Osha Neumann, spoke at Surreal Estate

Osha Neumann is in my "Paradise" blog, since he imagined the Paradise that is this world, but is not yet manifest, and tried and tries to bring it about." He said, "We should live now, as though that world is already here."

Here is Osha talking about his large sculpture work on the shore of the San Francisco bay, at a reclaimed landfill, called Albany Landfill.

Synchromystically, since I didn't know before I posted here. The site which deals with the wild spit of land that sticks out in the bay, is called bumsparadise.com.



Osha spoke about his time as a "Motherfucker" and read from the book he wrote about those time, a few nights ago at Surreal Estate, an intentional community in Morgantown Bushwick Brooklyn. Osha is so "lovable and charming," as honestly characterized by those close to him - and that appears evident, even in a brief meeting...so it's difficult to imagine him as a rabble rouser though he was and probably still is.



Joe Friendly will be putting a taping of this event on MNN - Manhattan Neighborhood Network, in the near future.

e=mail announcement ofevent as Introduction+++++++++++++++++++++++++

!!!TOMORROW!!!
Please help me spread the word!!!

UP AGAINST THE WALL MOTHERFUCKER!



Osha Neumann, one of the founding members of the 1960's Lower East
Side anarchist group the Motherfuckers, will be speaking at the
Surreal Estate in Brooklyn this Sunday (February 1st) at 7p.m.
Reading from his book Up Against the Wall Motherf**ker: A Memoir of
the '60s, with Notes for Next Time he will talk about his involvement
with the street gang that forced its way into the Pentagon during a
war protest, helped occupy one of the buildings in the Columbia
University takeover, and cut the fences at Woodstock to allow
thousands in for free, among many other feats of radical activism and
rebellion.


SUNDAY, FEB. 1ST at 7 PM
The Surreal Estate: 13 Thames St. (2ND FLOOR) Brooklyn, NY 11206

This event is FREE and for the COMMUNITY!

Inexact and suggestive-only notes of Neumann's lecture.
***************************
cheap
rents made up able, onthe Lower Wast Side ....Able to have free stores, crash pads.
surreal estate has the same flavor
1968

angry artists we.. artist's would do something against the war.
whatever they did, was against the war
meetings of anti-war artists. art's week.

printed up posters which had photograph from Vietnam..wasn't a clamp down upon Media presentation of war images, as they do today vis a vis Gaza and iraq

Girl running down street, screaming..
"Thou shalt not kill" banner
went to St. Patrick's cathedral, cardinal Spellman, chief,....of the Vietnam war. whatever we did was all blessed because of the fight against godless communism

so they went and decided to disrupt the Mass at St. Patrick's.

stood up to unfurl their posters. but they were infiltrated.

each of them had a security guard standing right next to them as they tried to unfurl the banner.
and were taken to the tombs. [prison downtown in NYC]

Need to transform the world
total imaginative transformation of he world.
that was on the agenda.
horror was in our face.. going on and on..

we were all potential cannon fodder..

will we either kill or be killed, or go to Canada.

sense we were transforming ourselves and transforming ourselves.
who knew where this was coming from

skinny rice farmers were beating the beef eating Americans. We identified with those.. National Liberation Front.

It felt like "they were us" but they were wildly different from us.

It was very charismatic. the motherfuckers formed out of this.

Being on the LES our job was to organize and politicize the hippies.

part they did not know: " you could not just drop out" you would be smashed for that"
Peace was somewhere in the future. For now there would be a struggle.

gun barrels on guns put flowers... that's cool.

broke thought the lines of he Pentagon.. we got inside of the Pentagon,,, but were beat back.

our version of the "Flower Power" was the "flower Power" of thorns.

Poem by Leroy Jones, Baraka, Poem was how they got their names.

all across the country their were ghetto uprisings. was police shooting or misconduct.. in the light of that Barak, wrote a poem, called "Black People"


"motherfucker" was the word of the year at that time. we identified with Amira Baraka, Newark burned. that poem was read and he was blamed for the riot.

Waiting for the guy to write the poem, before they do what they do? But the jury bought it.

We chose a word intentionally which could no be said on the TV,

We believed we'd just be co-opted. We were perfectly happy they could not say our name.

We took that name partly so it could not be spoken on TV

We saw ourselves as the defenders of the hippies and we should defend them from the police.

We would call for a demonstration aka riot, ring in patrol boards, run to our office and crank out flier calling for another riot protesting the fact we'd just been busted.

Appeared before a specific judge upteemth time.. "u r incorrigible, rap brown and...Hitler, you have to get out of here."

mainly white guys, men, based on LES.

Called ourselves after and "affinity group" came from a Spanish anarchist affinity group

Key Ben Moraya, was key person in group.. Italian street kid.

very intellectual German Jewish intellectuals. Franz Neuman, step-fater ws Herbert Marcuse, Frankfurt School, not aligned with particular Marx/ Freud, "Eros and Civilization" Marcuse argues with Freud that the level of repression necessary for civilization was not necessary.

that appealed to the movements of the 60's became and intellectual father figure for the movements of the 60's [Marcuse]

Ben was hooked on heroin and jazz musician, busted sent to jail, went cold turkey in jail, went back to jazz would go back to heroin, gave up jazz for painting. hung out with Murry Bookchin, and Julian beck and Judith Melina. That was where he
opposition t

street gang with analysis..what we presented.

We thought our role was to be... we were going to live within the revolution and to take the risks that were necessary.

risks that the black panther, the Viet Cong were taking.. we should take the same risks. We did not have the right to take less risks than that. Not to back down from confrontations with the police.

Combined that with a way of doing politics that was in no way similar to traditional politics.

As with y'all...Not "Real Estate." "Surreal Estate"

language we used was the language of the imagination

We spoke through the mental callous people live within.

We churned out tons and tons of fliers. for example,


"The streets belong to the people
and the people belong to the streets.
"

we constantly churned this stuff out. on the streets . fliers.

How we looked to the police. There was a "Red squad" back them. We got their records about the "motherfuckers" contained

Police very concerned about racial make-up of the motherfuckers.

We had a "mayfly" existence. Came on the scene late... went to Chicago 1968, [we did not last] named as un-indicted co-conspirator in the Chicago 8 trials. Got through how week of Chicago unscathed.. then in a car with folks decided to go to a movie. went through a street light. forgot that we had on the floor golf balls with nails under then, to use against police horses. we were in the police station. We pointed out as the one's who had golf balls intended to throw at police. [even that wasn't true as we were leaving the event(s)]

Came back from Chicago , had a memorable, most we had was 16 mm film Group called newsreel, doing political news reals. garbage strike on the LES... piles and piles after just a few weeks. tax on cultural institutions. Upper west side, Lincoln center for perming arts, Chrystal galls marble.

only appropriate to bring garbage form the LES up to Lincoln center and dumped them o the steps of Lincoln Center.

Opera was not protected from garbage.

"we propose an equal exchange. let's exchange one for one... world is our garbage. let's exchange garbage for garbage.

