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A Granny Says: Protesting is
SO good For What Ails Ya!
Protest #3 helped this granny smile long and hard. There are so few
places in our society where people can vent their anger and frustrations
without getting into some kind of trouble. The Internet is one, and hence
we see so many new websites daily. PEACEFUL PROTESTING is the other and by
far the most rewarding type of action to release personal tensions. It is
rewarding in terms of camaraderie, commonality of purpose, and a release of
negative tensions and frustrations that tend to bottle up when addressing
the recent wrongs done to us. As we hold back these tensions they tend to,
unintentionally spill over onto others who are probably undeserving of such
anger.
A President's Day protest against Mr. Bush in New York City
The political arena offers us so many things to be angry about and
very little in the way of dealing with it. We can write to our
representatives. We can write to our president (if we had one), and we can
even write to the Supremicist Court or the various media persons. AND
writing DOES help! It helps to relieve the tensions that so often build up
each time we think about the injustices done to the American people during
the past election process. It helps to express thoughts and opinions we
often must hold back in order to listen to others express their thoughts
and opinions.
BUT writing does not offer the intensity of relief that we once knew
as children. When we were hurt or angry we just cried out and Mom answered
our needs. And we felt so much better after crying because, for most of
us, momma was a great source of comfort. All too soon however, we learned
ways to hold in our discomfort. We were taught not to express our feelings
openly and not to cry out when hurt. We learned to be adults and to put
childish ways behind us.
So many of us lock up the Child within and become devious, tasteless,
sad, tense, or outright horrible folks, proceeding to our deathbeds with
the thought, "What was that all about"? The child within has been locked in
a closet. The inner Child (spelled with a capital C to distinguish it from
actual children) is a compilation of primitive thoughts, feelings, and
actions based foremost on gratification of needs.
My child was alive and squawking yesterday! I protested Jed Bush and
Kathryn Harris in Tampa. I shouted in the park and booed so loud I'm sure
my momma far up in heaven heard me. And Ohhhh, did I ever feel good when I
left Tampa to go back home. I felt truly drained and accomplished. My
kid reveled in the fact that Jeb couldn't speak due to all of the loud
booing for at least 5 minutes. He even addressed us (15-20 protestors)
with eye contact in order to get us to let him speak. It was Sooo good. I
wore my T-shirt with the picture of DumbYa wearing a black mask with words
stating," THIS THIEF STOLE THE ELECTION"...V-e-r-y childish! I held my
poster high in spite of the few people sent over to cover us in our front
row with a false banner that was actually a blanket in disguise. As they
snickered at us I held the poster higher than their banner to tell Jeb, "No
More BUSHIT"! And best of all----------he got the message.
We could see that he got the message that Florida will fight back by
noting his facial expressions and body language. His eyes and body were
focused on us rather than the rest of the broad field where we all sat and
stood. He could clearly have looked at the others around the one city
block square park from his place on the stage, but he didn't. And we
booed and we booed and we booed, like little kids who won't eat their liver
sandwiches. And we all got what we came for, that angry expression on the
rich kid's face when we wouldn't stop booing.
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And when Kathryn came out to meet the hundreds of people there
(mostly government employees) she didn't go up on the stage, like Jeb, but
headed straight for where we protestors congregated. We (he he he) flashed
our signs of disrespect directly in her face as she headed towards us. As
expected, she couldn't crack her makeup--- that pasted smile, which she
used to shun all adversity. (I never knew that makeup could express the
middle finger response before). We'll she may think we didn't get to her,
but the proof of the pudding is always in Kathryn's smile. If she gave a
real response her face would crack. The camouflage is her only defense
against the outrage we Floridians feel about her great discount of our
votes.
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After Jeb spoke it no longer bothered me that the police placed my
table of Oral Majority buttons and bumper stickers out in the street off of
the park grounds in order to keep me away from the others. It no longer
bothered me that they told me not walk on the cement path around the park
as all the other people did. Instead I recalled the other kinder officers
who told me to walk in the park. Of course that was after they heard me
protest loudly while walking in the street that my first amendments rights
were being taken away from me by the Tampa Police. It no longer bothered
me that the majority of people there did not speak out, after all they
worked for Jeb and I was so tickled by the fact that at least 80% of them
gave ME the high sign for my T-shirt-----but quietly. I protested loudly
for all of them!
