[Iowa-dx] American Dream tour - Mike Palecek's newsletter -

[hhart@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu]

Apologies for the length, but I'm including all 3 installments here.  =20
Subsequently, I hope to have them posted at the School for Moral =20
Courage website.   Folks in western Iowa will know Mike Palecek from =20
his work as a journalist and his campaigns for statehouse (and =20
Congress - almost) - check out the calendar, because he will be in =20
your neck of the woods, as well.


NEWSLETTER #1
"You Can't Arrest Me, I'm On A Book Tour"

By Mike Palacek

24 March, 2007
Countercurrents.org


"You can't arrest me, I'm on a book tour." ? Michael Moore

Hello.

I am somebody from Nebraska who now lives in Iowa, who will soon be taking
a country drive, a road trip, because our country seems on the verge of
something bad.

Really, I'm not trying to get away.

Actually my mother told me once that when they heard the War of the Worlds
broadcast on the radio they got in the car and just drove. Just to be
going somewhere seemed to help because they were so scared. They thought
it was the end of the world. This time the fire.

Well, I suppose I'm plenty scared, but I'm trying to run towards the
blaze, trying to see what I can do to put it out.

I have written some books during the Bush era. I'm going on a book tour to
promote my latest, "The American Dream."

Before I leave I'm also going to send a letter along with a tax form with
a black Magic Marker X through it as a protest against George W. Bush.

My book, "The American Dream," is a punch in the nose to George W. Bush
and Karl Rove. Somebody needs to punch those two in the nose.

They smirk while others die. They are getting away with murder. They are
robbing us blind.

By sending off this crossed-out tax form and taking this drive around the
country in my '90 brown Honda with the driver's side window and radio that
don't work I'll feel that I'm at least doing something.

Because.

Can we say it? ... Out loud? ... In public? ... Won't people think we're
crazy? ... Won't they roll their eyes? Wouldn't it be easier to just talk
about American Idol? The people on Fox and the announcers on the radio
don't say this. They'd say it if it were true. ... Right?

Because.

They? Bush & Co. ? did 9/11 themselves.

They killed Paul Wellstone.

They sent the anthrax.

They lied about WMD.

They stole two presidential elections.

They would never have told us about Abu Ghraib.

They have secret torture prisons around the world that we were never meant
to find out about.

They spy on us. And not because of "terrorism."

They steal the oil.

They want power. They want to be rich.

They could care less about us, about the soldiers, about the freedom of
the Iraqi people. They snicker about all that in the back rooms. Sure they
do.

And there's more.

Some [many?] of our news media "professionals" are actually professional
propaganda ministers for this cabal. Who cannot wonder about Fox, Tom
Brokaw, Rush Limbaugh, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings in this regard.

It sure seems that way.

What's that expression about talking and sounding like a duck?

I was in third grade when our principal, Sr. Ellen, walked into the room
just after lunch recess and said the president had been shot.

A few years later I went to sleep wondering if Bobby would make it through
the night. And of course, they had killed Martin Luther King two months
before.

So, well, now I'm 51, and those my age would do anything to really
understand what happened during those few minutes after lunch in Dealey
Plaza on Nov. 22 1963.

My kids will grow up wondering what really happened on Sept. 11, 2001.

Perhaps none of us will ever know. They keep the truth locked away, marked
to be opened after we are all dead. The rest they strike out with a black
Magic Marker.

But the Bush family is in power.

And American oil companies recorded record profits last year.

The world turns.

They want power. They want to be rich. Human traits, desires.

Quack.

The American Dream.

You look outside your window, you see robins and squirrels and Snickers
wrappers and Labrador poop.

Fair to partly cloudy.

It's all a fairy tale. You are a living character inside of a children's
book, with dragons and monsters and evil kings and queens.

How did we come to this?

We have fake history ? our junior high and high school history books
should be all in italics, presented with a wink by the teacher handing out
the textbooks on the first day of school: Remember the Maine, Pearl
Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin, Iran-Contra, Waco, OKC, moon landings, Watergate,
stolen elections ? millionaires in Washington D.C. who spend long days
agonizing over the lives and living conditions of dump truck drivers and
nurses aides. Right? Sure they do.

But even so, to talk about conspiracy in the United States ... it's like
being ... a person who has spent the day upstairs alone writing poetry ...
and he steps out onto the corner to hand those poems out to passersby. You
can imagine the looks he's going to get from people.

Because we accepted the Warren Commission we got the "9/11 What Controlled
Demolition?" and our children will get the "XYZ Non-Investigation By Rich
People Covering Up For Other Rich People Leaving The Poor Folks To Drown,
Again."

After the Supreme Court stopped the counting of votes. ...

Stopped the counting of votes.

Stopped the counting of votes.