"America turns the world to garbage" threw cow's blood on the Dean Ruck.. they had to dodge the blood.

Bill Grahme...opened the East, make money off of Rock n Roll Fillmore east on 2nd ave. Ticket prices no one on the LES could afford. He was ripping off culture and had to give something back.

Bill Grahm escaped the Nazi-s "you are no going to be able to mess with me" hell's angels didn't scare me. We said, "we're going to shut you down"

Graham scheduled a benefit for the Living Theater, for people who had been busted. We talked to the Living Theater. At end of your performance, we are going to stay there"
So we took over the theater and negotiated with BH to have the theater for one night.

Our rhetoric was beginning to catch up with us. New drugs.. 2 gangs the jokers and the aliens.. they had to fight us for turfs. they fought each others. Things were no going well on the LES. Police were beginning to close in "you can't see this kind of rhetoric. began to feel more like a death trip. "charlie" at one of our demonstrations. dragged into Gem spa st marks place and 2nd. charlie busted out but other one couldn't get away. arms broken tortured, beat on the head. Was never the same again. virtually catatonic for period of time .never recovered. years . whither fell or jumped off a mountain in Yosemite, unknown.

We went to new Mexico. there was a sense that you can't use the words/rhetoric we used.

Hippies, mexico Toas... people migrated.

We found there was something called Land Movement, led by Ekias elianza" his idea was Zapata, thought he's led a Zapata like revolution in northern Mexico.

He wanted to take the land back that had been taken from the Chicano. took over the town, shot the sheriff of the town. national guard was called in,, he was arrested. guys part of that melted into the hills. Inconacarn. guard came back during the day. They wanted to be there is the land thang happened gains. No idea how to live in the country: rustled the cow, use d every part. we had no idea how to tan a skin combined urine and asses. hollowed out a drum.. we couldn't shoot straightway. cult like quality to what we were doing. we were all going nuts.

what i am talking about is a mask
being real about the strength and weaknesses of this politics is what is important for today.



street gang with anaLYSIS.

WE STARTED TO FALL APART. I WAS NOT A STREET [ITHER]. i WOULD NEVER BE THAT.

IT WAS BAD.

JUST BAD. SO i LEFT.

MALE DOMINATED FANTASY.. WOMAN WHO i WAS WITH GOT you can tell y the name

felt like dropping of the end of the earth

you couldn't have real life outside of it. it was getting out of line. however, everything outside of that felt flatter. that was the way it felt.

have to draw the line between trivialize it and glorify it.

have to walk the line..

everyone lies,, naturally "i am a story teller"

"we demand a society that is not anti-fantasy."

despite my ode to fantasy.. i did not like my fantasies. but i wanted to be liberated from them

[wasn't Bernadette Dohrn as government agent;? .ed}]

three finger...fork salute.. which resonated to the fork in the stomach of one of Charlie Manson's family victims. B Dohrne made that gesture. [~that was how far out of line we had become]

somehow it was considered revolutionary.

we were always accused of being just about "infantile []"

white privileged kids ... you will infantile rebellion..you are acting out because you are angry at your parents.


'What part of that is true?" Deals with that in book.

Parental authority is ...control of the state.

ending subordination of childhood.
out politics was a passion play. over and over we were beaten up. did we secretly Identify with the punishing authority?

repetitively react the dynamics between parent nd child.

reading last part of chapter [?].

denied truth not by developing a....of theory... we believed we were placing ourselves where truth lives.[]


none of the movements threatened the State.


[italics mine .ed]

they were looking at all the things happening at once. when co-option does no work that is when guns and violence comes in.t Panthers death rate.

combining violence and birth somehow. there is nothing more antithetical. than those 2.

How do you reconcile? we thought we'd live within the revolution. we were riding a wave. creating a wave by surfing on it. we thought it would never stop. we were less on top of it than we thought. It was riding us.

there is technological capacity to feed and house the world, if it was used right.

[correct "moment" for this re-visioning of Neumann's past, in context of world economic melt-down]

to liberate our imagination.. material base for that is here now.

[what is holding 'us' back?]

Cut of from that by the Institutions.

Be realistic. demand the impossible.

Reality was that this "impossible" was the real.. [More real than the actual.]

What is really real is the Lie is preventing the rupture that would cause what ... really could happened

the very radicalization cut us off from what we were trying to gain.

present is not what it should be. many people are stuck in their lives. how come we are here and they are there.

How do we spread that, without compromising the vision.

we had this revolutionary fervor that did not count as a revolution.l

then we had this counter- revolution of 40 years.

They are the ones who have been in power for 40 years.

"the shift" did not put a change in capitalism on the agenda.

people are still waiting around for Obama to fix capitalism

bail out the banks, [yet Obama is] committed to wars.

There is a myth that capitalism is free or does not need the support of the state. That is how it operates, however. Capitalism needs the constant support of the State.

culture shift was a shift to eroticism.. they took that to make their commodities more attractive and to bind them to the consumer.

We can't be free until the world is free. but we can do the little things. we do to act as though it is there today..

[gives some 'props' to Surreal Estate]
Living communal..giving up you own little private life.

Danger of co-option by the powers that be...underestimated by the "motherfuckers"

"co-option " is sinister..l. question..how do we get around that?... there is no aesthetic that can't be co-opted?...

[not true...dirt... "they will not give you a job" Laia says that dirt will keep you from being co-opted]

liberalization of society makes society much more seductive" co-optation has given the consumer culture it's pizazz.

There may be limits to what can be co-opted?... hip hop and rap... examples.

have to keep producing form the outside and link it to a radical practice.

Culture can not be de-linked to acts of resistance.

uU[sing eroticism to get people to buy, [Joe Friendly mentions, "Wet and Wild" commercial which was invented by one of Nixon's henchmen named Haldeman]

When the society has fewer taboos, fewer acts are perceived to be radical.

[style, not substance, can be co-opted]

How not to get stuck in your own little group.

Don't forget those who can not live as we do.

["Did u disown militancy" asks Laia} ]

Media: "motherfuckers" "have things changed with the Media?" more vibrant counter- cultural media, plus the World Wide Web .

channels around mainstream.

Problem with that is:
People that are already part of our group will seek it out. others may not.
of course, *use the media, ubrt be aware of it.

militancy..disentangling... "if we re militant we have to be self-aware, otherwise you will get trapped"

I can't run anymore. I continue to get arrested. I still believe in civil disobedience. IN new years' day in oakland, baRT system. there was an altercation in Oakland. BART police pulled people off train. lined them up {6 or 7 black kids] In this world of cellphone cameras almost nothing escapes recording. One guy there, took one police person pulled him away from the wall and punched him forced him down face down on the subway platform they pulled his hands up behind his back. one of the cops stands up and pulls out his gun and shoots the man in the back. he is lying on his back on the cement. man is killed.

