Monday, September 26, 2005

Sheehan and fifty? others arrested at Civil Disobedience Action in DC

Here is a link to the BBC's coverage.
For more about this demonstration, which according to reports I read involved at least 500 people, read Mike Ferner's article about the CD in Counterpunch. I must say that I agree with him when he asks,
If nonviolent direct action is the most powerful tool we have to stop this war, what is the best time to exercise it? When a few hundred people surround the White House on September 26 for an orchestrated civil disobedience activity, or when a half-million (and more) people are in the streets September 24?
There was not enough publicity about the proposed "massive" civil disobedience action. Had I known about it sooner, I might have planned to participate myself. I wonder how the lobbying day went?
Meanwhile, I allowed myself to seriously procrastinate today. Instead of reading a book at least marginally related to my own project, I spent about two hours reading a long discussion about ANSWER on the Dailykos. I got het up.
Seems that CSPAN only showed the ANSWER speeches, which were boring polemics. People were pissed. According to one poster on kos, nicknamed "insane liberal," here's
Why ANSWER got CSPAN coverage:
Basically, ANSWER was able to come up with the cash to allow C-SPAN to cover their event. This is from an email I received from ANSWER: We have learned that C-SPAN is planning to cover this incredible assembly of opposition to the war. They will broadcast to millions - but there's a catch. The government is restricting C-SPAN's access on one side of our site, and their satellite trucks, which provide the live feed, are now only authorized to park much farther away.
In order for C-SPAN to have a live feed of the rally, we have to rent cable ramps as well as hundreds of feet of additional cable. This will cost many thousands of dollars, on top of the tens of thousands of dollars that we are having to spend for the joint rally stage and sound to reach the huge number of people assembling, for the thousands of placards, hundreds of thousands of flyers, port-a-johns, the buses, banners, flags and everything else that it takes to make a demonstration successful.
posted by : insaneliberal on Mon Sep 26th, 2005 at 02:27:26 EDT
to the Dkos thread "
But as for the questions people ask about where ANSWER gets their funding...it sounds like they get a lot of it from donations if the above was a fundraiser.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Worker's World or some holding entity connected with them own real estate in NYC. Or so I have heard, back in about 1989-1990.