ANSWER
The regular Tuesday night ANSWER LA meeting yesterday was packed solid last night. Standing room only. Jim Lafferty of the National Lawyers Guild spoke. He said, expect things to get more draconian before they get better, but they will get better, much better. Think smart, smarter than before.
At the Saturday demo in L.A., cops chased two kids through the crowd. The kids stopped by a woman. She said “What’s wrong”? They arrested her. Her husband put his arm on her, trying to move her away. He got arrested under an 1840 law for lynching (I am not making this up), $35,000 bail. That’s what Lafferty meant about things getting draconian.
We may get hundreds of people sitting in street intersections, blocking traffic in protest. Maybe some will get arrested, maybe none, maybe all of them. Don’t do civil disobedience unless you have enough money to bail yourself out, have talked to those who have done it before, and have let someone know you’re doing it.
But don’t let all this scare you. The size and breadth of the peace movement is already unlike anything the planet has ever seen. It’s already bigger than anything in the Vietnam days. It covers the globe.
Remember what the New York Times said after the Feb. 15 protests – there are now two superpowers on the planet, the Bush Administration and the peace movement.
So, like Lafferty said, think smart, act smart. Smarter than ever.