MY LETTER FROM CONAN

Ok! I always put off writing these things these days, but here we go,
i'll try my best to make it interesting.

So I spent the latter half of the afternoon yesterday not 'grouping'
or 'e-mailing' but writing angry letters to impeach the chimp in power
and his handlers, you all know that, you may have seen them by now.
Took care of that, enveloped and stamped them and then headed out to
meet up with Loryn to go protest.

At first we were worried that either everything was over, or that it
had moved somewhere we didn't know. But we just followed the people
with the huge signs and the police telling people to 'get out of the
street or you will be arrested'. Nice.

Powell st. BART was INSANE! Totally packed with people of all sorts,
hippies, punks, real people, business folks. It was pretty darn neat,
lots of signs and chanting, and a totally inflexible row of police
people who did not look especially pleased.

After running into John Baez from Rumah Sakit briefly and after Loryn
got hold of a sign we crossed the street and joined this march up past
union square and towards the TL. It was started by the Socialist party
but soon enough had all sorts of people involved. As it normally
happens we ran into Tack which was cool and he joined up our little
party. Marching commenced all around. Very peaceful, very cool. Lots
of onlookers smiled, waved appreciatively and flashed the peace
symbol. Normal kind of stuff you know. Some Raiders fans on top of a
huge dumpster leaped around like apes and made a huge ruckus in
support. That was cool. Things turned around and headed back towards
Market, then up uh... 2nd st? Right past where Zebulon was.

This was where French television became very interested in filming me
and Tack shouting "Impeach Bush Now!", so they did so. That was neat.
The protest moved up towards where it starts going up hill again and
hung a left. It was here that I started noticing way more police
people, apparantly worried about the protestors taking the bridge. We
ran into my old friend Steve Quinlan, heading the other way,
apparantly he had just had an asthma attack, but he joined up with him
anyway.

Steve is commonly known as 'asshole Steve' by many different people,
most of which are his friends, this is in regards to his incredibly
course and crude personality at times. Yes, this is course and crude
to me, so think about that for a second. This happens more often then
not when he is drunk. But he seemed in high spirits and showed no
signs of being an asshole, so he joined up with us.

For a few minutes it seriously looked like we were marching onto the
bay bridge, which would have been really crazy. Everybody was worried
about getting back home, but I offered to drive everybody back from
the easybay, no problems. The cops that had BLOCKADED THE ENTIRE ON
RAMP, saw to it that didn't happen.

Now, i'm going to step back from the narrative for a moment and
examine this, if they are trying to stop protestors from going on the
bay bridge and blocking traffic, doesn't blocking the ramp themselves
kind of defeat that purpose?

Whatever, we continued marching up past the Maritime Hall, where at
least 12 hippie jokes were cracked in the space of 5 minutes. As we
were descending down Harrison that's when shit went down.

No kidding, less then 50 feet from where we are at, we witnessed first
hand as a team of cops in riot gear, shields and all marched forward
and beat the SHIT out of some of the protestors on Fremont (I think),
pepper spray and all. Had we been about 45 seconds faster, we would
have been in the thick of it.

This is where the 'fun vibe' sort of headed south. The decision was
made to head back to market, and we all kind of regrouped after such a
bummer. I ran into Jeff Ray on a bike, which was cool, then we headed
down back towards fremont towards market again. This is where things
really start to get crazy.

So there seems to be kind of a bottle neck right by the freeway
offramp sort of by the bus station, you know what i'm talking about?
There are a bunch of people hanging out ON the ramp yelling and waving
for people to come over and join them, presumably to take the bridge.
Our little group decides pretty quickly that's probably not a good
idea. It gets kind of hard to tell what happened at this point, but
i'll post what I saw, maybe Loryn and Tack can add on to stuff.

There was a general stoppage of the march as the herd decided what to
do next, and then the next thing you know, a straight up PACK of cops
came rushing down the ramp towards the protestors whup ass sticks out
completely. Now this is something like 20 feet away from me, so that's
when I realized, much like many other people, that I wanted to be
somewhere else.

I saw a couple people get whomped, as to whether they were in the
wrong place at the wrong time, or were trying to get on the ramp, I
don't know... but they were unarmed and not very threatening I know that.

I totally lost touch with Steve, Tack and Loryn, and had to double
back a little bit.

For awhile I thought the cops up further on the street weren't going
to let anybody out and were going to do a pincer maneuver and
arrest/whomp ass. On everybody within, which would have been nuts
since we're talking at least 1,000 or so people. I contemplated
hopping the fence, but they let through people eventually which was good.

It was here that I started to get a little freaked, I had no idea if
everybody was ok or what, but there were some amorphous plans to meet
back up at Powell BART. So I said: "Screw it". And headed that way.

On the way a jarhead fratboy type was lambasting the protestors as we
went by saying things like "Yeah, why don't we all link hands and hug
each other so the world has peace! Hippies."

Needless to say I gave the, presumably Hootie fan, what for. Fully
expecting for him to try and kick my ass. I think since he didn't have
his buddies with him, and there were way more of us then of him, that
wasn't going to happen.

Some masked asshole tossed a brick through the window of the CalFed
building, I got the whole street booing him/her, until they ran away
in shame. A little futher on, some random citizens, like a punk, a
businessman, some college girl, and just a random joe, were all
picking up the free newspapers that were spilled out onto the gutter,
but the jackasses that think knocking those things over makes any
statement other then "i'm an asshole". The whole crowd started
applauding them and cheering them when they were done. It was really
neat, and made me proud to be a bay area resident, even with all of
the crap.

So I headed over to Powell and stood on top of a Bay Guardian
distribution node, watching for everyone for about 30 minutes, but I
never saw them. It was really incredible to just kind of stand and
watch as helicoptors flew over, people walked in the streets and all
sorts of non-regular activitity happened. I was getting really hungry
so I hopped down and was going to get something to eat when somebody
from Food Not bombs handed me a thing of trail mix. SWEET!

It was then that I noticed the documentary film crew for PBS filming
people in the protest on their opinions on stuff. They asked me if I
wouldn't mind being filmed and if I was opinionated or outspoken at
all. (yeah I know, I chuckled too) So I spoke into the camera, had
some jackass yell in my ear to try and sneak on, talked about working
a corporate bank job and not really being free to say my opinions, and
remembered to mention the cops swooping down lack a pack of hyenas on
the wildebeast for seemingly no reason, a half hour earlier and that I
couldn't find my friends still. (knowing damn well that they were
probably fine, but hey... it's the truth) I think the documentarians
were just pleased to find somebody who had enough mental resources to
sign the release and do something other then shout slogans.

so if any of you that watch tv see me on PBS, let me know...

I wandered around for a little bit more, saw a guy getting filmed for
one of the news stations holding a flag, went over to listen to see if
he was a jingoist or something, and it turns out he was talking about
how violent protestors are really in the minority and don't have
anything to do with the tens of thousand of people who are peaceful.

Right on.

I wandered into Civic Center eventually, no real clear plan in mind
and saw a group of cops all in formation for whatever reason
surrounded by people with candles. If I only would have had the camera
it was a total Time magazine shot, no joke.

Totally exhausted, I went home, called everybody to make sure they
were ok, watched 12 angry men with Peter Fonda (which is great) and
went to sleep.

It was really cool to see the Guardian distro node I was standing on
last night while people swarmed all around and helicoptors were in the
sky. It made me smile for reasons I can't even describe.

-C.

PS: Impeach the sonsovbitches!

A brief word about the war

I suppose that eventually I should say something about the war, but I feel like it's all been said. Obviously, if there are human rights violations anywhere in the world, we should do something to stop them. And if I honestly believed that this war had anything to do with human rights, I'd be behind it.

But what are we doing about Mugave in Zimbabwe? What did we do about Idi Amin? What have we done about China, about North Korea, and, let's be honest, the situation in Israel is as tricky as these kinds of things always are, but I am quite sure that we could be doing more.

The truth is that people in the world hate us as Americans because they have legitimate complaints about how we operate. Our import/export policies aren't fair to anyone else. We pass laws about labor practices in our own countries, and then destroy people in other countries to maintain our own standard of living. Because it's all right if someone else is working in a sweatshop if it ensures that my Nikes aren't too expensive.

Our foreign policies aren't too surprising, since our domestic ones are almost as bad. Not that there is anything wrong with free trade, as long as the thing you're trading isn't political favor.

But all politicians really have to do is to ensure a certain level of comfort in the lives of suburban Americans, and then they are safe.

So, yeah, I think this war is horrifying.

I'm not the first person to say that if the US had really been concerned about human rights in Iraq, then they would have found some way to address these concerns in the last twelve years. Why did human rights suddenly become an eleventh-hour discussion?

Why did we hear nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing HEY YOU'RE A BAD GUY AND YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS TO STOP OR I SHOOT?

So, yes, if it's about financial interests, I'm glad that protesters in San Francisco are bringing financial interests to their knees. Like most of the protesters, I disagree with any kind of violence or destruction. But I think it's really good that people are letting it be known that we don't support the war, and we feel that strongly about it.

Now I've added an extra inch to my CIA file.

I'm going to post a letter from my friend Conan here, after he gives me permission.

I know I've been terrible about updating this lately.

Anyway, I'm still working as a contractor at the same place I was, and although I haven't gotten paid yet, I at least know that I've made enough to pay my rent for a while.

On Saturday, I met up with Liz (http://www.whereisliz.com) and we shopped around Camden for a while, and then went to the city centre to march in the war protests. Lots and lots of people there. In the middle of our march, I looked up and noticed that we were just outside of Fortnum and Mason, so we left the protest and bought a box of truffles before re-joining the protest march.

Finally, we ended up at Hyde Park, and ogled all of the other protesters. Eventually decided we'd had enough, and went home.

Yesterday, the two of us hopped on a train to go on a day trip to Brussels, which was a seriously amazing trip. I really didn't anticipate being blown away by the beauty of the city, but it was unreal. One of those things where you turn a corner and then suddenly have goosebumps on your arms because you've come across something amazing.

Er, of course, we bought more truffles. And had waffles. And other food. I'm telling you, I’ve done nothing but eat for two days. The motion sickness drugs I take make me starving. They also occasionally go "bad", and then one of my eyes dilates and I look like David Bowie. Yes, on this occasion, the patch was bad, and so I did, in fact, resemble David Bowie. Now things have settled a bit, and my eyes aren't quite as dilated. They're still dilated, and now they're even. So instead of looking like David Bowie, I look like your average stoned person. Which of course is exactly the look you want to go for when passing through customs.

I didn't get arrested, which is nice, and now I have my passport stamped, and am somewhat legal here!

The contract work I was hired to do, well, I've finished it. But the boss isn't around, so I have nobody to ask, "should I come in tomorrow?" of. So I guess unless they say differently, I'll just keep coming in.