PRAWN party on the 20th of February

The Philadelphia Regional Anti-War Network (PRAWN) threw a party on Saturday, 20 February. We had a member of the Poor People's March give a talk on that upcoming event. From 4 April to 20 June of this year, there will be a march from New Orleans, LA to Detroit, MI. The Philadelphia Weekly recently did a piece on how "The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is currently reaching out to property owners across the city and linking them up with neighbors who are in a similar predicament so that they can [peacefully and nonviolently] resist en masse."

Next up was Bill Perry, along with his wife Terry Perry and their friend Emma Grigore (Bill Perry is a leading member of the Delaware Valley Veterans For America, but the group had no connection to the subject of the night's slideshow) and they all spoke on the attempt by 1400 people to visit Gaza ("Largest Open Air Prison in the World") around New Years 2010. Link is to selected pictures taken by Perry and posted to his Facebook page. Photoessay contains links to all three Facebook albums that in turn contain lots and lots of other pictures. Ultimately, only 70 people went into Gaza. 100, including Perry, were permitted in, but 30 of them stayed outside out of respect for the soldarity of their fellow Gaza Freedom March members.

The party went well. Food was plentiful and good. Naturally, our being a liberal, progressive and leftist crowd meant that the dishes were really heavy on vegetables as opposed to meats. We had plenty of coffee and tea and served dessert after the two speakers. We were missing a component for getting sound from Perry's computer to our speakers, but our audience could hear the supplied sound anyway and that problem has since been fixed, the component has been obtained. In a very good sign that the party was successful, people didn't just bolt out the door, but hung around and chattered for a bit.