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Editor's Note A Time for Peace!The war in Iraq is a disaster. The gruesome revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib and other prisons now make the entire occupation seem like an exercise in sadism. The entire Bush gang—from Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld to Bush, Rice, and Powell—has brought disgrace upon our nation. Perhaps the only credit they deserve is for making good on their claim, made well before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began, that they are "not interested in nation building." Here, for once, they spoke the truth, and have since kept faithfully to their word. So where do the Democrats stand on this, the most pressing issue of the moment? By and large, right in line with the Bush gang. After knocking out its leading antiwar candidate, Howard Dean, the party has now rallied behind the warhorse John Kerry, who’s still trying to figure out his actions in Vietnam. According to a certain Times columnist whom liberals love to hate, when Kerry recently addressed the Iraq situation, he gave what sounded more like a "Bush speech than a Ted Kennedy speech." And Hillary? Her own website says that she’s never come across a military spending bill she didn’t like. What the Democrats are offering up at the moment is far from leadership, let alone any form of opposition. The question, then, becomes how to tell those in power that more and more people are rejecting the occupation every day. Mass protests are becoming more difficult to organize. Just last week, Mayor Bloomberg and company rejected a permit for United for Peace and Justice to hold an antiwar march on the Great Lawn at Central Park during this summer’s Republican National Convention. Officially, this is because the Lawn is undergoing "renovations"—then again, so is the First Amendment. The fight simply to hold a protest somewhere in shouting distance of the RNC is still a worthy goal, of course. And one hopes that the Democratic National Convention in Boston late this July also witnesses peaceful protests against the occupation. My suggestion is to fight back in less traditional ways as well. Why not make "peace" a fashion statement again? Maybe this calls for using a new symbol to convey it, or maybe just for new variations on the old one. In any case, nobody can stop you from wearing peace on your jacket, shirt, handbag, etc. During the RNC (if not before), how about a "Peace Out," where everyone takes to the streets—peacefully, of course—at lunchtime and after work ready to say no to war and occupation? You don’t need a permit to walk on sidewalks with a peace symbol on your shirt (or at least not yet). Done en masse, such protest will be eaten up by the international media, and it will remind the world that many American people, if not their leaders, don’t want to occupy Iraq. Now more than ever, Peace! —T. Hamm Table of Contents  LOCALA Minimum Matter of Survival by Marjory Garrison Heath Care Crises: Home Health Aides Ready to Walk Out by Amy Zimmer NYC Hospitals Fail Victims of Rape by Hirsh Sawhney Letter to Ratner by Johannah Rodgers Givin’ the People What They Want by Theodore Hamm EXPRESS American-made Disaster in Iraq: A Political Autopsy by Christian Parenti Beware Negroes with Guns by Norman Kelley Exonerated, then What? Life After Death Row by Patrick Mulvaney Message from My Uncle Peter by Williams Cole The Billionaires Get Ready by Christian Roselund SPOTLIGHT The Photography of Robert Bergman by John Yau, Katy Siegel, Vicki Goldberg, Paul Mattick, David Levi Strauss ART Artseen Erró by Katie Stone Dike Blair by Roger White Indigestible Correctness Parts I & II by William Powhida Rico Gatson by Nick Stillman Los Carpinteros by Stephanie Buhmann Ricoh Gerbl by Sonya Shrier Ray Parker by Jim Long Cristobal Dam by James Kalm Natalie Charkow Hollander by Rachel Youens Amanda Guest by Ben La Rocco Michael Scoggins by Ben La Rocco David Humphrey by James Kalm Chicks on Speed/Icelandic Love Corporation by Megan Heuer Blind Spot Magazine by Farrah Karapetian web only: in conversation: The Icelandic Love Corporation with Praxis web only: Barbara Kruger by Rachel Youens web only: Eve Aschheim: New and Recent Paintings by Elisa Soliven Open House: Working in Brooklyn by Daniel Baird in conversation: Vito Acconci with Delia Bajo and Brainard Carey BOOKS in conversation: Carl Hancock Rux with Lara Stapleton in conversation: Linh Dinh with Matthew Sharpe Voices Not So Distant (Greenfield, Damascus Gate) by Brian Evenson Paris Spleen (Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity) by Andy Merrifield Kareem’s Got Other Skills (Rahman, I Dream of Microwaves) by Hirsh Sawhney MUSIC in conversation: Un-Liberating the Airwaves: WFMU’s Ken Freedman with Dave Mandl New Sound, New York Takes Manhattan by Alan Lockwood Subtle by Grant Moser THEATER in dialogue: Fast and Loose, with Ethics by C. Denby Swanson excerpt: Fast and Loose, an ethical collaboration: Wake God’s Man Pap and Secrets: Now That’s What I Call a Storm by Christy Hutchcraft Back to the Source: Great Jones’s Seven at LaMaMa by David Kilpatrick DANCE Maguy Marin: One Can’t Eat Applause by mj thompson Dancing on the Rail by Vanessa Manko web only: Brooklyn's Oasis FILM Boredom’s Just Another Vice: Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes by Lisa Rosman The Blonds: The Slippery Slope of Truth by Douglas Singleton Docs in Sight by Williams Cole outtakes: The Words of Kill Bill Volume 2 by Galen Williams in conversation: Taylor Mead with Sissi Tax web only: Bukowski: Born Into This by Williams Cole FICTION Traffic Island by Matthew Kirby 718 by Roy Nathanson Myriam’s Revenge by Constanza Jaramillo Cathcart La venganza de Myriam by Constanza Jaramillo Cathcart STREETS Growing Up with the Brooklyn Outlaws story by Ian Daly, photos by Andrew Hodges POETRY Waiting with the Dead by Jennifer L. Knox Category #2: Laundry Detergent by Kristin Prevallet |
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The Rail invites you to a reading with Jason Flores-Williams and Brian Carreira, along with musical guest Steve Strunsky of the Lonesome Prairie Dogs. Thurs., Sept. 22, 8:30 p.m. Vox Pop--Flatbush, Brooklyn www.voxpop.net |
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OFF THE RAIL FALL 2005 at the Central Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library - Grand Army Plaza |
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The Independent Press Association-NY recently honored The Brooklyn Rail with the following awards: |