Tucson Bush Unwelcoming, Goddess Style

In Tucson, I spend time visiting Tzadik and I work with CODEPINK Tucson to plan a just unwelcoming of Bush. Instead of protesting with signs and anti-Bush negative messages, we meet with a local female artists who makes goddess masks. She gives us each a mask--I am the Green Tara--and we form a processional with a huge pink satin banner that Nancy has made, which reads, "The Great Mother Says No!" We carry the banner through the streets, over footbridges over the downtown streets, and through busy crowds. When we arrive at the Tucson Convention Center, we begin to encircle the building, chanting Goddess incantations and songs about liberation and social justice. We reach the police baracade where attendees are lining up, but after we explain that we are doing a ritual act, and not just protesting, we are allowed to enter the enclosed area and bring our chant and message closer to the people going inside. Our processional converges with the large rally and we drop a pink slip "Bring the troops home now" banner over a huge brick wall. My spirit is nourished and fortified by this action, in a way that it has not been in times past. I am exceedingly grateful to Nancy and the other women for making action happen.

Over the weekend, we celebrate Tzadik's Ambush Makeover premier with a party at a local hotel with lots of his friends and family. We play Z-Jeopardy with lots of fun questions that Kristin, Anna, and I write and we stay up late talking. I am struggling through a cold, and by the morning light, I feel much clearer. Tzadik and I celebrate Easter with an easter egg and chocolate hunt and then I am off to return to California.

I drive all day and part way through the night to get to Salinas in time to help organize the Salinas Library Read-In.

March 19: Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq

After a brief day at home with my family, I drive south to LA where I help the LA crew prepare for the Peace Walk and Rally in San Diego to commemorate the anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. I help peel tape letters off a giant pink slip, make wooden crosses, create fliers, and more. We drop a huge pink slip banner off the Century Plaza hotel where the Gubernator is speaking that reads, "U won't be back for selling out California!" Dana and I journey to San Diego where we stay with Lynn who has the most wonderful and caring spirit and a deliciously colorful house. We begin the memorial events with a mini Arlington West--a commemoration to the soldiers lost specifically from the San Diego area--hundreds of hot pink crosses lining the beach and a banner drop over the pier. Several active duty military personell stop and talk with us. Many families stop by. The visual is beautiful and chilling and all too real.

We depart from there and start our peace walk. Dana and I scramble to put up the mile markers in time while making sure that everyone has water and Cliff Bars. The three days of the peace walk are made by between 5 and 100 dedicated activists walking through the streets en route the heart of San Diego from Oceanside Pier. I will never forget the sight of four of us women walking through the streets with a long banner strapped to our shoulders--the human peace caterpillar! Then there are Rebecca and Randy, who come from Scottsdale, Arizona and walk the entire way carrying a peace banner complete with frills and bows and strung to a piece of piping, and who have a daughter in the service. They are incredibly compassionate, a true vision of what CODEPINK is all about to me. I will also remember Bradley's stories about real justice in the streets and never taking life too seriously, and the end of the first day, when the women of Emma's Revolution met with us like magic on a street corner and we all sung, "We believe in peace, salaam, shalom" together. Or the day we crested a hill and I looked to the right to see the ocean lit with golden light--this is the way to be an activist, I remember thinking: walking with meaning alongside one of the most beautiful areas in the world!

The march swells so huge on the morning of the peace rally, when we have only 5 miles to go. We have a police escort that blocks off the freeway off-ramps so we can walk across and continue on our way. We begin to chant when we get into the downtown area and we feed into the Balboa Park rally at the exact same time as the student group who walked from the US-Mexico border converge into the demonstration. This miracle is a beautiful way to end the peace walk. The rally is quite eventful, both on and off the stage, with cheers, speeches, spoken word, lots of demands for CODEPINK gear, and a surprise appearance from my best friend, Kirsten.

I drive back up to Los Angeles with Dana and leave for Tucson in the morning, picking up Adam and driving him to Tucson with me. He and I visit the Tonopah hot springs and have great conversations all the way through the desert, which makes me feel very hydrated with enthusiasm and excitement by the time we reach Tucson at twilight.

