For the approximately 500 people who streamed into the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland last Thursday it was at night at the movies with a twist.

The requisite popcorn, soda and hot dogs were there as usual but so too were the unexpected—the activists selling books, videos and stickers questioning the official story of 9/11, and hundreds of curious truth seekers leafing through them, chatting and buying the items.

This night out at the movies was offering a lot more than just a Hollywood laugh or cry, it was offering a uniquely Bay Area-style of entertainment—films and speakers questioning a key ingredient in the administration’s War on Terror—911, and a call for people to educate themselves and take action.

The crowd that packed the art deco jewel in Oakland came to see a film from Dutch television called “9/11: Attack or Godsend?” and a video titled “World Premier: Flights 11, 175, 77 and 93: The 9/11 Commission’s Incredible Tales”, featuring David Ray Griffith. Both films carefully picked apart the official story of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001 in New York City.

Oakland/New York Resident Janette MacKinlay, who experienced firsthand the attacks on the World Trade Center, organized the evening titled “Question 9/11 A Call To Activism”. She was home in her New York apartment when the planes hit the towers.

"I am a survivor of 9/11,"she said as she began to narrate her slideshow of personal pictures from the attacks. A picture of her holding a wet towel over her face as she left her apartment building came up on the screen. She said that they had to cover their faces with the towels in order to breath because of the ash and dust.

"It became a completely altered reality," she said of the area around Ground Zero.

MacKinlay told the crowd that her first reaction to 9/11 was one of deep patriotism and need for vengeance.

"I wanted to join the Army and kill Osama bin Laden," said the pleasant-looking MacKinlay with her neat bobbed haircut and oversized glasses.

"I started going to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco," said MacKinlay. "I went to hear some of the commissioners from the 9/11 Inquiry Committee.

"I thought when the report came out that everything was going to be all right," she said. "But when I heard them, they convinced me there was a cover up. The commissioners evaded answering important questions.”

So driven by a need to know the truth about what happened that day, she become a member of the local 9/11 Truth chapter in Oakland and decided to organize something that would help others who might have questions about 9/11 learn more.

The films brought to the crowd some chilling concepts. The two experts in the Dutch film, European politicians Michael Meacher and Andreas von Bulow, matter-of-factly proposed that 9/11 was actually the new "Pearl Harbor", as described by the think tank Project for a New American Century, that allowed the Bush administration to enter into war and consequently begin to get a foothold in Middle East.

Meacher was a former member of Prime Minister Tony Blair administration. He said the 9/11 Commission Report answered nothing.

"It was a 580-page avoidance," said Meecher. "What 9/11 did was provide a trigger that put in place a geopolitical strategy.

The Griffin video took a close look at the 9/11 Commission’s reason why no military aircraft intercepted any of the hijacked planes on Sept. 11, 2001.

Step-by-step Dr. David Ray Griffin, author of the “New Pearl Harbor” and “The 9/11 Commission Report, Omissions and Distortions”, showed not only the implausibility of the official report’s findings but presented what would have been totally laughable had it not been such a tragedy: in the case of all four un-intercepted jetliners, the commission offered the answer that it was all due to the incompetence on the part of the Federal Aviation Agency.

Among the commissions explanations were air traffic controllers who actually heard over the airwaves that flight 93 had crashed and didn’t bother reporting it to a superior.

One of the more stunning revelations came when Griffith presented information that Secretary of Transportation Norman Minetta testified that Vice President Dick Cheney not only knew about the looming attack on the Pentagon but that Minetta had heard Cheney confirm what Minetta believed to be a stand down order. In effect, telling his soldiers not to shoot down the incoming jetliner.

After the films, the audience heard from several 9/11 Truth activists who sounded the call for immediate action.

"Tonight many of you have taken the first step," said MacKinlay. "The 9/11 Truth Movement is the most important mass movement our country has ever seen."

Carol Brouillet, a major mover and shaker in the Bay Area 9/11 Truth movement encouraged the crowd to not be afraid to take action.
"It is a time for courage," she said. "The most horrendous lie we have been told is that we are helpless."

She said that each person coming forward and refusing to be silenced is already making a difference and helping to exposed the coverup.

The majority of the attendees at the Feb. 23 event left with a packet of information that would enable them to start their own activism around the issue of 9/11. MacKinlay provided sample letters and the addresses of the entire Congress and Senate and encouraged the crowd to send letters to every one of them calling for pulling the veil off of the truth about the attacks on the World Trade Center, Sept. 11, 2001.