Taking on Rumsfeld in Court begins

Two of The Supremes, a peace collective, united with two courageous women of Code Pink to form the Rumsfeld 4 today in D.C. Superior Court. Katie, myself, David and Mari went before two different judges for status hearings regarding the D.C. charge of Disorderly Conduct and the Federal charge of Unlawful Entry.

Regarding the Disorderly Conduct charge, David who has a pending trial in regards to the March 20th action at the Pentagon selected to sign an agreement to avoid this judge trial. He will do 40 hours of community service -- two organizations he is considering working for are TASSC and Amnesty International. Katie, myself and Mari will appear in court on this one on September 28th. The judge assigned to us will be Pamela Diaz.

Regarding the Unlawful Entry charge, all four of us need to go before the same judge we saw today for an additional status hearing to discuss the legal necessity of a trial. Unlawful entry, because of its maximum sentence requires a jury trial. This status hearing will be on the morning of July 7th. David and I are pro se with an advisor. Mari and Katie have counsel.

If you want to learn more about what's going on in detail (and already know us personally), talk to either David and I face to face. For privacy and mutual confidentiality concerns, I will not discuss internal reasoning or strategies online or via phone.

The Supremes were founded in February 2005, when three peace-loving anti-torture activists were arrested on the lower steps of the Supreme Court protesting the U.S. Government's use of torture in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. Interestingly enough, the Dorthy Day Catholic Worker newsletter slid through Rumsfeld's door slot featured an article on torture at Guantanamo Bay, along with a hand-written note from Katie.

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Gays and Lesbians Opposed to Violence (GLOV) Reforms

As appeared in Metro Weekly...

Stirred to Action
Viciousness of recent anti-gay attacks spurs community reaction
by Will O'Bryan
Published on September 18, 2008

Perhaps a picture is worth a thousand words. When it comes to motivating a community, a picture -- far more than flow charts of crime statistics or bullet points in a report -- may actually be invaluable. Add to that picture a compelling online essay, and you have the start of a community movement.

With a number of publicized attacks against local gay people in recent months, from Nathaniel Salerno's attack on a Metro train in December to Michael Roike and Chris Burrell being beaten to the ground near the 14th and P Streets NW intersection in August, the viciousness Todd Metrokin suffered in Adams Morgan in July -- written about on The New Gay blog by his friend Chris Farris in late August -- may have been a tipping point.

''There are the anecdotal stories you hear from your friends,'' says Pete Perry, a loca…

A Proposal for We The People to Institute Positive Change

Hello sisters and brothers, subjects of the United States Empire, it has become clear the elected representatives on Capitol Hill no longer truly represent us and our best interests, but rather are serving their elite major campaign contributors. They serve the interests of the extreme rich and large corporations, certainly not the average American worker, student, or retired individual.

In order to improve our government, we, a collective of dedicated social justice activists, propose three demands to those who have power to legislate within the Federal Government. We list those demands here, and will then discuss how to make sure they pass into the law of the land:

1) Universal single payer health care, something that nearly all other developed nations of the world already possess for their citizens. We, as human beings, have a right to good health and to never be financially crippled in this pursuit of our own well-being. We demand that Congress pass House Resolution 676 and a Sen…

What Does Democracy Look Like?/Revolution of the Heart, Pt. 1

"You know that this broken world, with its rising seas and hungry mouths and bodies riddled by police bullets, can be so much better. We can end the toxic corruption that gives us militarized police, and oil-slicked pipeline deals, and hopeless shoeless migrant children like the ones I went to school with in Texas. We can get to the other side together. One road, many lanes." ~Justin Jacoby Smith, American activist
"How can an organization trying to fix our democracy operate undemocratically? How can an organization tell us that real change happens from the bottom-up. when they themselves operate top-down?" ~Kobi Azoulay, American activist
"In the end, the most important thing is not to do things for people who are poor and in distress, but to enter into relationship with them, to be with them and help them find confidence in themselves and discover their own gifts." ~Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche

"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to brin…

Inside the Belly of the Beltway Beast

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