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| In the ’Front Lines’: Reporter Embedded with Anti-War Activists |
| 2003-03-26 |
| San Francisco -- More than 600 journalists are embedded with the U.S. military forces in the Middle East. But no journalists are believed to have been embedded in the peace movement. Until now. The invitation to attend an activist training session came from organizers with Get your lawyer on the phone taxpayers of San Francsico. Training to do civil disobedience wasn't tough. Certainly not compared with what reporters embedded in the military are enduring. Good point. Being shot at is clearly more dangerous than taking an afteroon of tear gas on the embarcadero One Chronicle reporter spent a week at an Army camp before being embedded into a unit now in Iraq. During training he was shot at, made to do calisthenics and forced to eat tasteless food. Those inhuman bastards!, dont they know that J-school grads are tender sissy boys? But it took just an hour to learn how to properly block the front door of Bechtel Corp., high on the protesters' list of "war profiteers." No calisthenics required. ...and a little help on how to get your resume on the front door while you are also protesting the very same company. Instead, wannabe Going "limp" is easy as hell when you have no backbone. There were no snacks. But someone did offer a bite of her Luna bar. Bastards. Someone call Kofi Annan "We'd really like everyone to come back for the four-hour training course," said Leone Reinbold, who has been training civil disobedience activists around the country for several years. For the Ph.D.-inclined, there's also a two-hour follow-up on legal issues and four-hour courses on medical issues and "jail solidarity." "We're condensing a lot here," Reinbold said. Condensing. Thats what my colon does with lunch. It's not sexy stuff. While military embedding offers the chance to see high- tech gadgetry up close, activist training is a low-budget deal. Ever seen those Berkeley girls? Makes you want to burn every bed in the world. On a tiny swath of Civic Center plaza, Reinbold taped the course outline -- written in marker on a brown piece of butcher paper -- on the back of a light pole. Seated around her in a semi-circle were about 60 students. ....Dear mom and dad, I really need more money this semester, I'm learning a lot, but a dollar doesnt go as far as it did when you were in school...... Some in the class were veteran protesters, as they called out their civil disobedience credentials when asked. "Trespassing," said one. "Ooh, that's great," Reinbold said. "Blocking a building," said another. "Yeahhh," she said. "Nevada Test Site," said an older woman. "Wow," Reinbold said, "You make me feel like such a newbie. There's so much I haven't done yet." Get used to that empty feeling, sweetie. When you live a life with "just you" at the center of it, its an empty life no matter how long you live. Shutting down an intersection isn't worth much without getting out the anti- war message. Activists have "about one sentence" to condense their message into a digestible morsel for the "corporate media," Reinbold said. damn them. damn those rantburgers To practice this The activist on the other side was a bit wordy when the embedded reporter asked why he was protesting. "Go back to Nazi Germany and you'll see that there were . . ." Fourteen sentences later, the activist stopped talking. Soon, the class ended to a round of applause. "It was a good refresher," said Jon Jassy, 32, a veteran protester who works at an Oakland nonprofit. Dontcha love that? "I need a refresher to be a protester". I guess he probably forgets where he left his bong too. But there's a big problem for reporters embedding into the peace movement: Getting arrested makes it hard to hit deadline. So Remember Kids!, When you see a big protest sucking up all of the homeland secuirty money in extra police overtime and effort, you'll know who to thank. |
| Posted by:Frank Martin |
| #1 Cc this article to the FBI, who could use a copy. The agitators need to go down. I'm getting PTSD from my UC Berkeley days seeing this scum rise out of the swamp again. These demogogues have finally found a new bag. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-03-26 19:06:53 |