Peace Symbol Prevails Over Idiocy

It all started over a peace wreath in a Pagosa Springs subdivision. Here's the story:

Last week, a couple were threatened with fines of $25 a day by their homeowners’ association unless they removed a four-foot wreath shaped like a peace symbol from the front of their house.

The fines have been dropped, and the three-member board of the association has resigned, according to an e-mail message sent to residents on Monday.

Two board members have disconnected their telephones, apparently to escape the waves of callers asking what the board could have been thinking, residents said. The third board member, with a working phone, did not return a call for comment.

In its original letter to the couple, Lisa Jensen and Bill Trimarco, the association said some neighbors had found the peace symbol politically “divisive.”

A board member later told a newspaper that he thought the familiar circle with angled lines was also, perhaps, a sign of the devil.

[...]

Mr. Trimarco said he put up the wreath as a general symbol of peace on earth, not as a commentary on the Iraq war or another political statement.

In any case, there are now more peace symbols in Pagosa Springs, a town of 1,700 people 200 miles southwest of Denver, than probably ever in its history.

On Tuesday morning, 20 people marched through the center carrying peace signs and then stomped a giant peace sign in the snow perhaps 300 feet across on a soccer field, where it could be easily seen.

“There’s quite a few now in our subdivision in a show of support,” Mr. Trimarco said.

[...]

Town Manager Mark Garcia said Pagosa Springs was building its own peace wreath, too. Mr. Garcia said it would be finished by late Tuesday and installed on a bell tower in the center of town.

Source: here.

This episode in reminded me of something similar that happened closer to home. From Stephen & Virginia Pearcy:

When public support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq was at its peak, my wife and I voiced dissent in a very public way. The conservative media responded by demonizing us and encouraging right wing hate mongers to attempt to intimidate us. Fortunately, Mary Brassell and others with Media Edge were able to document many related instances of corruption. The video they prepared is now (finally!) accessible online.

The video linked below shows the media praising people who vandalized and stole our property. It also shows how the Sacramento District Attorney sent a strong public a message that vandalisms to our property would not be prosecuted.

Although the story is old news, it was never presented fairly in mainstream reports; so we hope that those who only saw the TV news will now see the facts presented the way they should have been reported--that is, without the right wing spin.

You can view the video at:

A Quiet Neighborhood

[Photo: Randi Pierce/Durango Herald]

End This War

Dealing with our bully culture

"I sense that the balance of power in the house and senate and the rollback of the neocon agenda is only part of the job ahead, as the country has been inundated with bully culture, the culture of greed, for at least a dozen years. For many young professionals, that’s all they know in their working lives — the attitude of winner takes all, bigger smashes smaller and do it if you can get away with it. It might take a while to allow another more humane culture of getting along and nurturing each other and benefiting from each other’s skills and knowledge to rise from the ashes. At present ashes are pretty much all there is. Social animals know better than this — they seem to instinctively know that there are limits to what the bosses and the alpha males can get away with, and that cooperation within the group is how the group survives. Checks and balances — something that’s been missing for a while.

I sense this culture every day, on the streets and in the media. Every time a cop car from my local precinct runs a red light or speeds down a one way street the wrong way (just because they can, no other reason) and every time an SUV with darkened windows muscles other cars, bikers, old ladies and kids out of way — sometimes narrowly missing pedestrians as they run a red light — well, it’s all been sanctioned by Bush and Cheney and the senators and congressmen who allied themselves with these bastards. They reflect and encourage one another. Push in line, build your building right in front of someone else’s, destroy a neighborhood, be a winner, a survivor. To me, those reality shows “teach” bully culture — that’s the lesson that is imparted — and that includes ones like Laguna Beach, which seems to promote backstabbing, lying, duplicitous behavior and entitlement — all in a world where no one works.

If these are the Republican ideals (and judging by the rampant corruption and entitlement in congress and elsewhere one would have to say it is) then changing the politicians will not clean the sheets. Not overnight."

Source: David Byrne's Election Day journal entry.

Quotable

"Ever since movement conservatives took over, the Republican Party has pushed for policies that benefit a small minority of wealthy Americans at the expense of the great majority of voters. To hide this reality, conservatives have relied on wagging the dog and wedge issues, but they've also relied on a brilliant marketing campaign that portrays Democrats as elitists and Republicans as representatives of the average American.

This sleight of hand depends on shifting the focus from policy to personal style: John Kerry speaks French and windsurfs, so pay no attention to his plan to roll back tax cuts for the wealthy and use the proceeds to make health care affordable.

This year, however, the American people wised up."

~ Paul Krugman, True Blue Populists NY Times

California Politics - Got to Love It

From The Roundup:

Meanwhile, Jerry Brown celebrated his election as attorney general Wednesday by announcing the formation of the Suede Denim Secret Police.

Stood in the rain to see President Clinton

And I'd do it again. President Clinton was stumping for Jerry McNerney who is running a fantastic grassroots campaign against Richard Pombo. Nice to see such a great progressive candidate getting this level of support. Looks like McNerney is going to defeat Pombo this time around. Clinton says, Republicans are the party of "cut and run" just look at Afghanistan. Democrats are the party of "stop and think." I was able to shake Clinton's hand -- quite a thrill.