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This morning, a reporter posted a query on HARO (a free service that matches reporters with story sources) asking,

Were you a protester/activist back in the 1960s? If so, what's
your reaction to the current Wall Street protest and the
off-shoots around the country?

I thought my response was worth sharing with a wider audience:

Hi, Sondra, I went to my first demonstration about the Vietnam war in 1969 and was very active in protests all through the 1970s and beyond. I was arrested at Seabrook in 1977, committed civil disobedience but was not arrested at the Wall Street Acton in 1979, was a peacekeeper for the million-person march for peace in 1982. I probably still attend three to five demonstrations in a typical year, mostly local (Western Massachusetts) –but I did go to massive demos in Washington and NYC to try to keep us out of Iraq in 2002-03. Also, using other methods than street demonstrations, I have been an active organizer for decades. My biggest success was forming a group called Save the Mountain, which generated widespread community support and blocked a particularly horrible housing proposal next to a state park–after all the “experts” said there was nothing we could do.

As it happens, today I’m getting on a bus for an evening conference on sustainability in NYC, and staying over for the night. Tomorrow morning my plan is to go to Wall Street and see how things are going.

As a teenager, I had a poster in my room with a picture of a peace demonstration and the caption, “It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest –Abraham Lincoln”–and I guess that pretty much sums up my feeling.

Obama has been a very weak president, falling short on issue after issue about bringing the “change” he was elected to create. He has given us a slower–and in some cases faster (like drone killings)–version of the “new normal” that developed under the illegal government of George W. Bush. No one has even been indicted for the crimes against the people by the Bush government or by the looters in suits in the financial industry. I believe strongly in the power of nonviolent protest, and am thrilled to see a new generation stepping forward, willing as we were to disrupt their lives in order to make a difference. Street protest is certainly not the only approach, and I believe we need multiple simultaneous nonviolent approaches. The country has gotten so topsy turvy and out of balance that I don’t think Richard Nixon would be tolerated by the Republican Party anymore (he’s probably to the left of Obama, if you watch both men’s actions rather than their words), and even their ‘sainted’ Reagan would be too far left to be nominated today. We desperately need an effective Left in this country, and the Occupy movement is stepping up, even if it has not figured out yet how to articulate its mission and goals.

30 years ago, Dina and I marched in the first-ever Gay Rights march in Northampton, Massachusetts. Organized by a very political—you could even call them militant—group called Gay And Lesbian Activists, the event drew about 500 people. We were proud and defiant in a society where being gay or lesbian was so threatening that some of the marchers wore paper bags over their heads to protect their identities and avoid reprisals. The speeches were all about claiming our place in a rejecting society.

Back then, there was a large contingent of counterdemonstrators from the local Baptist church, shouting slogans and carrying signs that today would be considered hate speech.

A few months later, some prominent lesbians in town received a series of threatening phone calls, and went to the police. A group of activists demanded and received a meeting with public officials. We pressed the mayor for a statement condemning the harassment. He waffled for quite some time until the District Attorney, who’d been quietly watching, said “I’ll give you a statement.” Once he had the political cover of the DA, the mayor quickly agreed as well. And later, the harasser was actually found, tried, and convicted. Yet, shortly after the second annual march, a City Councilor ran unopposed for re-election on a platform of stopping the Gay Rights march. (When his term was up two years later and he still had no opposition, I ran against him. He won that year and was defeated by another progressive two years later.)

Fast-forward to 2011: yesterday’s 30th annual parade, now officially called the “Noho Pride LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] Parade and Pride Event” and organized by a group called Noho Pride. The parade stretched for blocks and moved down Main Street to a cheering throng of some 15,000, lining not only both sidewalks but also the midline of our very wide boulevard.

Spectators applaud the Forbes Library contingent, #Nohopride 2011

Contingents included students, teachers, and parents from several elementary and high schools…dozens of churches…our local public library, where I and several other writers marched along with the director, assistant director, and a couple of the trustees…and a number of prominent politicians including both mayoral candidates (one gay, one not), Northampton’s State Representative Peter Kokot, and a candidate for US Senate who actually took a booth.

Vendors at the rally site included banks, home improvement contractors, and other very mainstream businesses. There was almost no political content, although there was a large tent for activist organizations, and the tent was crowded.

One of the local newspapers described the scene:

The atmosphere was a jubilant one – with hula-hoopers, a group doing intricate formations with shopping carts, drag queens, Rocky Horror Picture Show actors, the Raging Grannies, and countless school groups, some chanting “five, six, seven, eight, don’t assume your kids are straight.”

