January 2010

508 is a show about Worcester. This week’s panelist is Brendan Melican.

Standard Podcast [ 22:13 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Audio: mp3 link, other formats, feed

Video: Downloads and other formats

508 contact info

There was a big rally for (now-Senator) Brown at Mechanics Hall; the City’s considering banning plastic bags, though Mike has long advocated non-governmental action on this issue.

Vegetarian Renaissance: vegan mac’n'cheese cookoff coming up; veg fest coming up; creative Dunkin Donuts event. (Non-veg: Dr. Gonzo may have a roadkill barbeque.)

There are fancifully-dressed tax services advertisers on the sidewalks. Chain bar McFadden’s has closed.

Belmont Street Community School was massively vandalized. There was a Haiti fundraiser.

Mike talks about cargo cults. “Do different dumb things, Worcester. Do different dumb things.”

We’re planning something special for episode #100. Please share your ideas.

In the last few months, the media reported intensively on the Copenhagen summit on climate change, corresponding to the intense civil-society attention given to it over the whole of 2009. Here is a briefing for those who found it difficult to follow the large volume of press reports. I set out (from my limited vantage point) the science underlying the negotiations at COP15, and an assessment of its outcome. Despite the general disappointing and despondent tone after the summit, there are a few signs of hope for the persistent campaigners, which I mention at the end of the briefing. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a nice little article about Oakland A’s prospect Grant Desme leaving baseball to join a seminary.

Yesterday was the 12th and final day of the fast. It was spent, by many, in jail. For the others, it was a day of cooking food, roaming the corridors of the courthouse, and tidying up outreach.

This morning, three of us went down to the Japanese Buddhist temple for drumming and chanting.

“If even monks become weary and sloppy in saluting with joined palms, then no one will perform raihai. One would no longer salute parents, children, wife and husband, neighbors or laborers with palms together.”
–Nichidatsu Fuji

Which suggests one value of Thursday’s actions. If Catholic Workers aren’t creating illegal memorial services for dead detainees in the Capitol dome, then who will perform them?

This is too awesome: Nick Nassar at WCCA TV13 has made a documentary about Worcester’s cross-cultural, well-organized, relentless, and so far unsuccessful “Save Our Poolz” campaign.

I wish somebody posted a Worcester video this good every week.

On the 11th day of our 12-day fast, and the eve of President Obama’s missed deadline to close the Guantanamo prison, Witness Against Torture held 2 coordinated protests at the U.S. Capitol.

On the steps outside, 28 people dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, many wearing the names of current detainees cleared for release on their backs, held signs reading “Broken Promises, Broken Laws, Broken Lives.”

Inside, our Capitol tour group turned into a memorial service as 14 Witness Against Torture members placed the names of three detainees who died at Guantanamo in the spot in the Rotunda where presidents lay in state. (Revelations published by Harpers this week strengthen the suspicion that the detainees were tortured to death.)

We’ll be breaking the fast tomorrow evening, after everyone has been processed and is out of jail.

Beth Brockman photo

Today there was a vigil at the Pentagon (which I missed) as well as the standard White House vigil with the mostly-Christian group singing to their Muslim brothers.

Today was free from public protest, though there was a “public presence” at one of the museums. The day ended solemnly with stories from torture survivors. It began with surprising joy as we chatted with Afghani youth and sang Civil Rights hymns to them. Pretty weird and pretty great.

Posted today at Harper’s, evidence from a soldier that three Guantanamo detainees said to have committed suicide may actually have been tortured to death:

. . . new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006.

In which Witness Against Torture visits a John Yoo talk, and random passersby insult him.

(If my summaries are a little sparse for you, Kate Cowley has been writing excellent, detailed summaries of each day at the Witness Against Torture website.)

I spent the day messing with cameras and computers in a cafe, and reading about the earthquake in Haiti. My companions meanwhile walked the halls of the Senate offices in black hoods and orange jumpsuits. Remarkably, there were no arrests or evictions.