March 8, 2005

International Women's Day:
Chaos. Snow. Coalition skittering together through the flurries. Umbrellas. Signs. Big banner weaving through the Upper East Side. Cold. Wet. Police escort. Pink blur. Soaking boots. Limp flyers. Chattering lips. Women power. Kids and grannies. Plaza, penned in. Megaphone drops. Can't hear the speaker. Huddled close. Too cold. Try to break out of barricade, mindless of group. Must get hot chocolate. Must take off wet socks. Must get inside UN for health, not protest. Police resistance. Dive under barricade. Run to UN. Dry off soggy skin with hand dryer in the basement bathroom. Regroup. Effective? Coalition? Powerful? Snow storm. Cabs. Getting to Caravan of Dreams. Warm food. Table bursting with activist friends. Real change is at the table sometimes, not on the streets.

Later, Wangari Maathai--Nobel Peace Prize winner--speaking, podium, colorful clothes, real inspiration, grounded, tree planting, scrambling for tshirt sales, pseudo-ushering, camera for zoom photos.

Out for drinks with the gang, or half of it, while the others go to the party. Margaritas: bittersweet celebration. Over.

Remaining days in NYC recouping, analyzing, getting ready to leave again, drafting event planning sheets, Young Democrat Socialists conference at high school, flight home with Sam. Leaving. Arriving in Oakland and getting picked up by parents. Homecoming? Springtime.

Activist Training Camp and Women's Writes Poetry Slam

On Sunday, we host an Activist Training Camp at Barnard College. There are workshops on art and activism, anti-oppression, youth activism, high-profile actions, to name just a few. The trainers are phenomenal and the all-women group is one of the most ethincally and generationally diverse crowds that I have seen at a "peace event" in a long time. The attendance is too low to consider the event a true success, but throughout the organizing process I have learned immensely and I continue to learn from the powerful connections I make with the participants at the training, particularly with the youth in the youth activism workshop that I co-facilitate with Ariel and Adrienne.

In the evening, we have a Women's Writes Poetry Slam at the campus theater. Again, attendance is low. But energy is high: Morley's songs, especially "Women of Hope," reverberate through the black box space; Queen's "tight jeans" spoken words cuts through the room; Reno and her K-9 companion have everyone laughing in tears; Ariel and I share a poem; Bonnie gives me a new sense of what it means to have courage and to transform reality; Hershelle is so real that the room stops breathing for a second; Ellen brings Palestine into the room--a big family that takes up a lot of space, on stage and inside our souls; and more...
The collaboration with Sacred Slam produces a beautiful event, and I feel that even if the room isn't packed with bodies, it is filled with dancing souls.

CODEPINK Convergence at Crobar

About 20 Codepinkers gather to meet and greet and make hot pink sandwich board signs... followed by Ariel, Emily, and I grabbing Indian food to go and driving to the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) office for a full night of work and delerium. That night Ariel and I don't sleep--we're up organizing, planning, typing, printing, making photocopies, programs, toolkits, and finally we return to Molly's house and write our poem about jealousy and sisterhood. Dawn breaks and scatters grey light through the airshaft, and then we are off for the first full day of activities...

UN Banner Drop

After staying up all night to cut, sew, and letter a banner in Molly's hallway, a group of rockin' CODEPINK New Yorkers and Ariel and I head over to the Church Center and secure the banner on the railing on the third floor. It's very visible and looks out over the UN. Though it is later "torn apart" by the process and detail issues, I am very proud of the banner that we managed to put together with so little resources and womanpower. We inspire the local women to contine to do banner drops.

Global Week of Action for Women's Rights

And here, because I am blogging for past events, I will use the past tense:

For the past five weeks, I have been focused on organizing events for the Global Week of Action for Women's Rights. The week, which arrives in March, Women's Herstory Month, is centered around International Women's Day, March 8, and the UN Beijing + 10 Review, an international conference by the Commision on the Status of Women (CSW) to review and re-ratify the Beijing Platform for Action. I spend the month working with my holy goddess soul sister Ariel and a woman named Emily who is a Yale graduate, a WILPF (Women's International League of Peace and Freedom) intern, and an eastcoaster by origin. The three of us also work with Nancy from Codepink NY. Our task is to integrate the international women's events inside the UN with the organizations and indivudals that compose the NYC community; in other words, we're to forge an inside-outside bridge linking women together the Codepink way: with creativity, originality, and lasting impact. Our planning team struggled with communication between the supervising staff and the NY crew, and the limited planning time made booking spaces for events challenging. In the end, we planned some all-star events, and we learned a lot about grassroots organizing. With the information I gathered from the planning, particularly from the pitfalls, I have constructed a CODEPINK event planning guide and form, which I hope will be useful in the future.

