Rosemarie

(Crossposted from Defending Rosemarie )

Rosemarie Jackowski is an advocacy journalist living in Vermont. On March 20, 2003, her 66th birthday, she was arrested for participating in a peaceful protest against the war.

Principles are not always convenient....
UPDATE: A message from Rosemarie

It is an amazing time in my life. I thought that I would be sitting in a rocking chair and learning how to crochet, instead I may be heading off to prison one of these days. It will be worth it, if more people will take a look at the Robert Fisk photos of the bombed Iraqi children. They can be accessed by googling Robert Fisk War Photos. Those photos say more than any writer can ever express in words. That's all I ever wanted. That is what I still want.
LOVE....rosemarie

The legal struggle continues.

^{This diary dedicated to the memory of Robert P. Scanlon.}

March 20, 2003. I'll never forget the day.
Having just been invested with the title of Program Director at WZEC in Bennington, VT, I was at a lunch meeting at Carmody's on Main Street with Ken, the corporate COO and Doug, the station's general manager. On a TV over the bar, CNN was showcasing the shock and awe.
Usually it's me that's the distractable one, but on this occasion, the entire meeting was a little hamstrung by the awful news of the day.
Just as we managed to get the meeting back on track, an angry klaxon from an 18-wheeler cut somebody off midsentence. We looked out the window, and traffic was backed up as far as wee could see in either direction.
Doug and I exchanged grins, knowing what this had to be.
Ken picked up on it immediately. I think I was squirming like a little dog under a "sit 'n' stay" command that wanted to go outside.
"Why don't you go see what's going on, Ed," said Ken, and I happily obliged.
At the Four Corners, the protest was underway. Angry people lined the sidewalks, shaking their fists and shouting. The supporters were closer in, appauding and flashing peace signs.

Later protests at the Corners.

Rosemarie is in red, on the right.

In the center with the long blonde hair is Wendy Woods. Second from left is Claude De Lucia. Feel free to jump in and identify any others if you can.

There was one hyper, greasy little guy with dark hair, running up and down the sidewalk, screaming incoherently about how he wanted to go into the street and start beating up protestors. "One at a time! I'll kick ALL their asses!"
I caught his eye. "Calm DOWN, dude. You're being stupid."
"Oh YEAH?", he said, suddenly up in my face.
"How 'bout I kick YOUR ass? Huh? HUH?"
It was ludicrous. I lost the battle not to burst out laughing when Adam, the kid doing afternoons for me, came running out of the radio station, laughing himself.
"I got your back, Ed! I got your back, brothah!"
In the intersection, protestors moved in with banners, then out, goup by group, at the direction of the police, who had clearly been preparing for this day.
(Let me take a moment here to commend the Bennington Police Department. They were businesslike, restrained, and professional, and I was rather pleased with them.)
The final group remained in the street - twelve protesters, some of them costumed, who clearly planned to be arrested. The police went about their business. As the protestors stood in a line, a plainclothesman asked them one by one to leave the street. Each refused, and was handcuffed and led away in turn, as the onlookers cheered. You would have had to ask each of them precisely what it was they were cheering to be really sure.
The street was cleared, and traffic began to move again.
At trial, each of them pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and received a fine and diversion, except one:
Rosemarie Jackowski.

Rosemarie with a future peace activist whom we all hope won't have much cause for activism by the time he grows up...

Published on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 by the Bennington Banner (Vermont)
War Protestor Will be Retried
A grandmother whose conviction for disorderly conduct was over turned by the Vermont Supreme Courtwill be retried, according to the county prosecutor.
Rosemarie Jackowski, 69, appealed her conviction for disorderly conduct at an anti-war protest at the Four Corners to the Supreme Court in September 2005. She was convicted by a Bennington District Court jury of intending to block traffic and annoy drivers while she stood in the middle of Bennington's busiest intersection.

Retried?
Double jeopardy, anyone?
State's Attorney William D. Wright:

"At this juncture, we are going forward with the case. We think that the evidence was overwhelming in our view, and we think that the jury should have another opportunity to decide Ms. Jackowski's guilt or innocence."