We have the cellphone..tried to confiscate the cellphone camera. organizing happens. nothing happens. cop refuses to five a statement to internal affairs. resigns from police force. walks around. is not arrested.

demonstration in protest of this. folks march on BART station. up and down the street busting up police car.. over 150 are arrested.

everyone is making statements. District attorney decides the man need to be tried for murder.

demonstrators should've have done this. [and they did] it's entirely appropriated.
they [those who do these things and allow them] should know. if they do this kind of thing, it is not going to be business as usual.

the people who are injured and who need to protest, are not stake holders. The people who express that..are he people who are going to be injured by the system as it stands.

good protesters. / write letters. petition.. meetings with council members.

"bad protectors" are needed.

there will be a whirlwind otherwise.

[We need?] institutions that do not stop the energy but contain it. [ Allow it to work?]

electoral politics..you talk with people. [~so there is virtue in it. though it may not accomplish much on the bigger scheme, or at least has not]

waves of people not making it because of this financial crisis.
Need to know:
"Ur not at fault.
it's the system. it's not you."

You want the neighborhood/community to look a Surreal Estate and say:

"they may look funny and act funny. but they do cool shit. they do good things."

how do you pull that together? that can be done. more and more people are going to need food.

yes, you need food. because the system is messed up.

give the food. and give the message.
[peeps are ashamed for needing food]

i think we can do that. I think there are huge possibilities.

The problem with inventing things anew [ as my group attempted as I document].. continuity was broken. we saw nothing good with the old left.. split with left. split in movement too

[~split creates weakening?]

people wanted to think about system and do it in the context of action

Port Huron statement.. serious attempt to think about situation and world [they] we] are in.

"Derivative /leveraged buy-out.. wish I understood this."

"never come across as though you know everything. it's always a surprise. we are always going to be a surprise. no one has predicted collapse of capitalism."

[population changes
35 million 1865
133 million 1929
305 million 2009

why present economic crisis may be different?]

"I am constantly moved by heroes in daily life."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A list of blogs by "Peggy Carter"

My latest web tool, optimism creator, is Friend Feed

To see my rooms there, and to join as my friend, you need to make an account.

Watch "September Clues" , Please

To enter Paradise. ;)

Michael Zebuhr

http://michaelzebuhr.blogspot.com/

Art Rosenblum

__________________________
Art Rosenblum was killed in a car accident on June 5th, 2002 at age 74. He was a peace activist since the 60's, a writer, printer, pilot, mechanic, and inventor. Art lived in the future. He called himself a futurist. He had a clear vision of the planet ruled by love. When he was 20, he went to Paraguay to join the pacifist Christian community called the Society of Brothers, where they followed the teachings of Jesus and held all things in common. He lived with them until he was 38, when he struck out on his own. For two years, he traveled all over the country setting up print shops for any group that opposed the Vietnam War, asking only room and board in communes along the way.

In 1969, he came to Germantown in Philadelphia to start a commune devoted to finding ways to bring about a whole new age of peace and love to the world. He created a small nonprofit organization called Aquarian Research Foundation. He wrote a newsletter for over thirty years about alternative lifestyles, safe energy, psychic research, and sustainable living. The first five years of the newsletter are published in his book, Unpopular Science.

Art had an offset press in his dining room, which he used to print newsletters and also a booklet on natural methods of birth control, which grew into a book that sold over 90,000 copies. When we married in 1976 after a 28-day courtship, I helped him edit the fifth edition. The next year, Art became a pilot at age 49 and started flying people all over to visit intentional communities. He took in printing apprentices to work for peace groups that needed printing done at cost. He printed and distributed 300,000 Big Party invitations in 1984 to visualize and celebrate, in advance, the disarmament of the world.

In 1988, he flew a Soviet social scientist to visit intentional communities in the U.S., and we wrote and produced the first video on such communities, called Where's Utopia? He influenced Ted Turner to create the Turner Tomorrow Award, which resulted in the prize-winning book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, who befriended Art.

He raised our two kids to be loving, free, creative, and caring about the needs of the world. He picked up every hitchhiker on the road that could fit in the car. He took in homeless people to live with us. He championed homebirth, home schooling, polyamory, communal living, natural foods, alternative medicine, and every cause that came down the road. He flew his small plane to Cuba a few times at age 70. He took in Freedom Summer kids to sleep on our floors every summer. He got himself arrested for civil disobedience trying to free Mumia. He promoted the Disclosure Project's efforts to get UFO information out in the open.

At 74, "seaweed man" still bounded down the stairs two at a time and built a loft with our daughter. He spent his last years writing articles to his listserv and teaching our son about electronics and politics. He started a free radio station, which the FCC shut down. He threw out our old printing press and got two old copy machines and made handouts about Dennis Kucinich and Israeli refuseniks. On his last drive out, he was transporting a computer that was to be the first in a project to give computers and mentoring to disadvantaged kids in the neighborhood.

Art wanted a world without money where everyone's needs would be met. He deeply believed that if he worked for the universe, the universe would work for him. And it did, many, many times. We even managed to keep an airplane somehow, on a poverty level income, because he did his own maintenance.

He never gave up trying. He said, “The difficult things we do right away; the impossible takes a bit longer." He didn't believe in death. He said that death is just a change of lifestyle. He thought he could be more effective from the other side.

Most of the back issues of his newsletter are still available from the Aquarian Research Foundation, along with copies of The Natural Birth Control Book, some of his audio tapes, as well as the videos we produced, Where’s Utopia, and Grow With Sound And Spray, which are available by donation.

You can read our daughter (April)’s speech, which she read at Art’s memorial, here.

You can also visit April Rosenblum's website, PinteleYid.com for information on the work that she is doing to find a solution to the problems of anti-semitism on the Left. Any donations for this project are, as always, greatly appreciated (and tax-deductible). See the web site for more details.

2002


On Saying Kaddish



In the jewish tradition, when a parent dies, a prayer is recited for eleven months called the mourner’s kaddish. As far as I can tell from my readings, the purpose is not to lament the death of the loved one but for the mourners to remind themselves, again and again, of the continued strength of god and the holiness of the world that they live in. According to one source, “the Kaddish was considered so vital to the religious life of the Jew that it was recited in Aramaic, the spoken language of the Jewish masses in ancient times, so that every individual would understand it. In testimony to its continuing power, it is recited in that language to this very day.” With one revision, it can be translated as follows:


Magnified and sanctified be God’s great name in the world that was created as God willed. May God’s kingdom be established in your own lifetime, in your days, and in the days of all the house of Israel, quickly and soon. And say: Amen.



Congregation: May God’s great name be blessed, forever and as long as worlds endure.



May it be blessed, and praised, and glorified, and held in honor, and viewed with awe, embellished, and revered; and may the blessed name of holiness be hailed, though it be higher than all the blessings, songs, praises, and consolations that we utter in this world. And say: Amen.



May Heaven grant a universal peace, and life for us, and for all Israel. And say: amen.

May the one who creates harmony above, make peace for us and for all Israel, and for all who dwell upon the earth. And say: Amen.



