BAY AREA CANDLELIGHT VIGIL LOCATIONS - WED NITE!

correction . . . but it SHOULD be tonight for chissakes!!!

Why does CODE PINK and MOVEON have to hijack it for Thursday - when most Americans will be bored already! - instead of TONIGHT!!

Jesus . . .

Our rulers don't care that live babies burn. And you think candles will move their hearts? Gimme a break.

The only way to stop the war is to physically disrupt the war machine. Nothing else will work.

After the war broke out, neighbors from the Panhandle/Haight came out regularly every Sunday night to have a candlelight vigil in the Panhandle. We hoped we'd make it to the end of the war, but after 3 months, we eventually realized that we would be needing our Sunday nights back, and at the rate things were going that wasn't going to happen.

We called ourselves the "Panhandle Neighbors for Peace". We'd sit out on the grass next to Masonic, rain or shine, playing music and laughing. We had regular fans (as well as a few one fingered salutes- in the minority), and a few of the bus drivers on the 43 Masonic bus honked to cheer us on. I met some great folks from Code Pink, I'm hoping to see a few old friends there. Join us if you're in the neighborhood. There's probably still melted wax on the sidewalk!

Please sign up to come, at:
http://action.moveon.org/vigil/selectmtg.html?zip=94117&distance=10

Here are the details:

Panhandle: Masonic (btw Oak and Fell)
San Francisco, CA 94117
Thursday, September 9, 08:00 PM

i hate it when people complain about other people's work but don't commit to doing anything themselves. I am sure that code pink/global exchange/medea benjamin gave themselves plenty of time so they could do outreach to the media. True that it will be an old story by then!

does nothing to stop the war, and then call themselves peace activists.

There's a war on. People are being slaughtered wholesale, in dozens of places across the globe. Burning candles is an insufficient response. If burning candles could bring peace to the world, the Church would have done it a millennia ago. At best, burning candles is a way to meet other people against the war. But it does nothing to end the carnage. It's time to begin organizing *effective* actions. Every day we put it off, more people die, and their blood is on our hands. Ineffective actions have exactly the same effect as standing aside, doing nothing.

The only way to actually stop the war is to physically disrupt the war machine. You can’t be neutral on a moving train. Either you stop the train or you’re along for the ride. If sabotaging the engine is not your cup of tea, then lie down on the tracks. Better still, convince the engineer to go out on strike with you. But do something that actually effects the war. Burning candles effects no one but you. This isn’t about assuaging your conscience. It’s about actually stopping the war. If what you are doing is not actually impeding the war effort in a direct, palpable manner, you’re not a real peace activist, you’re a poser. You’re not in it to stop the war. You’re in it to assuage your conscience. That’s not enough.

Displaying your displeasure at war saves not one life. March 2003 proved that forever. Tens of millions of people displayed their displeasure at war, simultaneously on four continents. It did no good whatsoever, not even a little, none, zip, nada, zilch. It didn’t end the war. It didn’t even prevent the invasion. All it did was assuage a lot of people’s consciences. The war didn’t end, it escalated. Did you learn nothing from this?

Symbolic actions are useless, except against symbols. The war is not a symbol. It’s a real life, ravenous death machine, gnawing the flesh of humanity. Its victims are not symbolic. They are flesh and blood. It kills real people. They die real deaths. It will continue to kill real people until we kill it. Kill it. Kill it now. Short out its circuits. Put sand in its gear box. Blind it’s sensors. Choke off its fuel supply. The possibilities are endless. Take your pick. But do something real, because candles are only effective when directly under a gas tank.

but what is a candlelight vigil doing to opress you and your right to tear down the system?

It's an appropriate way to recognize what has happened. Far more appropriate than putting a candle under somebody's gas tank and blowing up the surrounding neighborhood.

If you don't like vigils fine, but don't get all high and holy about it. Not everybody needs or should make the same kind of revolution. I mean is there room for the methods of Ghandi and MLK in the house or no?

I hate it when people do stuff that makes themselves feel good, but really all they are doing is sitting on their ass in front of a glowing screen, complaining about how other people's actions aren't sufficiently revolutionary.

Sorry to burst your pathetic bubble, but complaining about other activists is NOT stopping the war. Complaining is NOT saving any lives.

Meaningful change comes about from solidarity among the people. However, that solidarity is unlikely to occur if we just sit around and denegrate the actions of others.

Like voting, a candlelight vigil isn't ENOUGH. But that doesn't mean that it isn't valid, that people shouldn't engage in it. It means that it should be one activity within a large array of possible actions. No single action will be the The Answer To Our Problems. It requires a multitude of tactics.

As Arundhati Roy put it:

"Our strategy should be not only to confront Empire, but to lay seige to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -- and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling -- their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them."

Your kids are lucky to have you as a mother.

>what is a candlelight vigil doing to opress you and your right to tear down the system?

That’s a straw man argument. I never said that it did.



>It's an appropriate way to recognize what has happened.

