TICKED OFF BY TEXAN'S TWADDLE! I try not to get too ticked off by phone-in shows. But Sunday afternoon a caller on C-Span nearly had me phoning in a response myself. Instead, I'm posting this blog entry!

The caller phoned C-Span after it aired the awesome United for Peace and Justice march past Madison Square Garden. A Texan supporter of George Bush, she was leveling some sort of silly complaint that there were no demonstrations around the World Trade Center site.

For the record, there was a demonstration at Ground Zero on Saturday evening. It was organized by Ringout.org with composer Pauline Oliveros, who is most welcome at Bushapalooza (see July 20 even though the Springsteen anti-Bush tour has obviously co-opted that brilliant idea).

Here's how writer Benjamin Dangl described Saturday's event in The NewStandard:

As the day drew to an end, thousands gathered at "Ground Zero," the site of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center’s twin towers, to advocate diplomacy instead of war. The solemn event was organized by RingOut, a group that uses bells to demonstrate unity and solidarity at protests.

Calling the event a memorial for the WTC victims and all victims of violence around the world, participants completely surrounded the site and rang bells, which echoed across the eerie space of Ground Zero. Moments of silence interspersed the two-hour event.

In inviting people to the demonstration, RingOut wrote that they would "ring in a week of harmony and many voices expressing their visions of peace and justice in NYC and around the country."

Martha Giardina, an organizer of the event from Georgia, told The NewStandard, "It is a nonviolent use of sound, something that everybody has access to and that anybody can participate in."

Sydney Gillett, a nurse practitioner from Berkeley, California said she had not visited the site since the attacks. "I got a little choked up, a little emotional," she said, adding that the ringing was a creative way to express her reaction. "I don’t have to march, shout or cheer -- I can just be here and sit with my thoughts."

Marla Zubel, a student from San Francisco, California said, "A lot of times protesters are accused of either not respecting the dead of 9/11 or just being heartless in some way, or unpatriotic; this specific tactic of ringing the bells was a good way to get a message across, almost without words.

"This sent a message to people who are critical of protesters," she added. "People don’t want to see any more ground zeros in the world. One human life isn’t worth anymore than another, whether it is American or Iraqi, or you name it."