Ooooo-kayyyyy....here's the state's argument for retrying her:

Jackowski's intent — whether or not she meant to block traffic and cause an annoyance — was the main focus of the jury trial. The state Supreme Court overturned the trial jury's verdict, ruling three to two in favor of Jackowski after the court found that (District Court Judge David) Suntag had made mistakes during the trial, including taking away the jury's responsibility to decide Jackowski's true intent. According to the majority opinion, Suntag made a mistake by telling jurors that if they found Jackowski knew that she would block traffic during her protest, then she must have intended to block traffic.

Not really sure I get that, but Rosemarie's cool with it...if a little surprised:

"That's fascinating. I had not heard that. I am kind of shocked and blown away by that. ... I guess he is just doing the job the way he sees it," she said.

Jackowski is the only person arrested that sought a jury trial. (She) said she does not fear another trial, and said she will be more prepared the second time around.

"I'm very willing and ready to go trial again. It will be much more easy for me this time. I will have experience at being a defendant in a criminal trial," she said while laughing.

But there is a fly in the ointment, and now we get to the real reason I'm blogging this:

Finding a new lawyer might be difficult, said Jackowski. Her former attorney, Stephen Saltonstall, who argued her case in trial and before the Supreme Court, said he can no longer represent her because former prosecutor Daniel McManus has joined his law firm as a defense attorney. She said she would consider representing herself.

"I hope that someone will come forward to represent me. ... It's not a big concern or worry. I think the facts are so simple and straightforward that I would like to tell a jury about that day and what I did," she said.

So if anyone reading this would care to step up to that plate, this dear, sweet granny with a heart of gold and a spine of steel could sure use the help.
Rosemarie: hugs from me, Julie and the kids.
Good night, and good luck.

Staring into candles

Lately, I have found that humming A-flat below middle C while sitting full lotus and staring into a candle flame has a calming effect on me. But tonight, things went a little different.



