Last week’s Fort Carson Environmental Sustainability Conference. Remember the Army’s conception of a “sustainable environment?” Sustain the mission, secure the future.
Yesterday’s town forum at the Antlers Hotel to discuss the expansion of Fort Carson was a similar assemblage of only pro-military voices. Two senators and several congressmen were in attendance, even the Democrat among them cheered the Army. In a side room to entertain questions about the Pinon Canyon land aquisitions, Senator Salazar’s assistant Richard Skorman attempted to placate the crowd. “It may not happen” he reasoned.
A chief hurdle for activists is draw the attention of the public at large to the looming danger. No matter how many years off, experience has shown how the governemnt aquires land, and what a juggernaut it becomes once it’s gotten up steam. The military is doing enough soft-pedalling, do we need a Democrat to be playing good cop to the inevitable cop agenda? Is the land-grab inevitable? “Who knows,” the Judas Goat assures the lambs being led to slaughter, “we really won’t know for certain until we get there.”
It is shameful that the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commisssion can’t find the energy to show up to publicly protest the war at this sort of event, yet can find the energy for boring themselves to death at meetings 2 1/2 hours long inside their offices, all at the exact same time as the military public relations forum was being held. And these internal meetings of these ‘peace’ inactivists aren’t even organized democratically, but are merely little cliches of the ‘executive’ committee talking to themselves inside little hidden away rooms.
Still, other activists less connected to the immobile PPJPC did show up, though they limited themselves to only a couple of minutes of outside protest before they went inside and sat themselves down to listen to the honchos. Outside, the two of us who remained got a great reception of support from passerbyers.
PS… The coverage that the Gazette had this morning showed no iota of antiwar protest at this event. Lesson here-that if you do not make your protest visible, then nobody will even know that the 300 people inside were possibly half for war, and the other half against. Surely the half against the war deserve to have themselves better organized than the listless PPJPC is doing.