No, it is not. The appropriate way respond to mass murder is to stop the murderers by any means necessary.


>Far more appropriate than putting a candle under somebody's gas tank and blowing up the surrounding neighborhood.

That depends on the neighborhood. It is totally appropriate where the rich live and where the war machine produces the tools of the trade.


>I mean is there room for the methods of Ghandi and MLK in the house or no?

There is room for everybody and everything. I’m not saying there isn’t. I’m just saying that that not everything that there is room for, works, and that we should do what works, not what doesn’t work.

History, recent history has proven beyond all doubt that symbolic actions don’t work. What I’m saying is do things that work. Where non violence works best, be non violent. Where violence works best, be violent. When the situation dictates that either will work equally well, choose non violence because it is almost always more cost effective. But don’t fetishize non violence. It’s a tactic, one of many, nothing more. It is *not* morally superior to pursue a strategy that not only doesn’t work, but by not working, gets more people killed.

And never forget, it got both Ghandi and MLK killed. If you want to get your own ass killed, that’s your problem. But when you limit yourselves to actions that, by not working, get other people killed, don’t tell me you’re morally superior. I don’t believe it.

Every day we allow the war to continue, more people die and their deaths are our fault. We could have saved them, but we didn’t, because we didn’t do what takes. No, we cannot end war by holding hands and singing Kumbaya. It ain’t gonna happen, or it would have already.



>all they are doing is sitting on their ass in front of a glowing screen, complaining about how other people's actions aren't sufficiently revolutionary.

That’s another straw man. That is by no means all I do. You have *no* idea what else I do, so you’re talking out your ass here. How does that help?



>Sorry to burst your pathetic bubble, but complaining about other activists is NOT stopping the war. Complaining is NOT saving any lives.

I’m not complaining. I’m criticizing. If you don’t want to be criticized, do things that don’t merit criticism.



>Meaningful change comes about from solidarity among the people. However, that solidarity is unlikely to occur if we just sit around and denegrate the actions of others.

(1.) If we don’t criticize ourselves and our actions, we’ll never learn how to do something effective. What we have been doing is *not* effective. If it were, the war would be over.

(2.) That’s not “just” what I do.

(3.) Some actions should be denigrated. Burning a candle and then going home is one of them.


>Like voting, a candlelight vigil isn't ENOUGH. But that doesn't mean that it isn't valid, that people shouldn't engage in it. It means that it should be one activity within a large array of possible actions. No single action will be the The Answer To Our Problems. It requires a multitude of tactics.


I agree. I not criticizing people who go to things like this to network, and build networks of real resistance. I’m criticizing the people who burn a candle and go home, thinking they’ve done their part and it made a difference. Those people are deluded. If you support their actions, you’re part of the problem.



>They need us more than we need them.

You’re right. So why aren’t you organizing a global general strike, instead of sitting in front of your computer, defending a futile, ineffective, feel good strategy?

The problem ISN'T that holding candles is hurting anything. The
problem IS that encouraging people to THINK that holding candles
does ANYTHING to stop the warmakers IS harmful because it allows
people to AVOID dealing with the necessity of REALLY DOING SOMETHING
to stop the imperialist war machine.

By the way, it took many thousands of dead U.S. soldiers, and tens
of thousands seriously wounded, before the survivors basically
destroyed the U.S. military as a fighting force by REFUSING to go
into battle and KILLING officers who tried to make them do so.
(Probably over 1,000 AmeriKKKan officers died that way!) Let's hope
it doesn't take as many deaths of low-level "grunts" this time to
bring about something similar in Iraq! Nevertheless, without those
deaths, there wouldn't have been such rebellion among the troops in
Vitnam and there won't be such rebellion now.

We can't all go full on constantly to destroy the war machine. This is a way to bring families out and get kids involved. They are not going to get involved in the same way you are. Not all people will commit equally or in the same way to this struggle.

Change will never ever happen as quickly as you want it. Going out to the vigils tonight helped me recharge my energy with my community in a positive way. Absolutely- lighting a candle isn't going to change anything, but neither is cursing the darkness of the world we presently live in. You will be tuned out and marginalized.

If you really want to change something and you want to do it in any type of reasonable timeframe, you are required to be someone in power. So if you wish to change anything become someone in power or do not, protesting did not stop the Afghan war, it did not stop the Gulf war, and it will surely not stop this one. People will fantasize about protesting stopping the Vietnam War, but this is simply not true. Protesting does nothing, it never has it never will, you can waste your time and complain about the government, or you can run for office and do something. As for putting, a candle under someone’s car because they are rich, blowing up cars and probably innocent people is not revolution its just plain stupid.

for listing all the damned protests on this site. What are they thinking? Why do they waste our time? Why did I even bother to come out and shut down the City when war broke out. What a fool I was...

And as for the people from Code Pink who got into the RNC and were dragged away by the authorities what did that prove? And all the other creative people who lifted their voices in dissent in NYC. When will they get a clue?