Definitely NOT a Douche

Last Friday, four people were arrested after attempting to preform a citizens arrest on Karl Rove. These four people, three of which work for the Des Moines Catholic Workers Community, were cited for trespassing and released.

The group accused Rove of a handful of crimes, including treason, sediton, subversive activities, and responsibility for acts leading to the deaths of 300,000+ Iraqi's and 4,000 US soldiers.

Good for them. Really, this is the type of civil disobedience we need more of in this country. What these people did may seem like a futile effort, but it gained some (minor) media attention, which refreshes in peoples minds the outright atrocities our current administration has gotten away with.

One of these brave citizens, Mona Shaw, was on a talk-radio show this morning, which I had an opportunity to listen to. She spoke of for years writing letters to newspapers and Congress, attending rallies and protests, doing everything she could think of. Nothing worked, nothing brought about any change, or even continued a dialogue on the crimes these criminal politicians have perpetrated. That's when she (and some of her friends) came up with the idea of "taking the law into their own hands", as it were.

Mona fully realizes that her attempt (actually 2nd attempt, she tried this in March as well) would not be successful, but all she was hoping to get was some attention to this issue, and to get people to at least talk about this, instead of letting the Bush administration skate freely into history. She knew she would not succeed, but tried anyway out of a sense of civic duty. She remarked on the talk-show "it may not have worked with only four of us, but if we show up next time with 4,000, we might get somewhere". Fuck yeah, that's what I like to hear.

I have to salute the bravery of Mona as well. She's got bigger balls than I do, to face all the public criticism she is facing for her actions. While there were a few supportive calls, by and large those that called in were rabid in their anger towards her, accusing her from being ignorant of history to being a "terrorist-lover" and "un-american". She handled it all with grace that is seldom seen, even in the face of the Fox-news loving wacko's who spilled nothing but hate towards her over the air.

So I salute you and your friends, Mona Shaw. Even though I may disagree with you regarding some things (such as Catholicism), if there were more people like you this country wouldn't have been in the shit-hole it has been for the last eight years.