It brought a major smile to my face!
I'll be there. Please join us and bring a friend!
The Bay Area's street-level response to military action in Iraq apparently will extend beyond barbed denunciations of U.S. foreign policy, civil disobedience and Kumbaya.
Conservatives from Palo Alto to Santa Rosa -- and some even in the left-leaning bastions of Berkeley and San Francisco -- are planning support-the-troops rallies and flag-waving demonstrations to counter what they expect will be a zealous outpouring of anti-war sentiment.
Some activists who support the Bush administration will take to the streets this weekend, hoping to polish their organizing tactics and gather support for their cause as a possible military clash draws near.
"This is not about holding signs and yelling back,'' said Andy Hoar, 32, a software entrepreneur from Palo Alto who has organized a pro-Bush contingent, known as the Anti-Appeasement Brigade, to speak out at the planned "No War on Iraq" march and rally in his hometown today.
"It's about challenging a position that doesn't make sense. So when the anti-war folks say that this is Vietnam all over again, or all about oil, we want to be there to show that, no, it's not."
Not only do they want to challenge what they believe are tired claims by the anti-war contingent, activists who support getting tough with Saddam say they also want to defy stereotypes of the Bay Area as a place inhabited exclusively by granola-grubbing, military-hating lefties.
Republican students at UC Berkeley, for instance, plan a support-the-troops rally the day war breaks out, on a campus long known for anti-war sentiment.
"Even in San Francisco, people are growing frustrated with the anti-war movement,'' said Alfredo Najera, an ex-convict and reformed gang member now active in Republican politics in the city. "They don't speak for everybody.''
Najera was one of 15 people who met Thursday in San Francisco's Mission District to begin organizing a Support the Troops Family Day Rally, which he hopes will be a flag-waving celebration and picnic in the plaza in front of City Hall.
Najera said organizers hope the event will take place on the weekend of March 15-16, the days preceding the proposed March 17 deadline for Iraq to disarm or face military action. Final plans were still being worked out Friday, and Najera said he was still seeking a city permit to hold the rally.
Hoar, Najera and Steve Cabezud, a Sonoma County painting contractor who organized a Support the Troops rally Friday night in downtown Santa Rosa, said preplanned demonstrations would serve as a preface for outpourings of support they plan to join on the day military conflict breaks out.
Such activities would contrast with plans for mass resistance to war on the day conflict begins. Earlier this week, the anti-war group Direct Action to Stop the War announced plans to stage mass protests in downtown San Francisco in the hours after war breaks out in Iraq.
Patrick Reinsborough, a Direct Action spokesman, said demonstrators will block streets and entrances to key downtown buildings in an effort to shut down San Francisco's financial district. Similar protests are planned in major cities throughout the United States.
"We plan to stop business as usual until the war stops,'' Reinsborough said.
Anti-war groups in Oakland, Walnut Creek and other Bay Area communities say they also plan for demonstrations the day war breaks out.
But don't be surprised to see equally passionate displays of support for military action in town squares and other Bay Area gathering places, said Melanie Morgan, who hosts a morning radio talk show on conservative KSFO in San Francisco.
Morgan says her show has been bombarded with callers and e-mailers angry at media attention given to anti-war activism.
Najera says he is angry, too. But he added that the only way for other views to get widespread attention is if conservatives show they are willing to act in support of their beliefs.
"If we aren't out there expressing our views, people might think we don't exist,'' he said.
flagbrigade and All, (paraphrasing) last week Barbara Simpson (KSFO) mentioned that Guy Ashley of the C.C.Times wanted people to contact him so he could cover pro-America rallies (especially in the East Bay.)