[pjw] REPORT BACK: Bad PR Moves: Friday rally #107 since stay-at-home orders

[Peace and Justice Works]

Iraq Affinity Group supporters

A new person joined us during our march last night, boosting the rally 
attendance of four to a march of five people. This person had actually come 
by a week or two ago and had taken a fact sheet. So hooray for outreach! 
We were masked up and distanced, as is the norm for the Friday Rally for 
Peace and Justice until further notice. One of our regular attendees 
creates a new message on a large piece of cardboard. This week their sign 
said "Honk if you hate war, war profits and empire." Many people honked 
their horns at the Square and along the march.

And even though it was pouring rain at about 3 PM with a forecast of 
showers, blue skies broke through right about 5 PM and that makes fourteen 
weeks in a row with only one light sprinkling on our event. *In Oregon.*

Here is some of what we talked about at the rally:

--The Senate used a WWII era law to approve sending more weapons to 
Ukraine, letting them pay us back later. In WWII this law was used to 
supply weapons to our allies against the Nazis, China and Russia.

  https://www.foxnews.com/world/us-senate-votes-to-resurrect-world-war-ii-era-policy-to-help-ukraine-amid-russian-invasion

---Speaking of Nazis, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy sent a video message 
to the Greek Parliament, which was well received until a follow up video 
was presented from the neo-Nazi Azov battalion. It's not clear to me if 
the Ukrainian government sent the video.

  https://www.euractiv.com/section/europe-s-east/news/zelenskyy-speech-at-greek-parliament-overshadowed-by-azov-video/

--In other Ukraine-related news, the UN removed Russia from the Human 
Rights Council. Although the US quit the Council in 2018 claiming it is 
biased against Israel (under Trump, rejoining in 2021 under Biden), this 
is the first time a permanent member of the Security Council was banned. 
Again raising the question, why are there permanent members with veto 
power?

  https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/07/un-votes-to-remove-russia-from-human-rights-council.html

--In what may be a good development, the President of Yemen has ceded 
power after being essentially in exile in Saudi Arabia for 7 years. The 
Presidential Council he named is charged with working out a peace treaty 
now that a cease fir is in place.

  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/7/yemen-president-transfers-powers-saudi-calls-for-houthis-talks

--The Iran nuclear deal seems to be bouncing back and forth from being on 
the cusp of being finalized to "never going to happen," with Secretary of 
State Blinken expressing little hope for the deal this week.

  https://www.jpost.com/international/article-703434

--Still unable to form a government, Iraq is facing a constitutional 
crisis, with Moqtada Al Sadr even reaching out to the pro-Iran members of 
Parliament to see if they can do anything, despite their firm differences.

  https://english.alaraby.co.uk/news/iraq-enters-constitutional-crisis

--And in really good news I'm choosing to believe despite the source, the 
US Defense Department says there have been no airstrikes conducted in 
Afghanistan since the withdrawal. That's over 7 months folks!

  https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/04/05/no-counterterrorism-strikes-in-afghanistan-since-us-withdrawal-dod-leaders-confirm/

In local news, Mayor Wheeler backed down on his proposal to shut down the 
Portland Committee on Community Engaged Policing. This was in part thanks 
to the work of Portland Copwatch members who urged that Committee to take 
a vote about whether they agreed (a vote that was 5-1-1).

  https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2022/04/07/40006602/police-oversight-group-will-continue-despite-city-staffing-shortages

On the flip side, an advisory group that is supposed to tell the police 
how to handle situations involving people in mental health crisis did not, 
as promised in October, start talking about officer involved shootings. 
They say they're waiting for advice from the US Dept of Justice and the 
Compliance Officer about how to do so. There's no link for this update but 
the promises are made in this video:

  https://flyingfocus.org/AdvisePolice_streamingpage.html

Along the march route I relayed the news that Israel killed 355 
Palestinians in 2021, 87 if them were children. Where is the outrage?

  https://english.alaraby.co.uk/news/israel-killed-355-palestinians-last-year-health-ministry

And as we came close to our end point, people were quite sarcastic about 
bipartisanship when I noted that the Democrats are expected to ask 
President Biden to make his military budget even larger than the $813 
billion we talked about last week.

  https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-04-03/bidens-defense-budget-is-big-democrats-will-vote-to-make-it-bigger

For the second week in a row the Ann Huntwork Peace Memorial Sign went a 
few yards further than usual along 4th Ave before conking out by the Gucci 
store again.

By the way we now have a title for our June 20 Ann Wright livestream 
event: "The US and NATO's 'Pivot to Asia' and Other Threats to Peace." As 
I announced at the rally, a formal announcement and flyer should be out 
soon.

It's inspiring that we had a person come back a second week in a row. 
There's also one person who heard about the rally on KBOO last March who's 
been there nearly every week for over a year now. Our friend who missed 
the last two weeks due to health issues is recovering and we hope they'll 
be back soon. If you want to join us some Friday at 5 PM we will see you 
at the Square.

Peace
--dan handelman
peace and justice works iraq affinity group