Tag Archives: City Auditorium

Stand united against Christian Endtimers who cheerlead colonial war for Zionism

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Christians United For Israel
SUNDAY 5/17- Colorado Springs Christians United For Israel has scheduled A Night to Honor Israel to instruct one and all “WHY it is necessary to stand united for Israel: “Biblically, Morally, Geo-politically” on Sunday May 17, from 3pm-7pm at the City Auditorium. Can you guess there will be something to say about this outside?

COLORADANS FOR PEACE will be providing counterbalance to the racist war-mongering outside the City Auditorium, from before 3pm Sunday, until this message is heard: JUSTICE FOR PALESTINE, NO WAR WITH IRAN.

night-to-honor-israelWith the consent and aid of the US, Israel most recently committed horrible atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon, and they continue to seize Palestinian land and oppress the Palestinian people. Inciting America’s Christian community to rally for Zionist racism is exactly what will not serve the cause of peace in the Middle East.

The CUFI invite reads: “Join us for Colorado Springs’ first ever Night to Honor Israel as Christian and Jewish communities gather in a show of support for Israel. The event boasts traditional Israeli song and dance, a beautiful banner presentation of the Tribes of Israel, and dynamic speakers that will convey the importance of standing with Israel and encourage us to action. There will be an Israeli Marketplace, and the event will close with a light reception.”

Which sounds reasonable enough, until of course the mention of “encourage us to action.” By action, the CUFI guest speakers mean war with Iran.

yes-will-stand-with-israelThe Colorado Springs event is one of scores scheduled across the country this weekend, intended as “a gift to Israel on the anniversary of her creation,” an expression of unconditional support “in Israel’s hour of need.” Israel has in the last hour cast Lebanon and Gaza into death throes, as it grades the remainder of Palestine for Jewish settlements. By hour of need, do they mean, the threat posed by Iran acquiring nuclear weapons? Iran has never threatened the “destruction of Israel” other than the expressed hope that her Zionist system of apartheid borders be dissolved and the inhabitants of the region be permitted a democratic regime of their choosing.

Here are some sample banner slogans:
CHRISTIAN RIGHT + ZIONISM = UNHOLY ALLIANCE
WHAT FRIEND OF ISRAEL CONDEMNS JEWS TO HELL?
ISRAEL IS NOT YOUR ESCHATOLOGICAL PAWN
CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS ARE ANTI-SEMITES

Here’s the COLORADANS FOR PEACE invite, please pass it around!

Fellow peace activists,
If you haven’t heard already, we will be protesting “A NIGHT TO HONOR ISRAEL” to be held at the Colorado Springs City Auditorium this Sunday. The event is sponsored by Christians United For Israel, which teaches unconditional support of Israel, and is currently advocating for a US attack on Iran.

This event is touted as the “First Annual” for Colorado Springs, and is among 60 happening on the same day all over the country as “a gift to Israel.” The same featured speakers have been traveling the US over the last several months urging unilateral support for Israel “in her hour of great need.”

COLORADANS FOR PEACE is determined to show that the City of Colorado Springs must not be considered an accomplice to Israel’s racist motives and criminal actions. We believe that peace in the Middle East will not be reached by escalated militarism and preemptive violence.

Please contact whomever you think would be interested. We will assemble on the sidewalk across the street from the City Auditorium at 221 E. Kiowa Street, between Nevada Ave and Weber Street. We’ll be there from 3pm to 6pm or so, serving as peaceful witness against war and racism. We will have Palestinian flags and banners which read OCCUPATION IS A CRIME and STAND WITH GAZA, among others. More information, and updates can be found at http://coloradansforpeace.org

WHAT: Witness for peace at COS Pro-Israel rally
WHERE: Across from City Auditorium at 221 E. Kiowa St.
WHEN: Sunday May 17, from 3 PM to 6 PM,
WHO: Coloradans For Peace with other organizations working toward promoting peace in the Middle East

Feel free to call me if you have any questions. I can be reached at 719.460.2836. Whatever assistance you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

Yours,

Eric Verlo
Coloradans For Peace

Colorado Springs Calendar MAY 2009

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MAY 2009
1- May Day: International Workers Day
4- Tobias Wolff, Reading at CC, Armstrong Theatre, 7pm
9- UFCW Local 7 contract expires with Safeway workers
15- NAKBA commemoration
17- CFP Protest of PRO-ISRAEL RALLY, City Auditorium, 3pm-6pm
18- Senator Michael Bennet, CC commencement, Quad, 8am
18- Governor Bill Ritter, City Hall, Fountain, 6pm
23- Uncle Wilbur Fountain, annual opening, Acacia Park, 11am-1pm
25- High Country Earth First! EF! ROADSHOW, Cheesman Park 2pm
26- High Country Earth First! EF! ROADSHOW, Gypsy House 7pm
27- Colorado Springs ACLU annual meeting, G&L Foundation
27-6/3 Feral Futures, to be disclosed shortly
30- UFCW solidarity action, TBA