Never mind the fact that in orthodox tradition, I am not supposed to say kaddish because I am a woman. According to religious law, I am not even permitted to observe my father’s death as the death of a jew, because he was cremated, as was his wish, instead of being buried. His remains are not allowed in a jewish cemetery and no mourners are to say kaddish for him. Orthodox tradition holds that, because he has embraced the ancient pagan practice of burning the dead, he has broken god’s law and is no longer a jew.



My father is no stranger to law-breaking, of course. Beside that, he spent a good deal of his life as an atheist and even longer as some version of Christian. But I interpret the story of my father’s life as the story of one who engaged himself in the passage of history, and it is as a jew that his story began:



My grandparents were children when their families emigrated from Russia to escape the pogroms, organized attacks being carried out against jews. They met and married in new york and had three children. My grandmother said that when she was pregnant with my father, in 1927, she prayed that god would give her a spiritual child. When he was born, she named him Arthur Baer, after an uncle in Russia who had disappeared around the time of the revolution of 1905, for trying to assassinate the czar.



My father grew up in the wake of the depression, but what he remembered most about those years was that he hated school. He was picked on really bad by kids in his grade, and he would come home and tell his mother the names that he got called and she explained to him, “Arthur, the jews are a persecuted people.” So by age 6 he understood that some people in the world had been set up as targets and other people were getting away with it. By age 12 he saw changing this as his personal obligation.



One of my middle names is Jenny, which I never understood, and one day I asked my dad why they named me that and he told me this story: When my father was twelve years old, in 1939, stories began to spread among American jews about what was happening to their relatives in Europe under the Nazi occupation. But many people dismissed the rumors as alarmist. They could not believe that things could be that bad. Finally my father’s synagogue sent a respected member of the congregation to Europe to see for himself and come back with a report. This man returned to new york and said to his congregation, “it is everything we have heard and worse. The only thing that can alter the situation is if America goes to war against Germany.” Now, my father had already decided he was a pacifist because he had read the novel of World War I, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” and he couldn’t believe that the only way to stop the massacre that was happening was to initiate more massacres. He felt that it was up to him to change the course of events. He decided that he would stow away on a boat to Germany, with the intention of going personally to speak with Hitler to convince him to put an end to things. He figured that if he managed to get to germany he might have a chance, and that if he was caught instead, his story would be reported in the papers and either another kid would try to do the same thing, or the adults would finally come to their senses and figure out how to solve the problem by talking things out instead of going to war. Every day, he would plan to go to the docks and stow away, but every day he lost his nerve and chickened out – and then, when he was 14, America entered the war. My father was horrified. He was convinced that both Hitler’s continuing massacres and the onset of war were his fault because he hadn’t taken the action to stop it. This depressed him so deeply that he resolved to commit suicide. He planned it out, and every day he thought about killing himself, and every day, he lost his nerve. He felt awful about it, until he became friends with a sixteen-year-old boy he knew. This boy had a girlfriend, and they were both so nice to my dad, and so visibly happy to be in love, that my father realized, if I don’t kill myself, I might someday fall in love, and that was a reason to live. The girl’s name was Jenny.



When my father got older, he was drawn to living communally by visions he had had as a child. He thought that he could go to Palestine and live on a kibbutz, a Jewish collective farm. But when he researched it, he couldn’t find any kibbutzim that were pacifist. Because of that, he eventually found was bruderhof community. This was a group which had been kicked out of nazi germany for opposing Hitler, with only one night to gather their belongings and make their way out of the country. They settled in Paraguay, South America, which was also under the grip of a dictatorship. They had come with so little that they ended up living in the jungle and making their own tools – which was how my dad became a mechanic, a steam-engine operator, and a Christian. Imagine my dad’s surprise when he arrived in Paraguay, a 20-year-old jewish atheist of the firmest convictions, only to find that the community he had come to join was Christian. But here he was, he had spit in the face of his parents by dropping out of college against their best advice in order to follow his own dream, and he couldn’t very well just give up and go back to them defeated, so he figured he would give it a shot. He ended up living with them for 17 years.



When my father joined the bruderhof, he made a lifetime commitment to live among them. But when he was 37 years old, something changed. He felt a calling from god to leave, and he ended up back in the USA at the very moment that the civil rights movement was exploding into public consciousness. He sought out communities based on his ideals of spirituality and social justice, and ended up living and working with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee in Atlanta. As the Vietnam War heated up, he became a member of Students for a Democratic Society, and started their first printshop, working as their printer for a year. When he left SDS he traveled around the country for five years, setting up printing presses for any group that opposed the Vietnam War and asking only room and board until he moved on to the next town. At the end of that time, in 1969, he moved to Philly, where he married my mom in 1976.



The Christianity he had adopted on the Bruderhof had by then mixed in with the all the spiritual schools of thought that he had come into contact with as he traveled the country. He believed, as I do, that the most powerful spiritual force is love, that God is just another word for love, and that we all can tap into that power and use it to change our surroundings. Most of all he believed in the arrival of the kingdom of Heaven, but he called it the Rulership of Love, and he said that the more we work to actively transform the societies we live in, the faster we could bring about the rulership of love – an age of true justice and harmony on earth. He would like the kaddish for this reason – it affirms our intent to see this rulership of love be established more quickly on earth. As for myself, every bone in my body rebels against parts of the Kaddish – especially the perception of God as a separate, higher being, who controls humanity. But my dad took these things so casually, he just reinterpreted them to suit his needs.



I first met Art Rosenblum in 1979, when I was born. As soon as the labor was over he played a recording of Pachelbel’s Canon in D to mark my entrance into the world and tried to get me to talk, but I was already somewhat hostile to authority figures and it didn’t work. As many of you here today know, I have gone through many different phases in relation to my dad. But there has always been one common factor, and that is that he embarrassed me. When I was little it embarrassed me that he was older than other kids’ dads, and that he wore second-hand clothes, and that he looked funny. When I got older it embarrassed me that he was Christian, and intervened in my problems with teachers, and talked about sex. In the years since I have become a political activist, it has embarrassed me that he has hard-nosed radical analysis of the American power structure but it’s all mixed in inextricably with his new age, supernatural interests. Since we both agree on what the problems are, he shows up to the same events I do, but then he manages to stand up in the Question & Answer segment and make a comment that links, say, the corruption of the prison industry to the need for government disclosure about UFO’s.



The irony is that, as much as I have sometimes been embarrassed to be associated with him, I realize more with every year I live that the qualities that most define me come from him. This is easiest to see in his commitment to fighting for social justice. He was completely driven. He did not see activism as an interest or a good thing to work on in the time that he could spare for it. It was such an unquestionable duty to him that I don’t remember him ever saying to me, in so many words, people should live in this way. To him, changing the world was primary and everything else was integrated into that context. He didn’t have the ability to detach himself and seek out personal happiness while other people didn’t have all that they needed. There was nothing heroic or martyr-like about him – it was all just matter-of-fact. When I first became active politically I felt very alienated from people around me, because I didn’t feel I had a kindred spirit around me who was compelled by the same drive. I actually did because I had my dad.



