Uh, no, Carl. If Durbin's office gave any thought at all to this, it was to look at your lineup, note that he has a plenthora of friends and supporters already on the stage - indeed the elected officials listed are both unanimous in their support of his reelection and the message of lining up behind the Democratic slate in 2008.

So why bother taking the minimal risk that he might be heckled from the crowd around his record --in front whatever press might be there? It simply isn't worth the effort. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

Once again, we see the problem, don't we, 'dd214?'

If you had your druthers, you'd have an antiwar coalition that purged Dems critical of the war and the people leading mass organizations that usually get out votes for them, or at least against the GOP, as well, from the speakers platform, press conferences or some other public role until they passed the ever moving goalposts of your purity tests.

Where would you start purging from our actual roster and where would you end? And Jan doesn't count--we know you all hate her.

That was the M20 benchmark, and quite a few of us want little or nothing to do with it anymore. We have to build even wider alliances than you'll see Oct 27 if we're serious about stopping the war.

You're welcome to the left cul-de-sac.

"If you had your druthers, you'd have an anti-war coalition that purged Dems critical of the war..."

Yes, Carl, when you're building a coalition it's generally wise not to include your enemies inside of it and thus allow them to sabotage your work from within. By voting for war funding every time it counts, by having one's leading presidential candidates all pledge to keep troops in Iraq through the end of their first term (2013), the Democratic leadership and its loyal followers in the Chicago congressional delegation have objectively ranged themselves on the other side, regardless of their rhetoric.

One need look no further than to your own recent behavior, Carl, to see how corrosive it is to include pro-war forces in an anti-war coalition. That you are now repeating the fiction that it takes super-majorities in Congress to stop funding for the war shows just who is influencing whom in your grand coalition. It's something that the Occupation Project (which you claim as such an integral part of your campaign) recently called "THE BIG LIE," noting that in the Senate, for example, "[Democratic Senate leader Harry] Reid alone could refuse to bring a [war funding] bill to the floor, or another senator could put a secret hold on a bill."

In your desperation to court these war-funding politicians and make your grand coalition more palatable to them, you've deliberately excluded many anti-war stalwarts from any meaningful decision-making for October 27. This has in turn whip-sawed against the building of the event as even many local endorsers find it difficult to muster much enthusiasm for it (let alone the dis-endorsers), and thus aren't doing nearly as much work as they might to build for the event.

Evidence of this can be seen in just how little depth there is on the ground in the building of this action. Despite announcing the event way back in June, and having weeks of uncharacteristically favorable weather during which to build for it, I finally saw my first O27 poster on a street pole only last Wednesday, just a week and a half before the event. This, despite the fact that more affluent donors have allowed the project to have paid staff and many times the budgets of other recent anti-war protests. Yes, you'll try and pull a rabbit out of the hat with expensive media buys and repeated email blasts, but that will only partially counter the effect of the alienation -- as evidenced in the unprecedented dis-endorsements -- that many local groups feel from this event.

And yes, Carl, you can point to a laundry list of mostly paper endorsements, but it's turned out that at least a few of those (SDS, for example) were never even paper endorsements, never having been properly authorized in the first place. UFPJ itself continues to pretend to be much, much larger than it actually is by listing groups that never assented to be members in the first place, not to mention groups that long ago went out of business.

Amidst thousands of hits on this site, the fact that no one, besides yourself, has commented in favor of the O27 event or its organizing strategy on this or any of the many other threads, should be telling to you Carl. And you can't claim this is because indy media is "irrelevant," or otherwise why would you spend so much effort posting to it over and over again?

Much of your grand coalition is smoke and mirrors, Carl. What attendance you do get on O27 will be disproportionately that of out-of-towners and suburbanites who don't know the dirty laundry of this project.

I recently received the following email announcement from CAWI regarding the Oct. 27th Mobilization and the expected speakers:

"*We have a terrific lineup of speakers and performers*. To the list posted
last week, we're adding Rosemarie Slavanas, Gold Star Families Speak Out;
Rep John Conyers, (D-MI); and Rep Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)."

Rep. Jan Schakowsky has voted to fund the War in Iraq, supports leaving all options on the table including the "military option" in regards to a possible U.S. attack on Iran and she has strongly supported the militarization of schools in Chicago, including the Senn Naval Academy and recently, the new Marine Academy. Finding it really difficult to find enough soldiers for its wars, the military has massively targeted the multi-national Chicago public schools for indoctrination and recruitment. Chicago has the most militarized public schools in the country where students from the sixth grade up drill in uniform in “Junior ROTC” and “Cadet” programs. I believe that schools should be for education, not military indoctrination. It doesn't seem at all appropriate that someone with Rep. Schekowsky's views would be chosen as a speaker at a peace rally.

Rep. John Conyers will also be speaking at he rally. Rep. Conyers is from Michigan. Rep. Dennis Kucinich from Ohio was informed that he could not speak at the rally because only "Illinois politicians" were being invited to speak, yet Rep. John Conyers from Michigan will be speaking. It seems quite obvious that the Oct. 27th Mobilization organizers wanted to keep Kucinich away from the rally because of their own political agenda.

The way this rally has been organized has definitely hurt the integrity of the peace movement. It's shameful.