[Peace-discuss] congrats in order

[Ricky Baldwin]

Thanks a lot, Peter -

But, for the record, I was just the point person
making a few calls when I happened to find out about
the counterdemo.  Several people - Kim, Carol, Al,
Linda, Peter, Carl (in absentia), and others - put our
heads together to come up with a plan in a big hurry. 
And we owe a special thanks to the working group on
security.  They had been planning and meeting for the
past three weeks or so, and without that ground work,
I'm afraid we could have dreamed of plans to our
hearts' content with no real way to implement any of
it.

I should also point out that Mark Thompson, the
organizer of the counterdemo, helped a great deal.  He
was friendly and open from the start, handed his folks
guidelines somewhat like ours, and suggested a kind of
zone of separation before we even mentioned it.  It
could have been otherwise.

And, of course, the wonderful folks who turned out to
the event didn't just listen passively to reason; most
folks seemed to already have an idea that we should do
just as we did.  It would only have taken a small
group out of the 300-plus folks who turned out (many
of whom we didn't know at all before today) to wreck
it all.  But no one did.  Think of that.  We take
things like this for granted sometimes.  

We were, mostly, not a pre-selected group of
professional activists trained in the principles of
nonviolence.  We were vets and supporters of previous
wars, people who saw the article in yesterday's paper
and decided to come for the first time, people who
have driven by Saturday after Saturday and finally
decided to join us, citizens, non-citizens,
Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists, Buddhists,
Quakers, Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Socialists,
Anarchists, students, teachers, laborers, you name it.

And - imagine it - we disagreed without resort to
violence!

It was truly a beautiful thing to behold.  Let's savor
it.

Ricky


--- Peter Rohloff <rohloff at uiuc.edu> wrote:
> 
> A big hand is in order for Ricky for his mediating
> work in preparation 
> for P4P this week!
> 
> By my count, we had almost 300 people. And, despite
> the counterprotest, 
> things could hardly have gone more smoothly. Spirits
> were high, and 
> conflict was very minimal!
> 
> Peter
> 
> 
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