I have inherited his mannerisms as well. When my dad was recounting a story of something that had happened to him, something he had witnessed or heard about, he would come to some part in the story, some very very small thing that for some reason stood out to him as symbolic of everything else, and his voice would break. He would kind of tear up as he was talking and his voice would get a little softer and sometimes it could be confused for him being incapacitated by laughter, but actually he was imperceptibly crying, not from something being sad, necessarily, but from how quickly he was overcome by the fullness of emotion in what he was describing.



I was embarrassed when I was little if he got like this, and sometimes I showed it by getting angry or trying to ignore him and rush along to the point of the story. I didn’t know how to see my father seem so open to everything around him. I perceived it on some level as weakness and it made me uncomfortable. What is funny is that anyone here who is my friend knows that this quality of his has been replicated in me completely, the inability to hold back anything I really feel, the openness to a fault. It is the same with lying. He abhorred dishonesty. He was honest at all the right times and at all the times when we all wished he could hold his tongue. Sometimes we felt he was being purposely disruptive in the name of being honest. I think we were right a good deal of the time. But I think it was more of an uncontrollable instinct for him than we could comprehend, because I have noticed in myself something similar over time. I am proud of myself for being relatively upfront with people when it could be scary to be vulnerable or to create confrontation. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is that when I am in a situation where I have to lie, about the most trivial thing, my whole body is wracked with tension and anxiety. Or that things come out of my mouth at incredibly inopportune times because if something doesn’t feel completely honest to me my body reacts before my mind has time to reason.



My father also taught me to believe in magic – that is, the power of every human being to choose the future they want and manifest it in reality by first visualizing it and then working toward it. Because of him and my mother, I see that activism is just magic by another name. My father was extremely proud that I am an activist. He wholeheartedly supported my anarchist ideals and my particular commitment to Mumia Abu-Jamal and other U.S. political prisoners. And he supported me in the recent months of the second Palestinian intifada, when I found myself having to explain to my fellow Jewish students why I oppose the actions that the state of Israel is taking against the Palestinian people. When I told him about my experiences of people calling me a self-hating Jew and a traitor, he told me this story: My grandfather, who became a lawyer to defend workers’ rights, tried desperately to bring Jewish refugees to New York to save them from the death camps and from homelessness in Europe at the war’s end. But the U.S. government, like most European governments at the time, refused to change the immigration quotas to allow thousands of Jews into their borders, and my grandfather was allowed to help only one young survivor. When these stateless Jews were denied immigration to Western countries, thousands of them turned to illegal immigration to Palestine, and people like my grandfather became staunch advocates of the Zionist cause. Whenever bills came up in congress that affected the new state of Israel, my grandfather would call his representatives to lobby for the Zionist position. But as the situation evolved, my father felt that his conscience could not abide by what was now happening to the Palestinian people. In the late sixties, when my grandfather would make his calls, so would my father, lobbying his congresspeople to take the opposite stance and bearing the brunt of my grandfather’s anger and frustration. The Kaddish would concern him, because it focuses specifically on the wellbeing of the Jews. To him, and me, the Jews are only as chosen as every other people, and peace and harmony reserved only for the House of Israel, for the Jewish people, is meaningless. For this reason, we use today the reconstructionist version of the Kaddish, which adds the line, “and peace for all who dwell upon the earth.” My father’s life had given him righteous reasons to fear for the lives of the Jewish people, but his Jewish consciousness had given birth to a universal consciousness of human suffering and human dignity that won out over those fears. For qualities like this, I am extremely proud of my father.



In the tradition, then, of some of my favorite political ancestors, the generations of jews who rejected an image of god they could not uphold, but held fast to their reverence for the sanctity of love and the power of the human spirit, I declare my father a radical and a jew. In the tradition of lawbreaking, I ask for the kaddish to be said now, and for anyone who is willing and able to take part. May we be reminded of how sacred our world and our lives are. May we be inspired by the people who have lived and died among us, and who made the world more sacred by their efforts. May we strengthen each other to bring about justice for all who dwell upon the earth, quickly and soon.



- April Serendipity Rosenblum

August 11, 2002

Philadelphia







Your dad only dies once.



Once I started writing this I couldn’t stop, so I’d like to ask you guys to give me your promise that even though it’s incredibly long, you will smile and act like you’re interested so I can get through without feeling too worried about how long I’m going on.





I don’t believe in the boss-in-the-sky, smiting jealous god of the old testament, but if he exists I certainly don’t want to throw him any support by accident. For that reason, I ask that as we say the kaddish you focus all your attention on what my father saw as god and what my father saw as the rulership of heaven…. Everyone here is welcome to join in this, but if you will not be saying the kaddish because you aren’t familiar with it, I encourage you to join us by saying the English version when we come to the revised last line.



His experience in the bruderhof made him much more amenable to biblical phraseology than the rest of us.





I can only skim the surface of the different lives he lived. There is just so much to say, and I have the advantage that he was a good and bountiful storyteller, who saw my every new guest in the house as a new audience, and who entertained me on demand every time he drove me from West Philly to Germantown by telling me everything he remembered about whatever historical period I asked him to recount to me, as well as how mechanics and electronics worked. I am cutting myself short from many of the stories about my dad’s life that I think are fascinating. I will tell you, though, that you have to hear those stories in order to understand why he felt so personally responsible – not only for allowing the holocaust to happen, but for the splintering of a key organization in the anti-war movement, and, happily, for ending the cold war in the 1980’s.



So why do I want to say kaddish? As an affirmation of my father’s vision of a just world, brought about quickly and soon. As a rebellion from the idea that anyone else decides whether or not we are jews. And as an acknowledgement of the profound contradictions of our lives in this world. He didn’t observe these traditions, but these traditions shaped him from the very beginning.



So my father was a jew, and a pacifist, and an atheist, and a Christian, and by the time he met my mother he had been an anti-war activist, had begun to study breakthroughs being hailed in alternative health and scientific fields, and had mixed in a good dose of new age philosophy.

Brave and intelligent Patriot Wallace. R.I.P.

We Do Not Forget You.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY analysis by Rob Ager

RE: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY analysis by Rob Ager
----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: <>The Last Baboon
Date: Aug 12, 2007 3:01 PM

Call for Mediation : Non-violent w/ or w/out Civil Disobedience as a 9/11 Truth Practice?

Truthlings want to shut-up Dave Slesinger: promoter of discussions about Civil Disobedience and Non-violence. 

Dave was banned from dc911truth.org - meetings, events and listserves and  (not surprisingly, who hasn't been?) from 911blogger.com

Here's is Dave's writing on political strategy of non-violence and on what happened to him:




Call for Mediation
By Dave Slesinger dslesinger[at]alum.mit.edu
Please post public responses at 911courage.org

I have been removed from the 911truth.org grassroots contact list after having been an active truther since 2002, having given out over 55,000 deception dollars and having spoken on nonviolence at national 911 conferences in 2005, 06, and 07. The reason is that I’m seriously considering taking nonviolent sanctions against dc911truth.org, a group I co-founded, and against Webster Tarpley, a DC area resident. Before I take action, I will give the rest of the movement a chance to mediate.