Obama has a chance to hear from Pueblo

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pueblo coloradoPUEBLO, COLO.- How exciting to live in a swing state! Obama returns to Colorado on Saturday Nov 1st, 3pm Pueblo. If Obama becomes president, when will we have a better chance to reach him with an antiwar message? Michelle Obama’s visit to COS on Tuesday looked progressively Blue, Blue, Blue, until you got inside the City Auditorium and saw the Red White and Blue pro-militarism imagery. We need to put the peace logo back at the front of this train. As usual, expect campaign lieutenants to throttle the pacifist tone.

Change We Need Rally
with Barack and Michelle Obama

The Union Avenue Historic District
Intersection of S. Union Ave. and D Street, Pueblo
Public Entrance: Corner of C Street and S. Main St.,

Saturday, November 1st, Gates Open: 1pm, Program Begins: 3pm

The event is free and open to the public. …For security reasons do not bring bags or umbrellas. Please limit personal items. No signs or banners allowed.

historic district of Pueblo

Springs Dems rally downtown in force

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michelle-obama
COLORADO SPRINGS- A street party atmosphere prevailed downtown as local Dems formed a line over five blocks long to see the presumptive next First Lady. El Paso County may want to be conservative, but this afternoon the police had to treat the Democrats like VIPs.

LaylaWe stood to the West of the City Auditorium with our antiwar banners, keeping our distance from the anti-abortion and pro-Palin sad puppies.

Once again Colorado Obama supporters voiced their agreement with our slogan to stop funding the war. As per usual, Tony raised his voice about the less obvious antiwar theaters of Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti, etc. With Layla in tow to reinforce the KIDS NOT BOMBS mantra. Still without upsetting most.

campaign workerEventually, one campaign official and then another approached us politely to inform us that we had to leave their sidewalk. Naturally we declined since we were not obstructing the public right of way. The second more animated worker went to confer with CSPD officers, who must have advised her to let us be.

No really. I remember hearing about GOP handlers in 2004, pretending to speak with the authority of the Secret Service, telling activists who could or couldn’t participate. I didn’t think I’d have a chance to laugh off that kind of self-important condescension from slickly dresses Democrats too.

Soon enough however, a city utility truck was stopped adjacent to where we were standing, his engine idling as if to test our determination with his exhaust. Most unfortunately, he blocked the visibility of our banner.

We stood our ground though because we could see that TV cameras were mobilizing around us for upcoming developments. It turned out we were ideally situated, perhaps less ideally for the organizers, to greet Mrs. Obama as she visited the outdoor crowd.

Springs Democrat overflow
Michelle Obama spent a good deal of time shaking hands and listening to personal encouragements. Let’s just admit that she was as gracious and eloquent as her husband.

Tony gives interview
Tony gave a lengthy interview to Hungarian reporters touring with the Obama campaign. They assumed he was a McCain-leaning counter demonstrator, and so were pleasantly surprised to hear we were actually Green Party Cynthia McKinney advocates. Andy stopped by before rejoining the queue to enter the auditorium. A number of the Springs quasi-extant peace community were in line for the Obama rally, sadly minus any peace paraphernalia to give them –or it– away. Gobama! (Hope for Peace?!)

Catholic vote
Next we decided to have a little fun with the anti-abortion contingent who’d occupied the center of the street. We were in general agreement that there are issues more important than the price of gasoline.

Blocking our message
But they weren’t interested in our expanded message of saving the already-born too, and moved to block our signs.

Tom O’Boyle a local Broadmoor treasure

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Tom O BoyleCOLORADO SPRINGS- Every Thursday at noon, over the summer, the City Auditorium hosts what they call a sack lunch concert. You can join several hundred mostly retired devotes to hear a concert performance on an old wind organ. Sometimes the keyboardist will improvise an accompaniment to an old single-reel comedy. Often the star of the show is none other than Tom O’Boyle.

In the interest of full disclosure, Tom O’Boyle was a classmate of my mother’s at the Cathedral School, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And he played my parents’ wedding in fact. Somehow when my parents retired to Colorado Springs in the late eighties, they discovered that Tom O’Boyle had come here as well. So my mother and father got to revisit the memory of their wedding every weekend. Tom had made a name for himself in Colorado, mostly from his performances at the various grand pianos at the Broadmoor. He counts many celebrities among his fans and impromptu duet partners.

