DEFYING ESTABLISHED ORDER

• Dan Ellis (Brunswick) and I went to the University of Southern Maine (Portland) this morning and stood with our Bring Our War $$ Home banner in front of the student center. After more than two hours we had handed out about 300 flyers. From there we moved to the center of town to the site of the Occupy Maine protest at Monument Square. There Dan and another man held the banner in the cold and wind and I handed out another 300 flyers to the lunch time crowd who were passing through the farmers market that sets up in the square. After some lunch Dan and I held the banner for another 45 minutes before heading back home. There were about a dozen or so folks doing the Occupy Maine while we were there including our friend John Branson, a local lawyer who is giving his assistance to the activists to prevent the city from evicting them from Monument Square. I will probably go back on Saturday and spend the day there with the folks.
  
• While at USM we spoke to one student who said he had been stationed in Afghanistan multiple times. He is in favor of the occupation and believes we should stay in Afghanistan until we kill every last Taliban. He thought it was possible if "people like you" (he pointed to me) would stop getting in the way of our government's war plan. While on the one hand he maintained that few civilians are ever killed by U.S. troops, on the other hand he wanted a policy that allowed full-bore, unrestrained U.S. attacks on anyone suspected of being the "enemy". During our difficult conversation he also spoke out against Social Security calling it a program that allowed "fat lazy" people to avoid working. With a desertion rate of Afghanistan soldiers (being trained by the U.S. & NATO forces) now at 24%, it is obvious to anyone who honestly looks at the situation that the whole policy is collapsing mess.
• Early tomorrow morning Dan and I will head north to the University of Maine-Orono where we will table inside the student center all day long. We'll also attend an event entitled: Bring Our War $$ Home: The Lessons of 9/11, the Afghanistan War, and the Killing of Osama bin Laden being organized by Professor Doug Allen. (12:30-1:45, Bangor Room, Memorial Union)