I do this out of respect for the rest of the 9/11 truther movement, which could experience some problems as a result.

All I ask is a full discussion with Webster and the DC group (separately is acceptable) of the issues I have attempted to raise for over a year. I do not require that others agree with me. I only require FULL discussion.

To give perspective to this problem, wouldn’t most truthers be ecstatic if those who refuse to examine the evidence of government involvement in 9/11 were to agree to a full civil discussion of the evidence? If truthers refuse to discuss nonviolence, an approach to social problems based to respect, why should defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (OCT) be respectful enough toward 911 skeptics to discuss 9/11?

Webster Tarpley
Webster has repeatedly spoken in my presence against the example of Gandhi and King. He has stated in my presence that there is no such thing as moral force. (Even Lee Hamilton acknowledges the Jersey Girls had a lot of moral force.) He has stated that the oligarchs wanted Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers. (He doesn’t go so far as to say that Ellsburg, one of the greatest moral figures alive in the US, was a pawn of the oligarchs). He has stated more than once that people who do civil disobedience have low self esteem. Since no one is perfect and most people can have higher self esteem, is using such a psychological put down a reasonable way to dismiss a legitimate political tactic? Using personal attacks has been the stock and trade of debunkers. Am I out of line for expecting truthers to act better than these misguided people who substitute venom for evidence and logic? Sadly, Webster uses personal attacks regularly.

The sanctions I am considering against Webster are to contact the mainstream media wherever he has been scheduled to speak so that the local reporters are more likely to ask him questions he has been unwilling to answer in the past.. For him to prevent this, he will need to discuss his background with Lyndon Larouche in depth and explain why he should not be held at least partially responsible for many of Larouche’s misguided activities. Webster was Larouche’s intelligence chief until the mid-nineties. In addition, He needs to show why we should not be concerned about his use of Larouche’s demagogic tactics. Keeping in mind Webster’s psychological tactics mentioned above against those who might potentially practice civil disobedience, Larouche used to counter political disagreement by accusing youths in his group of projecting their unresolved conflicts with their parents onto him. Everyone has unresolved conflicts with important people in their life. Is that a reason to avoid discussion of political issues on their merits? In addition, Webster has shown himself to be contemptuous of the democratic process repeatedly in my presence.

Lastly, he needs to discuss the relative value of facts versus concepts, and why at this stage of our 9/11 truth organizing that he emphasizes concepts. While the evidence versus theory issue might be categorized as more of a content issue than a process issue, Webster’s penchant for theory over evidence is part and parcel to the demagogic style he learned from Larouche. An emphasis on theory without evidence implies the speaker is deserving of a sort of unquestioning faith it his veracity and ability.

On July 4 in Philadelphia after waiting at least five hours to speak for 3 minutes, and after the facilitator announced that I was to speak next, Webster ordered the facilitator to let him speak next (for hours). He had already spoken before that day. I had called THAT facilitator, Paul Deslauriers, the night before (he had left a message for me earlier that night referring to me as “buddy “) and checked in with Paul minutes after I arrived at 1:10PM. My presentation was clearly the most daring of any proposal made that day. It called for setting up a website listing both the suspicious and laudable FBI activity regarding 9/11 and standing outside the Hoover Building in DC as FBI workers leave for the day holding a banner with the website’s URL in order to weaken the will of FBI employees to support the cabal. It has so far proved to be too bold for the dozens of truthers in the room. (See accounts of similar past activity at 911courage.org.) Because Webster’s lecture was so long, there were no breakout groups (as promised by Paul), and no one has even contacted us anonymously by mail, it is unlikely such effort will proceed.

911blogger.com
I have also been banned from posting on 911blogger.com for giving criticism of Paul Deslauriers’ post listing the agreements from July 4 in Philly. My offense was to note that my friend Cindy Sheehan had been abused in her support for the July 4 meeting since civil disobedience (CD) is not considered an option in the statement coming out of that meeting. She has stated in a post to me that she doesn’t work with people who oppose CD. I’m open to the possibility that she and many of the organizers of the conference did not anticipate Webster’s opposition to civil disobedience and ability to intimidate the facilitator. Reprehensor, of 911blogger.com seems to feel that since there was no previously agreed ban on CD in formulating the meeting, it is unfair to suggest Cindy was abused. I’m willing to agree that Reprehensor and others were not necessarily acting in bad faith while they were planning the conference. Nevertheless, a statement from the conference which doesn’t include embrace of civil disobedience is a slap in Cindy Sheehan’s face.

I support 911blogger.com’s decision to avoid the vicious mudslinging that has been so prevalent in our truther movement. I suggest that banning civilly stated disagreement is going too far and does not serve the movement. I like to think that an approach to conflict resolution which gives the adversaries credit and does not set a vicious tone is a contribution to rather than detraction from our movement. There must be acceptable ways to resolve conflict other than the person being abused agreeing to surrender. Even if the person abused wants to turn the other cheek, how can we be sure the contribution that person raises should be dismissed? Doesn’t such behavior invite more heat and less light?

dc911truth.org
Matt Sullivan, who facilitates most 911truth meetings, wrote after the July 4 incident that he supported the decision to preempt my speaking. He stated in a post saying that people didn’t come to Philly to listen to me. I consider this contempt for fairplay as being a version of “the ends justify the means.”

The sanctions I am considering against dc911truth.org include appearing at any and all their events with a sign or pack of leaflets asking why they won’t discuss nonviolence. I am also prepared to escalate beyond these sanctions. Such sanctions could result in serious implications for the rest of the movement.

Nonviolence is much more than civil disobedience. It affects normal public education efforts. It also involves fairplay within a group’s local process. As the modern women’s movement taught as far back as the 70’s, “the personal is political”.

As an example, allow me to review the discussion surrounding the eventual lack of public action by dc911truth.org on 5/11/07. I proposed we repeat the very first action that dc911truth ever did. We (Matt Sullivan, Lou Wolf, Clay Harris and I) had gone during lunch hour to the Washington Post in the spring of 2006 with a 7 foot banner (ask me how to make a plastic banner for under $10) stating “Courageous Reporters Work Here, dc911truth.org”. We gave out Steven Jones at UVSC on 2/1/06 DVDs, deception dollars, and Ken Jenkins’ glossy 11 points cards. We were well received by many, especially nonjournalists.

