I'm all for freedom of speech, but come on... What good is it to protest the troops? If you disagree with the government, you should be protesting Olympia or Washington, DC.

Of course, there's the incredible bravery of protesting as the Strykers are returning home (for pity's sake -- why not do something brave like interfere with an outbound movement -- where you might risk a felony charge) and playing up their bravery, in one cited example, by concealing his face/identity (like criminals do?) with a bandana.

Stupid ESC'ers.

I too am all for freedom of speech, but go to Olympia. All you are doing here is pissing me off. Becuase of your tatics it affects mine and others commute to work. When the City has to close roads and access to areas that some of us work near. You are not getting my support. You are just making me mad. Go, protest at the state capital. Or even better...The White House!

We are witness to Bush Administration Members' crimes against peace and crimes against humanity, thusly it is fitting to have this coverage in the crime blog.



Remember, the protesters are the good guys here. They want to protect military personnel from serving an illegal and unjust war of occupation against a country that did not threaten the USA.



in the course of events

Fine, protest against the war.. but do it where it counts!! They are not the good guys in my eyes, because of the way they are acting. Getting in the police's face and acting like criminal's does not make them the good guys. It makes them sound like a bunch of people looking for a reason to act like idiots!! Want to make a difference, get involved...write you local and state politicans. Hell, become one of them. But, causing me and others a lot of tax money to protest at the Port. Your not getting my support! Our guys and girls in the service and the port are just doing their jobs!!!

Protesting at the port and attempting to block troops does nothing productive. If you want to make a difference educate yourself. The police and port authority is paid to keep uneducated people off the property, and they will. Most of the protesters in Tacoma are wasting their time and basically do damage to their cause. The TNT also gives coverage to these events and attracts people and attention which encourages these pointless protest.

Sounds like the protesters are just a bunch of losers that have no plan.

"group began to sing briefly, but soon petered out"

"But largely stood around, looking indecisive, seemingly outflanked by the highly organized police presence (which included officers on foot, bicycle, motorcycle and patrol car) and outnumbered."

"The demonstrators rallied briefly, singing and chanting a bit more, but not as a united group."

"After a few minutes he gave up."

"traditional media outlets was less important these days because the group could post their actions on YouTube."

WOW! It sounds like they had a great turn out. This is a joke. I'm sorry that the "traditional" news media had to waste their time until midnight covering a bunch of nothing. And who is the intended audience? From all that I am reading is that there were a bunch of idiots "in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by cops" who didn't get their intended message passed on to anybody but themselves. This is sad. This is a waste of the police's time and a hinderance to those who are working down at the port and had to have their work route interrupted.

But hey, it did rain last night, right? Maybe the protesters finally got the shower that they have been needing.

Our streets, our port? Right. I'm sure these yahoos are paying lots and lots of taxes. All they've done is cost the responsible citizens a boat load of money in overtime pay for cops, which means we can't afford more officers to deal with the already existing crime. What a bunch of morons. I have NO respect for them, and while I'm against this war, and have been since the VERY beginning, these idjits don't speak for me at all. As for this bandana nonsense, man up, for pete's sake. I can only assume these are all folks with felony records who are on wanted posters somewhere, hence the disguises.

" They want to protect the military personnel..."??????
Then let them do their jobs! I don't agree with the war either but will always support the actual troops and take offense at any group that only has the "courage" ( in their view alone) to focus on the troops , families and those who tie yellow ribbons on bridges. That isn't a real form of protest against the war- just cowards without enough moxie or organization to bring this to the government level.
Protest there and let the Capitol pay for your security costs!

A country “at peace with being at war” is a country of “Good Germans.”

A country “at peace with being at war” is a country of “Good Germans.”

Seven years of the Bush Regime have radically altered the shape of U.S. society and locked in a global trajectory of wars for empire with no regard for human cost or conscience.

The world is shocked by the crimes and destruction the American people have allowed to be carried out in our names.


Despite the longest presidential campaign ever, George Bush remains unrelenting and self-assured that he can drive the savageness of his agenda into the next administration. Still commander in chief, Bush is recklessly threatening military action against Iran that could break out even before the next president is sworn in.

Who is to stop him when both presidential candidates have also threatened Iran, each insisting that all options, including nuclear weapons, remain on the table?

