Ok, Now that I've proved I'm not a negative person, let's talk about Ithaca and the war.
Quick, turn on the news and see if it's on yet! No, not yet?
Ithaca's Common Council passed a resolution against war with Iraq along with 50 or more other communities in America. That made a difference, didn't it? Bush got right on the phone and called back the aircraft carriers! Some cynics may say that this decision was self-serving to curry favor with progressive voters. Yeah, elections are coming up. I say the Council just drank too much coffee and were zoned out when the vote came up. It's only window dressing anyway.
Now take another resolution that David Whitmore (am I spelling his name right? not to get confused with that other guy who doesn't want poodles downtown) brought up. He wants a statement that the city will not help to enforce the Patriot Act. OK. Kick the FBI
out of Center Ithaca. If you didn't know, they maintain an office there. Hey, breathe a sigh of relief. The City won't pass over to the Feds any culpatory information on you. Okeedokie.
There have been numerous demonstrations, vigils, letters to the editor. The usual stuff. And someone is making out like a bandit selling bus tickets to DC and NYC. Now the lawn signs, buttons and decals are starting to show up. Could it be that peace is good business?
The one demonstration Ezra observed on the Commons occurred on the coldest day of the year. The only person downtown besides the protesters was a snow plow operator. The poor guy dutifully took a flyer that someone handed him.
On March 5 the high school kids invaded the Commons. It was like a tv spot for underage smoking. Anyway, I couldn't figure out if everone had gone off their Ritalin or what. Talk about irrational exuberance. Maybe Bush should continue with the war just to keep everyone in ithaca worked up and off anti-depressants for a while.
The bright spot was the day 13 people occupied the Army Recruiting office in Triphammer. It got a brief sidebar in the Journal and that was it.. No big rallies for the Triphammer 13, no defense funds, nothing. Like it never happened.
Yeah, war sucks. Don't listen to what the VFW crowd out in the suburbs say. They have a right to their opinion but they have no right to send somebody off to Iraq for the sake of their gas-guzzling pickup trucks.
What sucks about ithaca's response to the war is that it's self-serving, self-advertising, self-promoting. Someone I know called the
Catholic Worker folks to try to get involved in what they are doing against Bush's war. My friend got an answering machine message and left a phone number. Weeks later and there hasn't been a call back. Sorry, the club is not accepting new members.
All these smart, well-educated people around here (according to a recent letter in the Ithaca Times, this is "a politically engaged and creative community') and no one can think of a new and original way to protest the war. How about if everyone walked around with Osama bin Ladin masks one day to befuddle the FBI? What if the City of Ithaca refused to pay taxes? Or if Ithaca started a sister cities program with Baghdad? Invited all the people who are going to be cruise-missiled, bombed back to the stone age here for the Ithaca Festival? That would be a cool thing to do.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 11:17 AM