I proposed at the May 2007 meeting that we do a similar action giving out our new 4 in 1 DVD (9/11Mysteries, Loose Change II recut, Terror Storm (edited) and Griffin in Copenhagen). Lynn Bacaj suggested we avoid the Post with their terrible attitude toward exposing the lies of 911 and focus on the City Paper. Someone noted that the City Paper is an office in a larger building where most of the pedestrian traffic would not be from the City Paper. Instead of returning to the original proposal, Matt Sullivan, the facilitator, unilaterally moved to a new topic and no action occurred on May 11. We claim to use consensus, but Matt, who as a Quaker is well aware of basic consensus process, never went through the process of asking in sequence for questions, concerns, objections and blocking objections. A few months before, Greg Jenkins was denied the right to attach the dc911truth.org name to a project of his ostensibly because we “use consensus.” The group NEVER uses the consensus procedure of moving from questions to concerns to objections and to blocking objections. There is no evaluation at the end of the meetings, though I have requested such procedure. There are no minutes at any meeting, and I, even though I’m co-founder of dc911truth.org, am not allowed on the group listserve. This is because I have twice leafleted dc911truth.org events criticizing the group. Before I did this leafleting I pleaded with the group to discuss the issues internally so I wouldn’t have to raise them externally. At the Barrie Zwicker talk Barrie even praised me for the issues I raise. Copies of such leaflets are available.

Nonviolence
The suppression of the Washington Post action is an excellent opportunity to show how an understanding of nonviolence could help our normal public education efforts.

My friend Gene Sharp, considered the Clausewitz of nonviolent warfare, delineates in his 3 volume set The Politics of Nonviolent Action, how a violent conception of power differs from a nonviolent conception of power.

A violent conception of power sees the adversary as a monolith, incapable of penetration. The phrase “Talking to him is like talking to a brick wall,” is an excellent example of this conception.

A nonviolent conception of power sees the adversary as ultimately dependent of the cooperation of its subordinates. This is significant because it suggests nonviolence can be used against the most seemingly intransigent adversaries. Sharp goes on to describe three ways nonviolence can win. These are conversion, accommodation and coercion. The further away from conversion and the closer to coercion, the more the adversary’s decisions depend on the lack of cooperation by his subordinates.

To quote Sharp, “In conversion the opponent has been inwardly changed so that he wants to make the changes desired by the nonviolent actionists. In accommodation the opponent does not agree with the changes (he has not been converted) and he could continue the struggle (he has not been nonviolently coerced), but nevertheless he has concluded that it is best to grant some or all of the demands. He may see the issues as not so important after all, the actionists as not as bad as he had thought, or he may expect to lose more by continuing the struggle than by conceding gracefully. In nonviolent coercion the opponent has not changed his mind on the issues, and wants to continue the struggle but is unable to do so; the sources of power and means of control have been taken away from him without the use of violence. This may have been done by the nonviolent group, or by opposition and noncooperation among his own group (as, mutiny of his troops) or some combination of these. (Italics by the author)

The lesson for the Washington Post DVD giveaway is that even if every journalist and editor actually spit on us, the other workers there are their associates and friends. Such an action would undercut the respect and possible cooperation the Post’s management has from their workers. Such action, while eminently legal, is a textbook example of the use of nonviolence.

Ultimately, it is crucial that any movement for social justice examine the history and philosophy of nonviolence. The most important reason that nonviolence can be valuable for everyone is because it shows how courage with honor has such great potential.

Those who can tell no difference between business as usual and nonviolent resistance are essentially saying the 911 truth movement has all the power it needs. Compare this to the antiwar and impeachment movement’s assumption that they have no need for evidence from the 911truth movement. This comparison is what got me banned from the dc911truth.org listserve originally.

It is with great sadness that I admit that I doubt the courage of American citizens to prevent the cabal from establishing full martial law. The fact that it is so rare to witness civil discussion of the evidence about the lies of 9/11 is testimony to this assertion. If we don’t exercise good citizenship skills on this central issue, history is being encouraged to remove our freedoms.

I also doubt the courage of the 911truth movement to earn the full truth. Truthers need to EARN the willingness of other citizens to consider what we say. While many citizens are readily open to question the official story, courage with honor can make significant inroads with fellow citizens who are captured by fear.

Because the cabal has successfully generated such deep fear throughout the population, a focus on courage becomes that much more essential for the truther movement. Courage vs. cowardice is a more important dimension than plane vs. different plane vs. no plane, and it is more important than thermate vs. space beam weapons.

Too many truthers misunderstand nonviolence to mean either a lack of disagreement or to mean civil disobedience alone. Those who dislike civil disobedience need to delineate which historical CD protests they consider counterproductive. Maybe we can design activity which respects the kernel of truth they present. This lack of clarity exists in a movement where almost everyone calls those who disagree with them either liars or disinfo agents.

While we know there is a mass psychosis among Bush supporters who fall prey to his claims of being a Christian, we have our own version of mass psychosis infesting the truther movement. If you can’t imagine someone can disagree with you in good faith, you are acting PARANOID. Do you still WANT to act PARANOID? Most citizens avoid politics with sane people, much less people committed to irrational words and deeds.

The culture of calling anyone who disagrees a disinfo agent is the greatest weakness in the truther movement.

This does not suggest I believe there is no government infiltration. I have no doubt there is more infiltration than in most movements. However, I agree with Sharp when he warns that the primary danger of police agents is not their lying or their spying, it is their ability to generate mistrust between genuine activists.

I’m tired of hearing lip service paid to Gandhi and King. Help generate a real discussion of our own hardest questions or risk nonviolent sanctions. We ask those in power to address hard questions. Though the hardest questions we neglect facing are different than those we present to our adversaries, we need to prove our own courage to ourselves and each other.

I’m sad that it looks like I could be losing so many of the truther friends that I’ve built up over the past 5 years. Nevertheless, you need to realize that I’m prepared to be hated by every 911truther. Gandhi insisted that satyagrahis be willing to hold fast to the truth even if it means death. That is the mindspace I am in.

Gandhi once suspended his activity for Indian independence and called for purification. I’m a pale shadow of the mahatma in part because I have yet to transcend my anger. However, I don’t call people names, I don’t threaten violence, and I seek broad counsel on significant issues. (Can you think of another conflict within our movement where one of the adversaries goes by these guidelines?) Nevertheless, I’m coming to the conclusion that 911truth requires significant purification. I’ll wait a while longer before taking action.

Discussion with me will be welcomed, but Webster, the 911truth.org steering committee, Reprehensor of 911 blogger.com and the DC group probably need to be communicated with if there will be significant hope of avoidance of these sanctions. Many people advise me that Webster is unlikely to respond. I believe if enough truthers let Webster know they love him and appreciate him and want him to work things out, he will respond positively.

Before the 911 truth conference this past February in Arizona I had to threaten to hold a press conference criticizing the conference for not allowing me to hold a workshop on nonviolence. Kent Knudsen granted me that workshop and we eventually had good relations by the time the conference was ended. Many truthers might have concerns that I insist the philosophy and tactics I propose must be central for everyone, which I don’t.

I do recognize that some conferences have a narrow enough focus that discussion of the problems I discuss in this statement are off topic. However, you can assume that if Webster speaks at a conference and the issues I raise here are not allowed to be discussed, that conference is inviting me to contribute nonviolent sanctions against the conference. It would be nice if more truthers had the depth of background in nonviolence that I have. It looks like I have just recently found one, Rebecca Campbell of Washington state. (Hope I got your name right, sister) Maybe more are yet to become involved. Maybe I have missed a sister or brother who others can help me find.