In the intervening years, a lot has happened in the queer community around Northampton, including national press in the early 1990s in the National Enquirer (which dubbed it Lesbianville USA) and the TV program 20/20. Several openly gay or lesbian politicians have won their races, including Northampton’s openly lesbian mayor, Clare Higgins, who is finishing up her sixth two-year term—longer than anyone else has ever held the post. Same-sex marriage has been legal for years. You have to look really hard to find someone who isn’t aware of same-sex couples in their places of worship, their workplaces, or their circle of friends.

And the Pride event has gone from a defiant statement of our rights to a festive, touristy celebration of culture. So much so that the organizers were publicly criticized by a group of activists including at least two who were there from the beginning, for squeezing the politics of change out of the event.

To me, while I recognize the validity and sincerity of those complaints, that we can now party out tells me that yes, we are making huge progress in this area, among others.

I have only half an hour left of being 53. It seems a good time to reflect on the whirlwind year I’ve had. Professionally, a lot has gone right for me this year.

First, of course, this has been my initial year as a Guerrilla Marketing author, and the publishing world is definitely nicer to authors who have hitched their wagon to a star. The folks at Wiley have been far more collaborative and helpful than many authors experience with their big NYC publishers, and certainly more so than Simon & Schuster was with me all those years ago. I’ve been promoting the book constantly all year long, and the publisher and even Amazon have also worked on that goal. And as a result of all that effort, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green has been on the Environmental category bestseller list for at least 11 of the last 12 months—we’re not sure about March—and was #1 in the category for part of April and May. Even cooler—within three weeks of publication, a Google search for the exact phrase “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green” brought up 1,070,000 hits—far more than I’ve ever seen for anything else I’ve been involved with. Some of those pages have come down since, but as of today, it’s still quite respectable at 551,000. And a search for my name peaked last month at 119,000, nearly double the previous high point of 62 or 64,000.

Because of the new book, I’ve also done quite a bit of speaking this year, including my first international appearance (at an international PR conference in Davos, Switzerland, home of the World Social Forum and World Economic Forum. This was a different event, but in the same venue, and it felt pretty trippy to be speaking from the same building that the likes of Bill Clinton and Warren Buffett speak from. And when you write a book called Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, you have automatic “chops” in both the green community and the marketing world—which is great, since the book really looks at the intersection of profitability and sustainability. I’ve spoken and exhibited at quite a few green events this year (ranging from the mellow, outdoor SolarFest in Vermont to the huge Green America/Global Exchange Green Festival in the Washington, DC Convention Center) and made numerous great contacts.

And I discovered, particularly when doing media interviews, that I really do know quite a bit about going green, on a much deeper level than just “made from recycled materials” stuff. I was very pleased with the quality of some of the more than 100 interviews I did this year, finding that a number of the journalists went a lot deeper than others I’ve experienced in the past—and I was able to take them deeper still. I’m not saying this to brag, but because I didn’t actually realize how much I do know about many substantive issues around sustainability until I started answering so many great questions about it.

Part 2 will discuss the most exciting part of my year: a way to get the message in front of a much wider audience. Stay tuned.

For seven years, Zheng Xiaoyu headed China’s Food and Drug Administration–a time in which that agency was filled with scandal, from tainted toothpaste to poisoned pet food. Both animals and people died in large numbers as a result, The New York Times reports.

Mr. Zheng, 62, has been sentenced by the Chinese government to death–not for the poisonings, but for the bribery that enabled them.

One more reason to stay honest, o ye corporate executives and government officials.

Of course, there are plenty of others–including, as I point out repeatedly in my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, that it’s actually easier for an honest business to profit and thrive.

Out of the blue this morning, I received a fascinating e-mail:

Hi Shel,

I’m Joel Falconer, lead singer and songwriter of the Gold Coast,
Australia-based Grok Rock band Midnight.Haulkerton. I don’t want to
bother you, but I thought you might be interested in this.

Earlier this year we came up with the idea of the Tuneback. A
Tuneback is a song recorded under the self-imposed time limit of one
hour from conception to publication (making it more of a concept or a
‘sketch’ than a complete song) and a new one must be posted once a
week, every Tuesday.

Given that most songs take weeks to go through the recording process
alone, not to mention conception and publication, it’s no mean feat,
but it’s quite a fun way to interact with an audience online and keep
us thinking.

I guess it’s a frugal, grassroots way of not only publishing music,
but creating it too!

