Army Men in the News

From the City Paper this week:

Bring 'Em Home ·
Just in case Vice President Dick Cheney didn't get the point from the protesters trying to congregate at Hibernian Hall where he spoke on St. Patrick's Day on Friday, Drinking Liberally (DL), a local lefty elbow-lifting club, is against the war. Teaming with several other local organizations like Charleston Peace, DL posted tiny green toy army men in odd spots throughout Charleston County last week. The soldiers had little signs pasted to them that read, "Bring Me Home." Nearly 8,000 little green men invaded stores, offices, and public places in James Island (Monday), N. Charleston (Tuesday), Mt. Pleasant (Wednesday), West Ashley (Thursday), and downtown (Friday). Unfortunately, the war rages on, no one shot Cheney in the face in a hunting "accident," and there were some complaints that the mouth-sized toys posed a swallowing risk for small children who could stumble across them. "We're not putting them in kids' mouths," said one DL member in defense.
—Bill Davis

Also, you can check out the front page article from last week's West Of paper (pdf):

Invasion: West Ashley
The Army Men Project marches into town this week
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Final Week of Army Men Project

We're now heading into the final week of the Army Men Project! The 3-year anniversary of the start of the war against Iraq is coming up on March 19-20. To see more about the Build A Wall Against War action that Charleston Peace is sponsoring on the 19th visit www.charlestonpeace.net. Our partner in the Army Men Project, Charleston Drinking Liberally, is planning a special week to distribute the last of the army men:

The schedule for the Army Men Blitz :
MON MARCH 13 - James Island, Kickin' Chicken
TUES MARCH 14 - N Chuck, KC Mulligans
WED MARCH 15 - Mt Pleasant, Village Tavern
THURS MARCH 16 - West Ashley, Voodoo
FRI MARCH 17 - Downtown, Vickery's

Each day we'll be meeting up at 5:30 PM for a little while, then heading out to distribute the little green men. For more information visit the Charleston DL website. If you still haven't gotten any army men but want to be involved show up to locations listed above next week or email info@charlestonpeace.net. Hope to see everybody out and distributing army men next week!

Charleston Women Say No To War

For International Women's Day, Charleston Peace, ProPeace, and Charleston Democrats participated in CODEPINK's Women Say No To War! Day of Action. We gathered in front of the Custom House downtown to voice our opposition to the war and also to collect signatures for CODEPINK's Global Call for Peace Petition. If you haven't signed yet, you can sign the petition here.

Free Speech Pay-In

On Friday, February 24, members of Charleston Peace joined SC Progressive Network Director Brett Bursey In Columbia for a Free Speech Pay-In to pay his $500 fine and join people from around the state who are as angry as he is about what George Bush is doing to our country to bring a dollar and join him to pay what he calls "the rising cost of free speech." For background on the case and why we were there see the previous post US Supreme Court Refuses SC Free Speech Case. To see pictures of the Free Speech Pay-In, visit the Charleston Peace website.

The Cost of Free Speech, by Ed Madden:

A man holds up a sign. He stands beside a public road in a public place. Around him are thousands of people, many holding up signs.

The man holds up a sign that protests the ongoing war in Iraq. He thinks the president and the people in power are responsible for this war.

Half a mile away, in a muddy depression near another road, the man's friends hold up their signs, also handmade, also protesting the war. There is no parking there. The only people aware of their protest are the police who direct them there and forbid them to park.

The man is told that he must put down his sign and go to a specially designated "free speech zone," that muddy depression half a mile away — away from the media, from the gathered crowd, and from the president, whose plane will be landing shortly.

The crowd waiting in line to see the president — more than 6,000 people show up — surrounds him.

The man holds up his sign and explains to the policeman that he is standing in a free speech zone — it is called the United States of America.

He is told he must put down his sign or leave, or he will be arrested for trespassing.

A man holds up a sign on a public road in a public place. And he is arrested.
...
South Carolinian Brett Bursey's conviction stands, and on Friday he had to pay a $500 fine for holding up a cardboard sign on a public roadway in a public space, at the Columbia airport.

I stood in line in the courthouse on Friday with other folks who showed up to pay $1 toward Bursey's fine. I was there because he stood up for his — and my — right to speak freely. How many people in South Carolina think free speech is worth a dollar? What is free speech worth?

A man holds up a sign.

-Columbia Free-Times, 3/01/06

Find out if the government has been spying on you!

If you want to try and find out whether the US government has been spying on you, People for the American Way has set up a website to assist you in easily filing a Freedom of Information Act request - www.FOIArequest.org. Recently a list of just a few events the government considered "threats" was released. This list included last year's war anniversary protest in Fayetteville that Charleston Peace attended, as well as a peace retreat in St. Mary's, Georgia, numerous counter-recruitment actions and many other events.

There are few things that the Bush administration hates more than sharing information -- that's why it's willing to use every trick in the book to keep its secrets.

After excessive secrecy helped bring down the Nixon administration, Congress strengthened the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to guarantee citizens' right to know what their government is doing.

If you're concerned the government has spied on you, you can visit FOIARequest.org right away.

Over the years, People For the American Way has asserted this right by filing numerous FOIA requests. Most recently, PFAW Foundation demanded in court that the NSA reveal how many people it had spied on through its illegal domestic surveillance program and whether it had collected any information on our organization.

In order to bring the power of FOIA to you, People For the American Way launched FOIARequest.org last week. Designed to make it easy for you to assert your right to know what the government knows about you, the basic information needed to complete a FOIA request takes less than a minute to enter.

In the past five days, over 10,000 people have used this service to try to find out whether the Bush administration has been monitoring their phone calls or reading their email. FOIARequest.org is part of our four-part campaign to restore our constitutional system based on the principles of transparency, accountability, oversight, and public vigilance. Congress' Republican leadership, under pressure from Vice President Cheney, appears to be retreating from its oversight obligations and its demands for transparency. It's up to citizens like you and me to use tools like the Freedom of Information Act to demand the information necessary to hold
administration officials accountable if they have broken the law.

You can fill out a FOIA request by visiting FOIARequest.org.

Also, please help us spread the word about FOIARequest.org. We can't promise the Bush administration will be forthcoming, but if Americans don't assert their right to know, we may lose it altogether.

Ralph G. Neas

More information:

Fayetteville Online: Anti-war rally on threat list

See a partial list of events the government spied on last year [via Pam's House Blend - PDF]

More MOX in City Paper

From the City Paper "Best Of Charleston 2006" , out this week:

Best/Worst Program for Nuclear Disarmament:
MOX Fuel

Usually, the CP smiles upon any form of nuclear disarmament. Unless, that is, disarmament means corporations milking our tax dollars to build nuclear processing plants with no set budget, and requires shipping of weapons-grade plutonium through Charleston Harbor on its way to be processed into commercial mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, making the plutonium susceptible to terrorist attacks. Plans to build the nation's first MOX processing plant at the Savannah River Site would no doubt lead to more nuke waste coming through the state and our harbor. This plan also increases the risk of bioterrorism, especially after a handful of environmentalists drove into the middle of a "secured" truck caravan carrying high-level radioactive materials. If it's that easy for peace-loving hippies to infiltrate a shipment, how hard could it be for nefarious terrorists? --Benjamin Schlau

Women Say NO To War in Charleston

Join Charleston Peace, CODEPINK, ProPeace, and Charleston Democrats on March 8, to commemorate International Women's Day by rallying against the war in Iraq.

Wednesday, March 8, 6 PM at the Old Custon House in Charleston

Contact Ilene Kahn for more information:
yoffe824@aol.com (843)884-6727


Sign the CODEPINK Global Call For Peace: