[Peace-discuss] What, then...

[Robert Naiman]

Maybe the federal courthouse in Urbana deserves a second look.

- it's centrally located, at least in terms of urbana
- everybody knows where it is
- it's easy to get to by bus or bicycle
- mobbing it, perhaps even shutting it down for a while, wouldn't
inconvenience the broad public
- it symbolizes "justice"
- but also suggests "prison"
- we'd get to deal with the urbana police, which i personally prefer to
dealing with the champaign police. such a protest in urbana might well
involve e.g. former council members, so the urbana police might think twice
about manhandling people.


On 4/21/06, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
> Contemplating the remarkable complacency with which people
> seem to be regarding the plans of the madmen running our
> government for an attack on Iran -- an attack contrary to the
> US Constitution (even the War Powers Resolution doesn't
> justify it), the UN Charter (Article 51), and the Nuremberg
> principles (on the grounds of which we hanged Germans leaders
> after WWII) -- I began to think, Suppose an attack is
> announced: where do we assemble in this town to protest?
>
> We have no obvious public square.  (Our democracy is so
> eviscerated that here the phrase refers to a radio program.)
> The places that symbolize the federal government are in the
> federal city, Washington, or in its neighborhood (the
> Pentagon), so perhaps the thing to do is to flood that city.
> There seems little sense in demonstrating locally at places
> associated with state or local government.
>
> I could think of four places that might represent the federal
> government in Champaign-Urbana:
>        --the joint military recruiting office at 1615 W.
>        Springfield Ave. Champaign;
>        --the federal court house at 201 S. Vine Urbana;
>        --the FBI office at 116 N. Chestnut Champaign; and
>        --our Congressional representative's office at 2004
>        Fox Drive Champaign.
>
> Of the four, only Johnson's office seems a reasonable
> possibility, and it's (no doubt purposely) out of the way.
> Downtown [sic] Champaign or Urbana (perhaps by the IMC) seem
> fairly pointless.  Maybe the UI quad is the best place to
> exercise our "right ... peaceably to assemble, and to petition
> the Government for a redress of grievances" in such an event.
> But it seems a bit silly.  Thoughts?   --CGE
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--
RN
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