Who is to stop him when the Democrat-controlled Congress secretly approved funding for covert special operations already underway inside Iran?

Who will stop any of this when both major parties are championing the so-called war on terror, under which the U.S. launched two wars in a region that is strategically located, rich in oil, and long a central concern of imperial powers? Both major political parties have authorized these wars. And at every step, both political parties have voted to extend billions more dollars to continue them.

Only you – not your government – can bring any of this to a halt. The only realistic course is for the people of the U.S. to taking meaningful and independent political action to resist the machinery of war and the fascist direction that has emerged since September 10, 2001.

We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do. People of conscience do not allow themselves to be demobilized by the political and moral terms of an election that calls for national unity while carrying out unjust war for empire. We should take this government?? at their word when they promise a war to last generations.

People of conscience act when torture has been legalized and when war crimes are being carried out in our names.

People of conscience do not give up our right to dissent or hand over our consciences in return for a hollow promise of safety.

While Barack Obama and John McCain, each in their own way, distance themselves from the debacle of the Bush years, neither of them, and no significant force within the halls of power, is acting decisively to reverse the re-making of American legal norms and political culture that can rightly be described as fascistic.

Neither of them is demanding that the U.S.’s policy of torture – sanctioned and codified in the Military Commissions Act which passed with bi-partisan support – be repealed and those responsible prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Neither candidate is calling for ending the mass round-ups of immigrants or the Halliburton contracts for new prisons to hold targeted immigrant populations and political dissidents.

Neither of them gave voice to the public outrage against Bush’s illegal wiretapping; instead, Obama voted with the majority to grant retroactive immunity to those who joined Bush in breaking the law and violating basic rights to privacy and freedom of press. Further, Barack Obama has pledged to extend Bush’s faith-based initiatives. and promotes a nefarious message of finding common ground with Christian Fundamentalists who rail against evolution, celebrate intolerance and openly advocate the submission of women.

This is not the pendulum “swinging back.” This is a continuation of the politics of empire. Never before has a sole super-power held so much of the world in such peril and never before have the crimes of one empire threatened the future of so much of the planet.

The words from the original World Can’t Wait Call to Drive out the Bush Regime ring even truer today: “That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn – or be forced – to accept.”

What is needed is not a minor course correction. What is needed is not meaningless “change” we are allowed to believe in, but a radical change in direction brought about by people acting outside the political confines of these official politics.


Real change can come only from people in their millions taking responsibility to change the course of history. It will not be as easy as writing your congressman or putting your energies and resources into a supposed savior from the Democratic Party. But that. Let’s face it, is an illusion.

What will things look like the day after the election? Will people – through their passivity and through having restricted themselves to mobilizing behind one or the other major candidate – have legitimized the results of an election that is taking place on terms inhospitable to the future of the planet? Will the millions who want so badly a different future have forfeited this righteous demand on the altar of “national unity” and an empty promise of “hope”?


Or will there be a pole of opposition that inspires with its moral clarity and fearless truth-telling? An increasingly visible independent political force of resistance, protest, and acts of conscience that people can join with and persevere with until this whole direction is brought to a halt?

Let it be said: It was wrong to go into Iraq. It has been wrong to stay in Iraq. It is wrong not to get out now. It is wrong to escalate the war in Afghanistan and to threaten war with Iran.


LET IT BE SAID in DENVER so that, on August 24, the eve of the Democratic Convention, there is the largest anti war demonstration that city has seen. Come to Denver for a week of protest that includes marching to stand with immigrants under assault and counter-protests to the week of anti-abortion actions of the Christian Right.

For this to happen, WE must act and mobilize now.

We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do. Thus we call on all people living in the United States to RESIST the trajectory of wars and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration and a complicit Congress.


We choose to make common cause with the people of the world by extending a hand to those suffering from these policies and by showing our solidarity in word and deed.

emancipator, your political leftist diatribe is boring!!!!!

emancipator...YAWN!!!!!!!

This is the videographer you mentioned.

Just as I thought, in this article you focus on what was peculiar and humorous 'about' the activists, neglecting to take notice of what was peculiar and humorous 'to' the activists.

This is perhaps the single most annoying tactic of the bourgeois media, since it is not only a "superficial" excuse for reporting, it is also a way to characterize any action in a way that seems like real reporting but is essentially degrading.