This week I wrote the Tuneback with my good friend and colleague, NDK
Creative Artist, who said you’d know who he is and sends his regards.
He first introduced me to your work a couple of years ago, and I must
thank you for your article on frugal weddings, which helped to shave
a few pennies from my own last year.

This Tuneback was inspired by the idea of Principled Profit,
something NDK is a strong advocate of, and so am I. We are all
interested in solutions to the poor state of culture and
civilization rather than the continual whining of most mass media
(who I think cause many of the problems in the first place) and self-
pitying artists.

The fact that there is someone actively doing something about the
problem of unethical marketing is inspirational and we want to honor
you with the dedication of this song.

To which I say–go right ahead and bother me, Joel. Any time you write a song about my ideas, I’m delighted to be interrupted. I had never heard of Joel before this e-mail (although I have corresponded with NDK–we used to be on the same discussion group), and I’m impressed that I made an impact all the way to Australia–without even discussing the Business Ethics Pledge (which does have a number of Australian signers).

The song is kind of a synth/metal thing, not the sort of thing I usually listen to. But I really like the lyrics (used with his permission, of course):

Principles of Profit

The principles of profit
Say make your money in the honest way
Good work, hard work
Quality all the way
It pays
Shortcuts to profit, don’t really exist
You gotta be alive just ask Ken Lay

There’s nothing wrong with making money
There’s nothing wrong with making hay
It’s all in the way you make it
The principles of profit say
Make it the honest way

The cheating culture, full of vultures
Picking over scraps
Pluck the vultures, cook their goose
Change the cheating culture
You want to be loose, you want to be free
Live the life you want to live
We gotta keep on changing, re-arranging
So we can make profit in a principled way
There ain’t no shortcuts to profit
That’s just cutting corners to hell

There’s nothing wrong with making money
There’s nothing wrong with making hay
It’s all in the way you make it
The principles of profit say
Make it the honest way

Make honesty pay,
Make honesty pay,
Make honesty pay
Profit the principled way

I also really like the way Joel manages to refer obliquely to several of my websites and book titles in his message, subtly cueing me that he has taken the time to study my stuff a bit.

I don’t shock easily–but I am deeply shocked. I m outraged. I’m enraged. I’m bloody furious!

We hear all the time from the Bill O’Reillys, Ann Coulters and Rush Limbaughs of the country that any criticism of the Iraq “mission” is unpatriotic and goes against supporting our troops.

And then this–The Nation reports on numerous cases of soldiers injured in the war, pressured to accept a psychiatric discharge for a “pre-existing condition” that they never had, being told by their military doctors that this way they’ll get to keep their benefits and get a much quicker discharge–when in actuality these brave young men and women are hung out to dry, stripped of their medical benefits, and left holding the bill for any enlistment bonus they haven’t yet earned out.

This lowest of lowball tactics is saving the Veterans Administration millions of dollars–and is yet another betrayal of these many-times-betrayed soldiers.

Here’s a longish quote from the article:

He was standing in the doorway of his battalion’s headquarters when a
107-millimeter rocket struck two feet above his head. The impact punched a piano-sized hole in the concrete facade, sparked a huge fireball and tossed the 25-year-old Army specialist to the floor, where he lay blacked out among the rubble.

“The next thing I remember is waking up on the ground.” Men from his unit had gathered around his body and were screaming his name. “They started shaking me. But I was numb all over,” he says. “And it’s weird because… because for a few minutes you feel like you’re not really there. I could see them, but I couldn’t hear them. I couldn’t hear anything. I started shaking because I thought I was dead.”

Eventually the rocket shrapnel was removed from Town’s neck and his ears stopped leaking blood. But his hearing never really recovered, and in many ways, neither has his life. A soldier honored twelve times during his seven years in uniform, Town has spent the last three struggling with deafness, memory failure and depression. By September
2006 he and the Army agreed he was no longer combat-ready.

But instead of sending Town to a medical board and discharging him because of his injuries, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado, did something strange: They claimed Town’s wounds were actually caused by a “personality disorder.” Town was then booted from the Army and told that under a personality disorder discharge, he would never receive disability or medical benefits.

Town is not alone. A six-month investigation has uncovered multiple cases in which soldiers wounded in Iraq are suspiciously diagnosed as having a personality disorder, then prevented from collecting benefits.