One refreshing aspect of the 911 truth movement is that so many people, even though they may not be young, are new to political activism. I say refreshing because historically, people have not usually gotten involved in idealistic causes after their youth. In particular, most anti-imperialist activists seem to become involved in their youth and have remained active their whole lives. Thus many activist groups are cannibalizations of similar groups from a decade before. Many participants in civil disobedience are people who came to this tactic after years trying other tactics. I’m suggesting activists new to their activism are less likely to embrace civil disobedience.

Roundup
Some friendly critics ask why I don’t focus on creating a good nonviolent example rather than opposing others in the movement. Does than mean I should accept being shut out of forums like 911blogger.com, the 911truth.org grassroots contact list, Philly in July, Chandler in February, dc911truth.org meetings, events and listserve? If the rare person who sees value in courage doesn’t hear my call, is that acceptable? Some say start another group in DC. I’ll be lucky to find anyone else nationally to give more than lip service, much less in the city of which Harry Truman once said,” If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” Doesn’t the complete absence of assistance in our whistleblower efforts at the FBI and other venues mean the truther movement has clearly spoken? Its message would be, “Rather than do something bold, we would rather be in complete denial that anyone who does 911 truth public education efforts is risking their lives in the event the cabal makes its move.”

Who thinks giving out deception dollars at the HQ of the Bureau of Engraving in DC would be fun?

How people could think the general strike being advocated by Webster would not be aided by training in nonviolence is beyond me. Each of us needs practice trying to speak to the hearts of police, homeland security or military officials in order to be better prepared for a general strike. It will be quite a challenge for the cabal to get their storm troopers ready to impose martial law on people who remind them of their neighbors. Our greatest protection will be undercutting the will of the cabal’s minions to follow orders! Sharp notes that when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Czechs were so effective at touching the hearts of the European Russian occupiers that the Kremlin replaced them with soldiers from the Asian part of the USSR.

Practice at this does not take a PHD. It’s easy enough to set up a “hassle line” An exercise can be practiced by separating yourself into 2 lines facing each other. Generate a description of a situation to be experienced (i.e. talking to a homeland security official coming to take you to the camps or talking to a local police officer about why they should look at the lies of 9/11). One side is the official, one side is the truther. Talk for 2 minutes. Then shift so you face the person who was catty corner to you before. Have a hassle line on a regular basis. Brainstorm situations for hassle lines. Send those brainstorms to us at 911courage.org so we can compile them. BE SURE TO HAVE A DISCUSSION OF THE EXPERIENCE BEFORE YOU STOP EACH TIME.

As the 9/11 truth movement gets closer to such broad support that the criminal traitors who run this country realize their time in power is threatened, they will go even more on the offensive than they already have. Sharp calls it,” Challenge brings repression.” Since elements of our own government killed the 3000 people on 9/11, and because they got away with it, they can do it again in another form, declare martial law, suspend elections, and round up EVERY dissident (including the left gatekeepers, ironically) and put us in camps built by KBR.

In order to round us up, the cabal will designate 911truth activists as terrorists. The best way to prove we are NOT terrorists is by regular training and discussion in nonviolence. Many truthers believe we need no discussion of nonviolence if we are not actively using physical violence. I BELIEVE THESE PEOPLE ARE NAÏVE.

This naiveté particularly concerns me because of my past experience. The longest part of my experience as an activist was 15 years opposing nuclear power, primarily at Seabrook, NH. The greatest lesson for me from these years is that activists should not be surprised when the authorities use repression to counter a successful movement.

My dear friend No Guns, who I met organizing for Seabrook, has proposed other activity to discourage roundup. She proposes that local groups arrange a permit for area next to some central location (city hall, the TV station, the newspaper) to be camped at 24/7 in the event of martial law. It would be suspicious for the authorities to drag people away from such an encampment, while it would be too easy for people to disappear from their homes. I also suggest prepaying for a port-o-potty. We at 911courage.org are eager to list whenever someone gets such a permit.

Those who know they could never get arrested on purpose could still benefit from learning more about nonviolence. Whether it be to learn how to make sure civil disobedience actions do not fall prey to what you consider imprudent, to learn the value and role of support in civil disobedience actions, to learn how the philosophy of nonviolence can improve the activity of truth groups or other public education, or to just learn how courage is a crucial ingredient in any struggle (watch the Beit Shalom Denver to DC walkers get the police to modify their stance), education in nonviolence can benefit our movement.

Ultimately those who can not see themselves getting arrested need to realize that public education efforts on behalf of 911truth could be sufficient grounds in the cabal’s mind to be rounded up for the camps. In jail, it’s reasonable to expect to survive. In the camps, the outcome could be different.

Compassion
Kevin Barrett has requested that I show compassion for Webster and the DC group. The way I have always been able to show compassion is by giving people credit where credit is due.

As for Webster, he has provided a valuable service to the truther movement by introducing the concept of the false flag operation. As I told Webster when I greeted him warmly with a handshake in Philly, I quote him regularly. The idea of his I use regularly is when I make a concise plea to leftists and antiwar activists to consider the evidence of 9/11. I say “You’ll never get out of Iraq without 9/11 truth because the president’s supporters do not care about the use of torture or about the disappearance of the right to dissent because they are so frightened of foreign terrorists.” I add, “There may be foreign terrorists (that part of what I say would not be supported by Webster), but they didn’t do 9/11.”

In my opinion, Webster is not nearly as misguided as Larouche. I’ve heard him state several times that because we are facing nuclear war, we have to work with people we don’t completely agree with. Larouche, the demagogue, would never say that. Webster cannot be said to be put in the same anti-Semitic category with Larouche because he regularly denies the primacy of Mossad involvement in 9/11. He is also one of the rare truther luminaries who do not fan the flames of hostility between the no planer/ plane hugger factions.

The DC group should be applauded for the excellent 4 in 1 DVD made by Greg Jenkins, for the bonding generated by their regular meetings over dinner, for Matt and Elaine’s Rock Creek Free Press and for their willingness to discuss the 911truth.org “A Commitment to More Civil and Effective Collaboration within the 911 Truth Movement.” from 2/5/07 which I initiated but was embellished by Fred Burks and the steering committee of 911truth.org.

Let me also state that Janice Matthews, executive director of 911truth.org, who removed me from the grassroots contact list, is still one of my favorite people in the world.

Contact info
Dave Slesinger 240-221-3293 (h) 410-499-5403(c) dslesinger[at]alum.mit.edu

Webster Tarpley-Call Dave for Webster’s phone or check the listing in whowhere.com. He lives in Gaithersburg, Md. I’m told he often does not respond to email. Maybe calling him before posting to him would work.

contact[at]dc911truth.org

The FBI criticism and applause project-Dan Nalven dmn@nalven.org PO Box 1132 Ossining, NY 10562

rebeccaphb[at]yahoo.com Rebecca Campbell