Antiwar roundup

First, the action we did around Ehren Watada's first day in court went quite well, considering the intense cold. We managed to stay out for about 45 minutes and got about 40 people to stop long enough to sign the petition, and hopefully several hundred more people at least have a vague idea about who this guy is. I posted a couple of pictures I took above; I know there are better ones out there somewhere. There was a short but decent piece in the Daily Targum about it.

We've got plenty coming up; Janis Karpinski is speaking at Rutgers on Tuesday, there will be a rally Thursday to do with the events at Santa Barbara, Columbia and so on, and then of course gearing up for March 20th.

I went to a meeting in Newark Tuesday night of what is now called The Coalition for Peace and Justice (more explanation in a previous post). Most of the big decisions had been made in advance, mainly by POP. The main items are an indoor rally on March 24th, days of action April 4th-7th leading up to the anniversary of the assassination of MLK, a big march "for Justice, Jobs, Equality, and Peace" in Newark on the anniversary of The March On Washington on August 25th, and a followup "People's Peace Conference" in January, also in Newark.

I've made a point a few times about the discussion process not being very open in this milieu; there has not really been much of an opening for people to have much input into the process. I do not think this is intentional (the POP organizers have been very forthcoming when asked for specific information, for example) but it is a problem. There was what seemed to me to be an extremely tentative attempt by the Coalition for Peace Action to shift the center of gravity a little ways away from POP by proposing that the conference be held in Trenton, but they dropped it before it even came close to coming to a vote. We'll see how things develop.