Without explanation, most of the vignettes you talk about come entirely from ignorance, since they are only a series of first glance judgments, which play up the roles of the 'authorities'. Whereas any kind of opposition demands more explanation. You should know this as 'journalists'. The de facto position of the average reader will invariably side with the authorities unless there is a reason to think otherwise.

May I suggest you add a 'police quote of the night'. And here - I already found one for you: I spoke with the commanding officer last night, P. JAGODINSKY, and he said he couldn't tell me where this 'free speech zone' they had setup was. I wondered to myself how it was possible that the police cannot say where the place is. Was that some kind of joke?

At any rate, the broader picture is the we are engaged in a fifty-to-a-hundred-year war that was based on false pretenses, but the closer, tighter picture is that we are losing our liberties as we speak, and the cultural superstructure could care less. Thanks Tacoma News Tribune.

Our military action in Iraq was, and is, definitely legal. Our military action in Iraq was ordered by a president that has been elected twice. The military action was approved by our congress of representatives and senators that we the people have elected. Who elected the mob of PMR rioters? Nobody!

Hey Acumensch - I find it kind of funny that you have to ask a police officer where the "free speech zone" is. As an advid "protester" wouldn't you already know that anywhere you go is a "free speech zone"? I thought that was an amendment of the Constitution? Free Speech, right? Don't you have the right to say what you want (within reason) wherever you are? Do you have to be told where you can go to say what you want to say? It must be nice being a sheep, always being herded, always being told what to do and where you can do it. Man up and make decisions for yourself. Baaaaaaah.

These people were at the ports to make it be known, the people of this country will not allow the war in Iraq to continue. They are putting their bodies on the line in a fight against the U.S.'s endless wars; to create a neccessary and possible movement of resistance to the crimes that this administration has carried out, and the trajectory that it has- no matter who becomes the next president, no matter how many calls you make to your congress person, and no matter how long others try to just "wait it out".

Support the troops by supporting the truth. The truth is that Bush (et al.) lied in order to drive the nation to war.

Bush Administration Members took the US military to war based on false pretenses.

It is time to recognize this simple truth - the Bush Administration lied us into war. It is time to act on that truth.

If we truly support our troops, we will work to defend them and protect them against being convinced and coerced into fighting an unjust and unnecessary war of choice.

Support the troops:

Stop the war.

http://inthecourseofevents.blogspot.com

Robolya

"If we truly support our troops, we will work to defend them and protect them against being convinced and coerced into fighting an unjust and unnecessary war of choice."

But who defends them from those who think like you but feel justified in inciting conflict and aggression against the troops here?
By all means- exercise the rights that have been fought for over many years, but do it in a way that actually has some potential meaning... go to state capitol or DC and protest. You want your voice heard? Then take it to the one's empowered to listen, not chicken out by attacking the lowest level of the order chain.
Protesting at the Port or bases or especially the mall for heavens sake is and will always remain a cowardly media attention grabber.

Hey Acumensch - I find it kind of funny that you have to ask a police officer where the "free speech zone" is. As an advid "protester" wouldn't you already know that anywhere you go is a "free speech zone"? I thought that was an amendment of the Constitution? Free Speech, right? Don't you have the right to say what you want (within reason) wherever you are? Do you have to be told where you can go to say what you want to say? It must be nice being a sheep, always being herded, always being told what to do and where you can do it. Man up and make decisions for yourself. Baaaaaaah.

Okay idiot, the point you sidestepped was that the police did not know where their free speech zone, which they created for the protest, actually was.

The sixties were over a long time ago.

Causing conflict and acting like a general pain in the ass and claiming it's for some political ideology is something that people grew out of way back when. It doesn't do any good, it annoys people and makes you look like a moron. Note the average age of said protestors.

Believe what you want to. But act like an adult about it. Letter writing campaigns, monetary donations to organized causes not affiliated with Evergreen State College, and voting are how it is done in 2008.

As to where your "free speech zone" is, the police are not your personal escort service to help you get where you need to go. Out of the kindness of his heart, said police officer could have told you, "Over there, sir" but I suspect he has better things to do. If you want to know where you're supposed to go, follow your nose to the odor of patchouli and look for large clusters of tie dye.