It wasn’t a quiet week in Petaluma, my hometown.
It started with a visit from Daniel Ellsberg, the ex-marine whose
courageous release of the “Pentagon Papers” set in motion events that ended the
Vietnam War. Ellsberg, speaking at Copperfield’s Books, was quite clear about
two things. One, President Johnson lied to Congress and the American people
about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the alleged 1964 North Vietnamese attack on
US ships. Ellsberg had first-hand knowledge that the attack was fiction, but
the incident nonetheless launched the escalation of American involvement in a
war that killed 50,000 Americans and over a million Southeast Asians. Second,
Ellsberg is 100% sure that the Bush administration is lying about Iraq, and
that there will soon be another “Gulf of Tonkin” incident to trigger the
long-planned attack.
Not willing to sit idly by, Petalumites let their feet do the talking
on Saturday, as over a thousand locals marched across town to prevent the
coming war. Always alert for the local angle, I carried a sign that pointed out
how Petaluma’s share of this war’s long-term costs will be $30 million, or
about $1000 per household. Will Council Member Moynihan carry a sign saying,
“Fill potholes in Petaluma, don’t create them in Baghdad”? And if the civilian
death toll is anything like the last Gulf War, Petaluma will be buying the
deaths of another 60 Iraqi kids. How about, “Soccer fields, not killing
fields”?
Two days after the march,
the Petaluma City Council heard public testimony supporting a resolution that
would protect Petalumans from Big Brother abuse under the so-called USA PATRIOT
Act. It may have been the largest crowd ever to fill the Council Chambers. All
but one of the dozens of speakers supported the resolution. They were
remarkably well-informed, diverse, passionate yet respectful-- a powerful
expression of the democracy and freedom that is at such risk. More than
anything I've seen in so long, it made me proud to be both an American and a
Petaluman.
Regrettably, despite a
moving statement of support from Council Member Healy, the votes for passage
weren’t there. Glass, Harris, Canevaro, and O’Brien opposed it, claiming lack
of jurisdiction. I think that, perceiving a mandate for “back to basics”, they
were reluctant to make their first major policy statement on a matter that was
“solving the world’s problems.”
That night, it dawned on me that USAPA is the second half of the pincer
attack on our democracy. The first is the growing power of money-rotten
politics. The only answer to dollar power is people power, but grassroots
organizing against corporate hegemony could be chilled, if not busted, by the
Bushy homeland security regime. Example: a few months after September 11, Green
Party USA Coordinator Nancy Oden was detained at the Bangor airport, prevented
by armed military personnel from flying to a political meeting in Chicago (see www.counterpunch.org/oden2.html).
Fear and lies carry the
day. Our respected Secretary of State Colin Powell used the recent Osama taped
statement to refresh the fear of al-Qaida, then inferred it justifies the
attack on Saddam. Why didn’t Powell point out that Osama, in very clear words,
told the people of Iraq to rise up against *both* American aggression and
against "socialist" Saddam Hussein? And why did the report of
Powell’s omission get scrubbed from the MSNBC.com site shortly after it
appeared. Is owner General Electric, a major military supplier, censoring
MSNBC’s reporting? See the whole story at www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15176.
Besides the Alternet site, see www.moveon.org,
and www.petalumansagainstwar.org
for national and local activism.
There is still an
alternative to war. In the short term, we can support the French-German-Russian
proposal for toughening inspections. Such inspections, following the Gulf War,
destroyed more of Saddam’s arsenal than did that war. Over the longer term, we
must pursue policies that, as our Congresswoman and champion for peace Lynn
Woolsey says, “pre-empt poverty, sickness, and injustice at home and abroad.”
Contact Lynn via her website www.woolsey.house.gov.
Well, that’s the news from Petaluma, my hometown. God bless
us all.