A few years back, the Broadmoor sought a change of their entertainment and Tom O’Boyle is no longer there. It’s a shame. He still has a weekly gig at the Castaways in Manitou, and no disrespect meant to that Tiki-Deco throwback which still has plenty of charm, but O’Boyle is much too refined a talent to be buried behind their keyboard. Come see him on Saturday night, ignore the family dining. He’ll play anything between cigarettes, he does pop standards and classical, all like it’s jazz blues, with none of the lounge act. Think Cole Porter meets… Tom O’Boyle.

Back at the noon hour organ fest, Tom’s fingers are too agile for the antique organ. The organ offers more of a one-man-band performance that’s fun just for the grandiosity of the sound. But when there’s a piano handy, Tom will alternately switch his seat there. At the upright he’ll play Grieg, Mendelssohn and everything distinctly blue. You don’t want to miss it, no matter what time of day. Next week is the last sack lunch of the season.

Roller derby nostalgia for a lifestyle?

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Broads, Quads, Bruises and Brawls, the PPDD Slamazons versus the Muencas MuertasI enjoyed the buzz over the past decade as the Pikes Peak Derby Dames built their DIY franchise, as if a regional roller derby team had simply been an oversight of misplaced heritage. It didn’t occur to me to wonder why the WWWF of the 70s had gone the way of the spitoon.
 
This poster appears to depict a supine woman relishing the attentions of leprechaun droogs intent on mayhem, or -dare I suspect- her own rape murder?

I heard one Dame interviewed on local radio. She joked about a cat fight at the City Auditorium event the night before. Asked what being a roller derby queen meant to her, she answered “Everything! It’s a lifestyle!”

To be fair, she is probably referring to the full time job the dames have undertaken to enliven this city. At local events the Derby Dames always make an appearance to promote their upcoming bouts. The message is no more ever than frivolity and empowerment. But is the gladiator ring the greener pasture for those across the gender gap?

We can joke about mud wrestling, but marauding gangs of teenagers already cross our streets and schools intent on violence. Hair pulling being the least of the injury.

Did the zeitgeist of the 70s, newly health conscious, concerned for the environment, and sensitive to social issues, lose interest in the roller derby for its cartoon violence and promotion of an adolescent gang banger ethic?

The sport might have lost its television coverage, but roller derby teams have sprung up a quarter century later all on their own. As much as we might hold ourselves to higher standards, and hope to discourage gang violence, the ape urges are strong. You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl. The Salvation Army knows this struggle better than anyone, you can’t always keep a bad man up.

Spika’s sledgehammer

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Tonight was Gwyn Coleman’s Art Wars III at the historic City Auditorium, a great success as usual, everyone on the youthful side of the Colorado Springs art community was there. Spika had a performance piece in the show, and here’s what Spika did, the big goof.

Early in the evening Spika and an assistant painted a huge mural on stage of the United States in neon red against a black background. At the center of the red map was a yellow circle with a blue outer ring, over which was a green hazmat symbol.

Just before his performance piece which he called Metaxis, Spika led a robed figure [his wife dressed in burlap and darkened skin] resembling a Middle Eastern Muslim of irrelevant gender. She sat before the symbol at the middle of the America mural. Spika stood centerstage before a blacklight clad only in a pair of black shorts.

To a recording of Bob Dylan singing Masters of War, Spika rolled up his shorts into the sides of the waistband so that his attire resembled that of Jesus or Tarzan or Captain Underpants. Then Spika began to rub fluorescent red paint all over his legs and bare feet.

Spika wiped his hands on the front of his shorts, a repetitive move which looked uncomfortably indulgent until we saw that he was cleaning his hands for the next color. Then Spika covered the upper half of his body with blue paint. By this time the soundtrack had progressed to Jimmy Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner. Spika rubbed the blue into his face and poured what remained of the blue paint over his hair.

Now Spika wrapped a skirt of white stripes around his waist. These were strips of white paper suspended on a wire waistband. Then he draped a similar shawl of white paper stars over his shoulders. Having made a living flag of himself, Spika donned a yellow crown of spikes, whatever it is that the Statue of Liberty wears, greatly amplified and struck a pose. Once the applause subsided, Spika walked over to the robed figure at the center of the America mural.

We were not sure as he turned his back to her, if he wasn’t bending to take a crap on the Muslim, but instead he sat between her legs. Then Spika slowly reclined into the arms of his robed non-westerner to create …a pieta, and the crowd went wild.