I lit a candle again tonight when I got home, and sat on the floor once again, and stared for the thousandth time into the guttering, yellow-orange flame.
But this time, I decided to try something different. The flame was blurred, a deeper gold than usual, and filtered through a whitish haze of frost. I decided to stare into the flame through a cold pint of india pale ale.
I don't know whether it was the race between the beer and the candle, to see which would reach bottom first, or if it was the wild mushrooms found under a cow pie that we put in the omelet we had for dinner, but things began to take on a surreal quality at that point. The sun was down, of course; and the day's torrential rains had gone as quickly as they had come.
Odd. Somehow, I missed the rain. I wanted the sounds, the chaos of off-white noise from the storm battering my window. But the sounds weren't there. Only distant traffic, if you strained to hear it, the occasional child or two at play, and somewhere, a medium-sized dog barking his head off in odd numbered bursts.
Seven, seven again, three, five, five. Nine, five, seven. Seven twice.....
(Cat is in my yard right now. Cat is in my yard right now. Let me go. Let me off this chain. Let me off this chain. I can't get the cat that's in my yard. Let me off this chain. Cat is in my yard right now.....Cat is in my yard right now. Cat is in my yard right now.......)
and a funny, whirring noise, getting louder and closer. Something bumped against the window.
I wondered what would come in if the window opened, and the noise moved into the room. The wind kicked up, and I shivered and it occurred to me that damn window needed to be shut. I jumped a little at the bang - I don't know my own strength sometimes. This was sufficient to break my focus on the cold-filtered flame, and I looked up to see what I knew had to be there.
There was a little grey saucer, looking exactly as if someone had welded a couple of snow saucers together, hovering in midair. It was emitting a melodic whirr.
But the really amazing thing was the little green dude sitting in a seat dead center of the thing. It was the damndest thing. He looked just like that little green alien you see on keychains and posters and just about anywhere else.
He raised a hand in salute.
What to say? I was making First Contact. I had a visitor from another star system in my home. I knew I must consider my next words carefully.
I raised my hand in response.
"Nanu nanu."
The bulbous green head tipped quizzically to one side.
` I decided to try something different.
"Gort, Klaatu barada nikto," I said brightly. The black eyes seemed to narrow.
"Oh, shit," I thought. "I have made him SO ANGRY. VERY angry inDEED."
As if by their own volition, I felt my fingers part in the middle, into a V formed by ring and pinky on one side, middle and index on the other. My thumb was quivering a little as it hovered parallel to the floor.
"Uh.....live long and prosper?" I said nervously. the saucer gave a little bobble, and the huge black eyes widened again. The little guy actually smiled.
Whew. At least now I wouldn't have to deal with the Eludium Q-36 Space Modulator.
"I would take you to my leader, but I don't really have one. I'm a liberal," I said to the little green man.
He nodded somberly, and a little door appeared out of nowhere on the seamless surface of his saucer. An eyeball floated out, tethered to a ropy stalk. It lit up inside, a hellish orange red.
"I got some Visine for that if you want some," I said, when suddenly, the orange-red glow turned white, and an image projected on the wall behind me.
It showed the World Trade Center sprouting a ball of fire, and the smiling images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein laughed and gibbered together in the flames. They were riding donkeys, the both of them.The donkeys brayed raucously, WEEEEE....HATE AMERICA! WEEEEEE....HATE AMERICA!
A disembodied voice said, "I'm George W. Bush, and I approved this message."
I've had the baseball bat for years. I found the lead in a junkyard in Akron, and melted it down on the stove, then poured it into the hollowed-out bat, and sealed the end back on with epoxy resin and a couple of 4-inch wood screws.
The saucer rolled on its axis five or six times when the bat made contact, but it didn't seem to leave a scratch, much less a dent, despite the BANG that caused the neighbors across the parking lot to flip on their porch light.
I wanted the damn thing to fly out the window and away, which it did, and the window banged shut again when I realized the thing might fly back in if the window was opened.
I let out a sigh - I had been holding my breath -and my head dropped reflexively.
That's when I saw the little green bastard struggling to get up off the floor, where he'd been dumped when the saucer went ass over teakettle.
I still had the bat in my hands.
All told, I think I dealt with the experience pretty well.
I do have one problem, though, that I hope you can help me with:
How do I get all this green shit out of this beige carpet?

Finish it

Saul Alinsky:
Last guys don't finish nice.

Winston Churchill:
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

It is time.
The moment is here; carpe diem.
What have we endured for the last six to ten years? A constant stream of mischaracterizations of our positions, projection of their fears onto us (which many of us have tacitly accepted through inaction) and endless spate of fear-mongering, hate and division; the relegation of the word "Liberal" to the status of a pejorative

But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."
-John F. Kennedy

"I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East, and sending liberals to Guantanamo."
-Ann Coulter

As we see from this, the "liberals" serve as a convenient boogeyman for the Right:
along with the homosexshuls, the activist judges, the terr'ists, the atheists, and the flag burners, the liberals are essential to the effectiveness of the conservative sales kit.
Because without demons, without enemies, conservativism cannot function. It cannot function because it has nothing positive to offer; no benefit, no goodness, no happiness, and the only freedom it claims to offer is a freedom from danger.

This was a time bomb waiting to explode. It required their desperation to reach critical mass, and that is what happened last Tuesday night. The only problem for the replicants is, they got too close to the explosion. They couldn't back away from it. They had to massage the warhead with robocalls and voter intimidation and right-wing "broadcasters" and macacas and marriage amendments and "Call me, Harold" and videotapes of Osama and Terri and the shit finally blew up in their faces.

Now, they lay helpless from the concussion, flat on their backs, bleeding from every orifice: from their eyes, ears, mouths, and noses; from their penises, vaginas, and anuses.

This is our job, netroots Democrats:
To come to their side as they lay there helpless.
To rush to their side in their time of need.
And to drop a knee into their fucking spleens, to gouge their eyes out, and to kick them and kick them and kick these motherfuckers in the head until they stop moving.
Forever.
INVESTIGATE. IMPEACH. INDICT. IMPRISON.
Your country deserves no less.
Be heard.