On the way home all of the tension I previously felt when thinking
about the Bush family seemed to have drained out of me. I giggled instead!
All was well within me both physically and mentally. I let my child
express her self in a safe, police attended event and I really felt good
about it. Even beyond that, I was rewarded by several new friendships,
especially my fellow protestor, Jan.
Oh, I know the tension won't be gone for long, not for any of us who
protested Jeb's Cabinet Meeting in Tampa this day. The tensions felt by our
victimization in Florida's election fiasco will come back with each piece
of news from our Internet friends, and it will continue to pile up within
our inner child. But for now at least, my circuits are clear and having
learned new aspects about protesting I am personally ready for Protest #4.
As a member of the Oral Majority, I will continue to speak out!
Suni:)
The Hall-Carpenter Archives
If you are aware of a European archive we are missing, please contact me.
If you could post this to relevant US-based e-lists you think might be
interested, I'd be most grateful.
Best wishes,
Oliver.
Oliver Merrington
Chair, Hall-Carpenter Archives
BM ARCHIVES
London WC1N 3XX
Never Again
We were all heartened to learn, on Friday, of a potential breakthrough in the search for
a vaccine that would prevent and possibly even treat AIDS.
Such a vaccine would save tens of thousands of lives in this country and avert a worldwide
catastrophe of medieval proportions.
But there are two potential dangers in this development.
The first is that, as started in 1996 with HAART and continued through the death of
barebacking activist Stephen Gendin in 2000, there will be an orgy of unsafe anal sex, leading,
if the vaccine fails, to more untreatable cases of HIV and other STDs.
The other, and this is particularly true should the vaccine prove successful, is that the domination
of the culture of anal sex will remain unchallenged, and that gay men will continue to be assailed
by the notion that anal sex is the truest and most powerful expression of male 2 male sex.
Should that anal sex culture continue unabated, it will mean that, as happens today, many men
will never have the chance of finding their true sexual path, but instead will be forced by cultural
and peer pressures into the confining world of the anal tyranny; that the psychologically disastrous
and outmoded culture of tops and bottoms will remain damagingly dominant in gay male life; and
that men into frottage and other nonanal forms of sex will continue to be denigrated and discriminated
against in their own community.
And, I believe, somewhere down the line there will be a new epidemic, probably worse than AIDS.
That's because anal sex is a vector for disease, and today the rapidity of travel spreads disease at superhuman
speed. At some point, we in the gay male community have to acknowledge that the universe is an unforgiving
place, and that to expose a vulnerable part of our bodies to every pathogen that may come tripping down the
garden path is, ultimately, suicidal.
So I hope the news of the vaccine will be welcomed by the gay male community cautiously and thoughtfully.
I hope that the community will continue to explore the causes of the epidemic, including the cultural
domination of anal sex, and take as its pledge these two simple words:
Never Again.
Bill Weintraub
Amnesty International UK:
Investigate Zimbabwean Attack
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Amnesty International UK is calling for the Belgian authorities to
investigate reports that human rights activist Peter Tatchell has been assaulted in
Brussels today by Zimbabwean security officials.
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Members of OutRage! London attempt to make a citizen's arrest of President Robert Mugabe |
Amnesty International has documented a frightening pattern of violence by
the Zimbabwean Government against its critics in recent years.
The Belgian authorities should establish whether today's events are a
further sinister twist to an already deeply worrying trend of attacks on
those that criticize the Government of Zimbabwe."
Amnesty International remains extremely concerned at Zimbabwe President
Robert Mugabe's outspoken attacks on the judiciary, the Zimbabwean
opposition, the white community, the free press and members of the gay and
lesbian community.
Communications Director Richard Bunting
Amnesty International UK
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Pen Points
Edward Carpenter 