If it weren’t already obvious, this “treatment”–which ought to be the subject of immediate Congressional investigation AND ACTION is the very opposite of supporting the troops. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–the best support we can give our troops is to bring them home safely and SOON. To which I’ll add that bringing charges against the barbarians carrying out this deeply inhumane and vicious policy that victimizes the very people hurt in carrying out their orders is also a way of supporting the troops.

Huffington Post’s Eason Jordan nailed the problem with recent Iran “revelations”:

After weeks, if not months, of US official planning to present a damning “dossier” of incriminating evidence against Iran, and after this same US administration presented us with lopsided, erroneous information about the capability and evil intentions of the Saddam Hussein regime, the best the US government can give us today is incendiary evidence presented at a Baghdad news conference by three US officials who refuse to be quoted by name?

That’s disgraceful and unacceptable.

Yeah, you got that right. Disgraceful and unacceptable. There’s a book coming out about the coming war with Iran: “From the Wonderful People Who Brought You Iraq” by Craig Unger. I was listening to him on Democracy Now this morning, along with General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff–in other words, a major big cheese in the US military–who doesn’t believe the “evidence” incriminates the Iranian government (of which I am no fan, and nor was I a fan of Saddam–but that doesn’t mean we go charging in with guns blazing and brains left behind).

Scary stuff. Once down that dangerous and foolhardy road is apparently not enough for the Bush League. Or for the New York Times, which ran a Page One story yesterday with the unsourced allegations–by none other than Michael Gordon, co-author with Judith Miller of some of the worst pro-war propaganda in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

To its credit, today’s Times features a much more skeptical article:

Even so, critics have been quick to voice doubts. Representative Silvestre Reyes of Texas, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, suggested that the White House was more interested in sending a message to Tehran than in backing up serious allegations with proof. And David Kay, who once led the hunt for illicit weapons in Iraq, said the grave situation in Iraq should have taught the Bush administration to put more of a premium on transparency when it comes to intelligence.

“If you want to avoid the perception that you’ve cooked the books, you come out and make the charges publicly,” Mr. Kay said.

The article goes on to quote General Pace, who also gets his own article on the subject.

I’m just back from the National Conference on media Reform in Memphis, where much honor was deservedly poured on Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated in that city just a few blocks from the conference (now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum).

My reports on the 2005 conference in Saint Louis are posted on my Frugal Marketing site; I’ll try to get at least some of my ’07 coverage up this week.

It’s wonderful to see a national figure like Senator Russ Feingold who’s not afraid to connect the dots. In an insightful piece on Huffington Post, he all but calls the Foley-lusts-for-boy-pages scandal a distraction from the continuing disaster of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld’s totally failed Iraq policy:

We all saw the recently declassified key findings of the National Intelligence Estimate. One thing those findings underscored is that our continued and indefinite presence in Iraq is benefiting global terrorist networks that threaten our country. The war has been a disaster, but the Administration refuses to admit its mistake. It refuses to do what’s right for our national security. By “staying the course,” this Administration is ignoring the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the growing threats we face around the world.

I hope this guy runs for President! But the Dems will probably run Hillary Clinton, and if they do, I’ll vote Green–I will not vote for a candidate who still doesn’t understand that the Iraq war is a moral and practical failure, and who as far as I know has not repudiated her support for the so-called Patriot Act (which was one of the most unpatriotic pieces of legislation in its time–unfortunately surpassed by last month’s shameful embrace of torture and spying).

For several years, I’ve wondered about the failure to scramble fighter planes on 9/11 to intercept the hijacked jets. I’ve ready all the conspiracy theories, and agree that the series of coincidences is not plausible, and probably not random. However, now that the transcripts of NORAD’s Northeast control center (NEADS) have been released, it seems very clear to me that whatever conspiracies might have been in play, NORAD’s controllers weren’t a part of it.

Michael Bronner, writing in Vanity Fair, uses the actual transcripts of NORAD/NEADS control room operations on that fateful day, with his explanation and commentary. Bronner, an associate producer on the movie United 93, has the background to interpret what the cryptic military language actually means–and most of his commentary is simply explaining what we hear (yes, you can actually listen to several brief clips).

The article is long, and includes large sections of actual transcripts. I recommend printing it out and reading carefully (and listening to some of the clips).

What I come away with…

What this article establishes in my mind is that NORAD’s people behaved phenomenally well under conditions more stressful than any in history–but they had antiquated and inadequate equipment, antiquated and inadequate and in some cases completely false information, and no chance to preemptively block the hijackers from reaching their targets.

I commend their courage, and I thank Vanity Fair for running the article. Now…was there a conspiracy involving other aspects of 9/11?