From a friend:

Psssst…pass it on!

[The] Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was to be held outside on the lawn in front of the Loussac Library in midtown Anchorage. Home made signs were encouraged, and the idea was to make a statement that Sarah Palin does not speak for all Alaska women, or men. I had no idea what to expect.

The rally was organized by a small group of women, talking over coffee. It made me wonder what other things have started with small groups of women talking over coffee. It’s probably an impressive list. These women hatched the plan, printed up flyers, posted them around town, and sent notices to local media outlets. One of those media outlets was KBYR radio, home of Eddie Burke, a long-time uber-conservative Anchorage talk show host. Turns out that Eddie Burke not only announced the rally, but called the people who planned to attend the rally “a bunch of socialist baby-killing maggots,” and read the home phone numbers of the organizers aloud over the air, urging listeners to call and tell them what they thought. The women, of course, received some nasty, harassing and threatening messages.

I felt a bit apprehensive. I’d been disappointed before by the turnout at other rallies. Basically, in Anchorage, if you can get 25 people to show up at an event, it’s a success. So, I thought to myself, if we can actually get 100 people there that aren’t sent by Eddie Burke, we’ll be doing good. A real statement will have been made. I confess, I still had a mental image of 15 demonstrators surrounded by hundreds of menacing “socialist baby-killing maggot” haters.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t tailgating when I saw the crowd in front of the library or I would have ended up in somebody’s trunk. When I got there, about 20 minutes early, the line of sign wavers stretched the full length of the library grounds, along the edge of the road, 6 or 7 people deep! I could hardly find a place to park. I nabbed one of the last spots in the library lot, and as I got out of the car and started walking, people seemed to join in from every direction, carrying signs.

Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn’t honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn’t happen here.

Then, the infamous Eddie Burke showed up. He tried to talk to the media, and was instantly surrounded by a group of 20 people who started shouting O-BA-MA so loud he couldn’t be heard. Then passing cars started honking in a rhythmic pattern of 3, like the Obama chant, while the crowd cheered, hooted and waved their signs high.

So, if you’ve been doing the math Yes. The Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was significantly bigger than Palin’s rally that got all the national media coverage! So take heart, sit back, and enjoy the photo gallery. Feel free to spread the pictures around to anyone who needs to know that Sarah Palin most definitely does not speak for all Alaskans. The citizens of Alaska, who know her best, have things to say.

If anyone in St. Louis should know anything about how to throw a proper protest it would be Percy Green. A veteran of civil rights fights in St. Louis since the 1960s, Green has been arrested, has had successes and failures and knows that many activist groups, irregardless of the cause, are often fighting the same foe. He proposes, why not fight together?

Green was offering this and other sage advice to the Peace Economy Project Friday when he was a guest speaker at their event Friday at the World Community Center on North Skinker.

Green drew on his 47 years of activism, including recounting his famous climbing of the Gateway Arch during its construction to protest the lack of black laborers on the project.

Some of Green’s advice to current and aspiring activists:

• “Young people are going to be young people.” – Green advised those who are older and were involved in protest movements of the past to not get frustrated with their younger counterparts who’s participation my ebb and flow based on outside influences like marriage or starting a family. Rather than get out of sorts he advises organizations “do what little bit we can do and stay focused.”

• “The movement is just like other parts of nature. Some of us know that you need rain. Rain is very necessary if you want vegetation to grow.” – Green’s metaphor continued, adding that to get rain necessitates clouds, but not every cloud means rain, but that it’s not going to rain on a blue sky day. Translation: Despite some stagnation in progress, organizations need to keep up their work as diligently as possible. The right chemistry could come along at anytime to make their work dynamic, but they’re are guaranteed to not get that dynamic if they don’t keep their apparatus, their “clouds” up, out and visible.

• Emotion. Green said the main thing that will bring new people suddenly into a protest movement is emotion, mainly anger or hostility towards a recent injustice. While some might blanche at working with the raw emotions of others, Green said he’d rather have this fire directed properly through guidance and organization. “You know how to organize a picket line. What to say in a megaphone,” Green said on helping young people channel their anger into progress.

• “We can still learn from the young folks. The Young folks can learn from us.” – Green said the protest movement is at a junction point with the youth having knowledge and expertise in technology and the older generation knowing how to organize and protest.

Anti-war group St. Louis Instead of War Coalition will have a protest in Clayton Wednesday, marking the anniversary of the Iraq War, which began this week five years ago.

Several hundred war protesters will stand in-between the two-and-a-half blocks from Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond’s office at the corner of Hanley and Bonhomme to the office of a Boeing subcontractor in the 7700 block of Forsyth.

The protest will last from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

The anti-war group is calling for an end to all funding for the war with the exception of money to withdraw troops from the region. The group also wants the US government to commit funds to the reconstruction of Iraq through international organizations once the withdrawal is complete.

This protest is in conjunction with similar protests that will take place throughout the country Wednesday.

Protesters are singling out Sen. Bond because of his connections with Boeing and other military contractors. The group claims Bond has received half-a-million dollars in campaign contributions from these companies, more than any other senator.