test blog 5

The march was great. It was huge , high spirited , angry and peaceful . And sweltering! I'm not used to being out in 90-degree blazing sunshine. Whew. It was the largest protest ever conducted against a political convention, and probably the second largest demo ever held in NYC, after the great anti-nuclear protest in June of 1982. (I was there - were you?) From what I hear, the police mostly behaved themselves. After the march, thousands of us exercised our cherished right of peaceable assembly in Central Park, mostly lounging around on the lawn, some people playing music. It will be very interesting to see what happens tomorrow , August 31, a long-planned day of civil disobedience actions. I won't be participating, but I admire the demonstrators and wish them much good luck and safety. I am continually inspired by the vast creativity brought to the protests these days. Seems to me that's a relatively new phenomenon. The t-shirts , buttons , stickers and signs are oft...

The Republicans are already arriving - and the unwelcome mat is already out. Has any convention ever been less welcome than the RNC in NYC? A, they're only exploiting us to cash in on the tragedy we lived through, B, they're making us less safe by drawing a target for terrorism and C, no one here votes for them! Small businesses located on closed streets will lose huge amounts of money, transportation will be a nightmare, and no one will benefit except a few large hotels and some famous attractions that least need the help. There are dozens of great protests planned. Yesterday some guys rented a room at the Plaza Hotel, rappelled down the outside of the building and unfurled this beautiful banner . Later the same day, eleven ACT-UPers dropped their drawers and stopped traffic. I love it!! The big march is Sunday. (I've had the day off planned for almost a year.) The city should worry less about the lawn and more about the Constitution. Hey Mike, have you heard? Gras...

Pick up a phone. If you've been wondering what you can do to help defeat W & Co, I highly recommend phone-banking with ACT . It's easy and it's really kind of fun. I went twice this week (once with Allan), and beginning next week I'll train other volunteers and "captain" a shift one or two nights each week. Right now in New York, ACT is calling people in Ohio and taking a brief survey to identify undecided voters. Those people will then be specifically targeted by local canvassers. The calls run the gamut, from staunch Bush supporters to vehement Bush haters, and many with mixed feelings. I've spoken to a lot of people who voted for Bush last time but are unhappy with him and unsure of how they will vote this time around. Yes! You get the occasional oddball who voted for Gore but is now leaning towards Bush, but mostly it's the former W voters who are now on the fence. Their problem is definitely the war: why we went in the first place, why we are...

Through a combination of some internet coincidences and a very slow weekend at work, I ended up looking at a lot of blogs today. These are all intelligent, thoughtful, complex, text-heavy blogs, each linking to dozens of other worthwhile sites. They cover art, literature, film, world events, politics – you name it. Some are very focused on a specific topic, others more broad; all offer intelligent, critical discourse on all sorts of fascinating subjects. I have one question: How do they do it? How does anyone have the time? Not the time to write a blog, that alone is manageable. But these blogs don't exist in a vacuum. Each of the writers is presumably reading many of the blogs they link to, and combing the net in search of other interesting sites and tidbits. I do not understand how any of these people have time to do anything besides read and post all day long. Do they have lives outside of the net? Do they go outside? Do they have jobs, children, friends, dogs, shopping, laundr...

I have a letter in the New York Times Magazine today. This has been a great year for letters for both me and Allan. Then again, that just means there's been a lot to be pissed off about. OK, now it's the We Move To Canada and I'm Alerting You When I Have Something Published blog. A book I contributed to is coming out soon, and you can bet I'll be plugging it here.

It's not about moving to Canada, but I love it! It can be ordered from Blog for Democracy . Thank you to Allan for finding it, and to Catherine from Georgia For Democracy for sending us some. We'll be handing them out freely during the RNC.

Not to me, to the New York Times. In today's letters: In "Selling the Sizzle," David Brooks referred to the "health care industry." That single phrase sums up all that is wrong with the health care system in the United States. Here in Canada, health care is considered to be the right of every citizen. It is neither a business nor an industry, and our overall consensus rejects the notion that the health care system exists primarily for the profit of those who operate it. -- Jack Shultz, Pointe Claire, Quebec Thank you Mr. Shultz!

Allan thinks I should blog more often. He has a point; I don't want to lose my audience. (Do I have an audience?) But there's nothing to report on the We Move To Canada front, and that's what this blog is supposed to be about. At some point, I'll be writing a lot, and very often. So please keep checking back! But for now, there's nothing new to report. Well, here's something at least tangentially related. I started phone banking last night with ACT , the voter mobilization group. ACT stands for America Coming Together. Started by Ellen Malcolm of Emily's List fame, it's a national effort to target the 17 battleground states - to disseminate info and get out the vote. You can go to the main website to read about the group in general, or here to learn how to get involved locally. If you live in NYC, becoming more active is the easiest thing in the world. Four nights a week, you can call Ohio on someone else's dime. Ohio is an extremely important sta...