Carl, to be blunt one reason turnout was not higher this year was because outreach -- the kind of people-to-people outreach it takes to make a movement -- was off. The M19 effort had more than 50 paper endorsers. That's great, but visibility on everything from neighborhood bulletin boards to community college campuses didn't happen as systematically as it did last year. Nor did the sort of cross-constituency conversations that it takes to bring people to the table as engaged participants, rather than passive co-signers. That sort of work rested on the necks of the endorsing organizations, and everyone fell short here. Some nights the outreach working group drew only two or three people to its meetings. Every single group that endorsed M19 needs to ask itself what it did right -- and what it could have done better -- to reach out to people to participate in M19.

And on this note, let me submit that it was hardly the militancy of the slogans that kept endorsing groups from taking up this work. We all consensed on the slogans with a pleasant lack of acrimony. What's so controversial about "Bring the Troops Home Now"? "Civil Liberties at Home, Self-Determination Abroad"? "No to War & Occupation"? Let's compare these presumably over-radical slogans to the slogans UFPJ mounted in Fayetteville: "Show REAL Support for the Troops: Bring Them Home Now!" "Money for Jobs and Education, NOT for War and Occupations!" "The world STILL says No to War in Iraq."

OK, now help me get this. You're not suggesting that turnout was down because Chicagoans, including the liberal local peace projects, uniformly supported adding the issue of civil liberties to our slogans, are you? I'd submit that many Chicagoans, faced with last-minute emails that basically gave them two alternatives -- a police approved protest pit on a Clark St. dead zone vs. the fear-mongering suggestion that YOU WOULD GO TO JAIL if you actually showed up to march where the people were -- decided to take a pass. Obviously that intimidation tactic worked on at least one alderman who shall not be named. Some of us might consider providing our base with a less disempowering frame next year.

Second, the fact remains that our sitting mayor -- whose administration seems hell-bent on outpacing Tammany Hall in the sheer scope of its corruption -- will spare no taxpayer-funded travel dollar to fly to Dubya's DC events, where he touts his utility to the current regime. Dubya certainly knows that Daley is committed to making his city a safe space from public protest when it really matters. Makes one wonder just how long it will take the Republican-appointed U.S. attorney to take a stab at hooking the big tuna instead of scooping at the minnows. I'd like to see more allegedly Democratic Party elected officials raising cain about the Daley/Bush love fest. Cripes, we had more principled opposition to Daley I in the mid-seventies than we do today. Then again, our aldermen weren't pulling down $85,000 a year in taxpayer-funded salaries back in 1973. Guess that's a powerful incentive to shut the hell up.

This is so not the Chicago of my youth, when we could have counted on the rest of the sharks in the pool to start circling around their bleeding leader, and not to throw air kisses in his direction, either.

Third, the peace movement nationally still has a lot of regrouping to do in the wake of a year of defanging to support the slightly leass pro-war candidate. And the ruling regime has been deft about using the 'elections' in Iraq as yet another dodge to more immediate accountability. Perhaps we should have pushed protests marking the second anniverary of the war back six months or so, when the insurgency against U.S. occupation will still be raging, Iraqis and U.S. military personnel will still be dying, and the rolling fraud that is this administration's international spin machine will be looking for yet another pr strategy to dodge the metaphorical bullet. Unfortunately, I don't currently know any peace activists with the power to alter the prevailing rules of physics and literally time-shift. We sent a powerful message out to Chicagoans on March 19 that there are plenty of folks who still oppose this war, and for a change we were able to get out some messaging that actually explains why. Personally, I'd have preferred to have been able to deliver that message where there were actually people around to hear it, instead of having to rely on the television news to titrate same. That remains my preference. Just attached to those pesky free speech rights, I guess.

Fourth, having said nothing about Jan Schakowsky in this thread to date, let me note that Jan spoke powerfully on Sunday about how wrong it is that the current regime remains hell-bent on turning our young people into killing machines in places like Iraq. If only Jan could apply that same logic to the situation at Senn, where she continues to support a military academy. This is a logical disconnect, and a truly dopey contradiction. I leave it to Jan's peacenik inner circle to continue to struggle with her on this issue, and to urge her to change her position.

Fifth, the fact remains that a young mother and her baby showed more stand-up gumption than even our most outspoken anti-war alderman in connecting the war on the world abroad to the war on civil liberties at home. A 77-year-old pacifist went to jail for trying to carry a peace sign on Michigan Ave. on Saturday, while every single one of our elected officials remaained silent on this issue when it really mattered.

Silence will not stop the attack on civil liberties. It merely sets the ground for these attacks to continue to expand. Don't take my word for it. Examine the historical record.

Me, I'm with that 77-year-old pactifist, and that baby and her mom. At least they grasp what's at stake, and care enough to do something about it. Perhaps our quiescent 'pro-peace' aldermen could do them both the courtesy to start working within the City Council to get Ordinance 10-8-330 -- first passed by da mare to suppress protest in 1996 at Democrat Bill Clinton's reannointment, and used by da mare most recently to abolish constitutional rights on Michigan Avenue -- changed to restore our constitutional rights.

That would definitely help ameliorate the abiding sense of betrayal many feel at the hands of the alderman who must not be named.