wednesday represented the highlight of DNC street action, with a great free concert, a fantastic street march led by Iraq vets, and a Code Pink party serenaded by David Rovics. The concert took so long to enter that I missed all of State Radio and half of The Coup. With battery problems galore, I only took brief snippets of performances, beginning with The Flobots' "Same Thing" below ...



... and continuing with "War Going On for Your Mind" (1 and 2), "Stand Up" (1 and 2), the fantastic poem/song "I-R-A-Q", "Fight with Tools" (1 and 2), and of course, "Handlebars." (Sorry, "Rise" fans, but the batteries were shot for the encore.) Oh, and did I mention Jello Biafra introduced The Flobots?

Before the RATM performance, IVAW members came out in uniform to read their letter to Obama, calling for immediate end to the war, health care (including PTSD care) for all vets, and reparations for the Iraqi people. Rage Against the Machine kept a level of screaming invective going under the familiar red star, for "Guerilla Radio"



In this case, I couldn't finish the song because I was in the mosh pit and got body-slammed. The last clarion call for "Guerilla Radio" is here. Here's a video of "Bulls on Parade." At the end, Zack brought out Wayne Kramer of the MC5, the only band to stay in the parks of Chicago in 1968 after Daley cleared the streets. They played MC5's anthem, "Kick Out the Jams, Motherfucker."

When Zack and Wayne asked the audience to join them in an unapproved march to the Pepsi Center, I was skeptical that many would join in, as most attendees were just there for free tickets. To my surprise, over 5,000 joined the call. As we started out, Zach and Tom Morello hustled to join the vets in the front:



The march proceeded two miles down Brighton Blvd., then on to Broadway and Arapahoe. The police were guiding it without problems for a while, but as we approached the underpass into downtown, the march was stopped every couple blocks with warnings about "failure to disperse." The first police block was resolved by Code Pink, and in later blocks, orders from the city allowed the parade to proceed. As Brer Rabbit of The Flobots was leading a segment of the parade, some guy was handing out blue tubes that made even-octave harmonies when you twirled them - dozens of folks were twirling tubes, saying "What does this sound like? Sounds like change!" Here's one parting shot of the group at Auraria Campus, outside the Pepsi Center fence, where IVAW met with Vets for Obama and got commitment for the three points in the Obama platform.

My friend David Chase and I had tickets to the Nader rally at Magness (my only real reason to go was to see Nellie McKay), but once Frances Mendenhall and Edwina Vogan said they were going to the Code Pink party, well, what other choice was there? Guess David Rovics thought so too, because there he was headlining the evening entertainment:



After singing "Pirates," David went on with such winners as "Operation Iraqi Liberation," "Alligator Dicks," and "Punk Rock Baby." What talent! What drama! What excitement! What drinking! Que lastima!