Over the month and a half that I am in NYC, I perfect the soon-to-be Olympic sport of couch surfing. I stay with old and new friends and cultivate some absolutely incredible bonds. In the post-college world, as with any massive life change, one can never be certain which friendships will last and which will fade and perhaps resurface again later. My month in NYC was a great blessing of friendship. In the darkest months of the year, the time when I have most feared being in the concrete complex of Manhattan, my friends opened their doors and invited me into their circles of light and warmth. I slept on the pink sectional couch from my old apartment at Hila's house. I shared a futon with Kyla at her parent's apartment and helped her move into her Brooklyn brownstone. I spent a shabbat and a weekend at Sarah Chandler's house with Ariel, eating bagel breakfasts and celebrating valentine's day with rose petals. I spent an evening with Sarah, the woman who is currently co-facilitating Students Against Silence, and we ate desserts at Lalo's and returned to her dorm where I slept on the futon. There are three most memorable experiences. First, I spent ten days housesitting for Karina while she was in Australia. She has an incredible studio apartment in Chelsea which is filled with light, Central American artwork, and good spirits. It was wonderful to live downtown, to have my own place, to savor the city in this way. Secondly, I spent a weekend and several more days at Malia's home in the west 70s. Malia has an apartment that is splendidly large, inviting, and feels very west-coasty to me. I slept on the most comfortable sofa couch I have ever slept on and awoke to streams of light filtering through stained glass windows and real wooden shutters. Malia and I stayed up late talking and watching parts of pirated movies and I discovered a life-long friend and goddess in Malia, whose radiant soul and firey presence illuminated my time in NYC. And lastly, I spent nearly two weeks at Molly's apartment in the west 100s. Molly gave me a spare key to her house and bade me go as I please, and she generously offered me Fresh Direct peanut butter, which I am now, thanks to her, addicted to. Molly is for sure one of the greatest people I have ever met, and I already knew that. But what I didn't know was the extent of the gift of her friendship. She made me laugh countless times, especially when she, her boyfriend Wylie, and I hung out. Imagine Dr. Drew and Adam, only Dr. Drew is a woman who is fiercly humorous and serious at the same time, and Adam is also an artist who paints large canvases with splashy colors and creates webpages. I really felt at home at Molly's house, and by the end of my stay, when I was boarding the Blue Van outside the Broadmoore and saying farewell "seeyoulaters" to Molly and Wylie, I felt like I was parting with family. Molly's apartment building is especially cool because there is a rooftop solarium with wireless internet access and a view of the entire city. I spent many a day e-mailing and working from the roof, and even brought up a sewing machine to sew the large pink satin banner for Codepink. Molly also has a film projector and a bed with a hotelesque mattress and friends who sometimes crash at her house in the middle of the night. So her house is obviously a great place to stay. But it is superb primarily because I got to spend so much time with Molly, hanging out, eating zen pizza with lots of garlic, planning the reform of the way we look at mental health in this country, celebrating Molly's summer plans for Florence, and even sharing my last night in the city with friends and Wylie's white russians. All this couch surfing taught me a thing or two about packing light and gave me an opportunity to really test drive my Ex-Officio "17 countries, 1 pair of underwear" quick-drying undergarments. I learned some crafty ways to find free food, internet, and land line access in the city in my post-college days. And I really felt grounded on the island, emerging from subways and knowing instantly where I was headed. And, I faced my anxieties about NY wintertime. You see, my friends make it hard for me to be down in NYC. If I was seasonally affective before, then I have finally found the cure: Friends who embody a springtime spirit and wrap me in a warm and nurturing environment.

The event highlights for the Global week of Action follow in the next blogs.