[pjw] REPORT BACK: Friday rally #23 under stay-at-home orders

[Peace and Justice Works]

Hi PJW supporters

I remarked at last night's Friday rally for peace and justice that it has 
been __five months__ since PJW took over the coordination of the event 
from Portland Peaceful Response Coalition. Time flies. There were only 
four of us out last night, all masked up, so our ongoing call for 
additional folks who can come downtown and feel safe health-wise 
continues-- again, you don't have to be there every week. As noted in the 
email yesterday, we're holding special themed events on the weeks of Sept 
25 (on Syria) and Oct. 2 (on Afghanistan). Please do RSVP if you are 
thinking of attending any of our events so we know who to expect and 
whether we're reaching capacity of 25 people.

We talked about how it seems neither major political party is making it a 
platform to end military spending or to bring all the troops home. Despite 
Trump's intentions to get troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, the US seems 
perfectly happy to keep occupying northern Syria to steal their oil.

I have since found this story about Russian military vehicles deliberately 
crashing into a US convoy in the area, injuring the US personnel.

https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/u-s-service-members-injured-after-russian-convoy-intentionally-collides-with-their-vehicle-in-syria-officials/

We also talked about the new tactic trotted out by Mayor Wheeler and the 
media, blaming the protests for the lack of police response to daily 
crimes.

https://www.kptv.com/news/data-shows-portland-police-are-taking-50-percent-longer-to-respond-to-high-priority-calls/article_036be0ae-e0da-11ea-b8a2-bba28ca7c118.html

But of course this ignores that the Mayor/Police Commissioner is where the 
buck stops to decide how to deploy officers, and clearly did nothing to 
address the right-wing demonstrators who, among other things, pointed a 
gun at anti-fascists last weekend. The Chief claimed they "only" had 30 
officers there and were stretched thin due to policing Black Lives Matter 
protests every night, then proceeded to deploy 50 cops to that night's 
protest where, so far as we can tell, no protestor brandished a gun.

No news about Israel's plans for formally annexing parts of the West 
Bank but we did note that country had bombed Lebanon earlier in the week.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-israel-shells-idUSKBN25L2SX

Remember when the world was worn out from two World Wars and created the 
United Nations to make sure countries could not attack one another 
willy-nilly? Seems like a quaint notion in the wild west of post-9/11 
planet earth.

There was once again a small amount of both foot and vehicle traffic, but 
we got a reasonable smattering of support from those who passed us or 
whom we passed. As the rally was starting two different veterans talked to 
the two of us from Peace and Justice Works for a while, seemingly at least 
mostly aligned with our messages for ending war and calling for police 
accountability.

Special bonus-- at the August 21 event (a week ago) we captured a little 
video (about 15 seconds) of the Ann Huntwork memorial sign (and our 
protest) going by the Pioneer Place mall. Unfortunately it's a little hard 
to read the sign, and all you get is the very end of the "US out" message 
and the start of the "Justice 4 George Floyd" message. I tried enlarging 
the video to make it easier to read but the result was that I knocked it a 
little bit out of focus. This link is "private" for now, we're going to 
keep trying until we can figure out a good way to appropriately capture 
the sign.

https://youtu.be/Kn1PYcoOt7U

Toward the end of the march I noted that our ongoing calls to divert 
military funds for human needs is the same message on a larger scale of 
the protestors who are calling to defund the police, again linking the 
various issues we look at as an organization.

I'm sure there was more that we covered but that should give you a general 
idea of what this week was like.

Thanks

--dan handelman
Peace and Justice Works
     Iraq Affinity Group
     PO Box 42456
     Portland, OR   97242
     (503) 236-3065
     iraq at pjw.info
     http://www.pjw.info/Iraq.html
     Donate on line: http://www.pjw.info/pjwdonate.html