I sat by the upstairs window and looked out at the robins and the
squirrels and the Labradors and thought, of course they killed the
Kennedys, they can do whatever they want.

I thought about tossing a concrete block through the military recruiters
offices over in Sioux City, just to put up some kind of resistance against
all this. I even drove over there, about an hour away, to drive around the
area and see how I might do it and get away.

I asked others to join me. Nobody wanted to.

Then I drank a quart of beer out on the patio and sort of measured in both
hands the weight of a concrete block against a piece of paper, and decided
to keep writing.

I don't know what good I can do. Maybe I'm just driving around just to be
moving because I'm scared.

Kurt Vonnegut once said that an anti-war novel is as likely to stop war as
an anti-glacier novel is to stop glaciers.

But you still gotta. You gotta walk out the back door and put yourself up
against that ice and push. Set your feet and lean and get your hands cold.
Push with all your might, until you've got no push left.

There are many of us who see the murder of the Iraqi people for gold as
evil, and who want their children to grow up in a world not perverted by
the mind of Karl Rove. Those are also human traits, desires.

You got something better to do?

Join me. I'll be writing a column along the way.

 From Newton, Kansas to Omaha to Sioux Falls to Des Moines to ... well,
here's the whole schedule. Here's where that brown '90 Honda will be
pointed over the next three months.

Tour route:

March 28: Drinking Liberally, Kansas City
March 29: Faith & Life Bookstore, Newton, Kansas
March 30: Lawrence, Kansas, public library
March 31: Crossroads Infoshop, Kansas City
April 2: A Novel Idea Bookstore, Lincoln, Nebraska
April 3: Soul Desires Bookstore, Omaha, Nebraska
April 4: The Reading Grounds Bookstore, Omaha
April 6: Wayne State College, Wayne, Nebraska
April 6: Zandbroz Bookstore, Sioux Falls, South Dakota
April 10: Hill Avenue Bookstore, Spirit Lake, Iowa
April 12: Southeast Minnesota Peacemakers, Rochester, MN
April 13: Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa
April 14: Ritual Caf=E9, Des Moines, Iowa
April 15: Iowa City, Iowa, Public Library
April 16: Magers & Quinn Bookstore, Minneapolis
April 17: Magus Bookstore, Minneapolis
April 18: Duluth: College of St. Scholastica,
April 18: Duluth Catholic Worker
April 19: Mondragon Bookstore, Winnipeg, CA
April 21: Rainbow Books, Madison, WI
April 22: Cream City Collective, Milwaukee, WI
April 23: New World Resource Center, Chicago
April 23: Unitarian Church, Park Forest [Chicago]
April 24: Revolution Books, Chicago
April 24: Barbara?s Bookstore, Chicago
April 25: Volume One Books, Hillsdale, MI
April 26: Drinking Liberally, Indianapolis
April 27: Saginaw, MI, 303 Collective Bookstore
April 28: The Planet Bookstore, Ann Arbor, MI
April 28: Drinking Liberally, Detroit [Oakland Co.]
April 29: Drinking Liberally, Cleveland
April 30: Boxcar Books, Bloomington, IN
May 1: Drinking Liberally, Pittsburgh
May 2: Talking Leaves Books, Buffalo, NY
May 2: Literary Caf=E9, Buffalo
May 3: Drinking Liberally, Rochester, NY
May 4: Bluestockings Bookstore, New York City
May 5: ETG Caf=E9 and Books, Staten Island
May 7: AS220 Performance Space, Providence, RI
May 8: The Book Cellar, Brattleboro, VT
May 10: Lucy Parsons Center, Boston, MA
May 11: Elizabeth, NJ Catholic Worker House
May 13: Wooden Shoes Books, Philadelphia
May 14: Robin's Books, Philadelphia
May 15: Drinking Liberally, Wilmington, NC
May 16: McIntyre?s Books, Pittsboro, NC
May 17: Internationalist Books, Chapel Hill, NC
May 18: Revolution Books, Atlanta
May 19: Beyond Your Ordinary Bookstore, Atlanta
May 19: Bound To Be Read Books, Atlanta
May 20: Koinonia Community, Americus, GA
May 21: Iron Rail Bookstore & Collective, New Orleans
May 22: That Bookstore in Blytheville, Arkansas
May 23: Monkeywrench Books, Austin, TX
May 24: Drinking Liberally, San Antonio
May 26: Peace Farm, Amarillo
May 28: Albuquerque, La Semilla Bookstore
May 29: Taos/Food Not Bombs
May 30: Tucson, Prescott College
May 31: Drinking Liberally, Las Vegas
June 1: San Diego Drinking Liberally
June 2: Metropolis Books, Los Angeles
June 6: Oakland Drinking Liberally
June 7: San Jose Drinking Liberally
June 8: Sonoma Peace & Justice Center, Santa Rosa
June 9: Revolution Books, Berkeley [?]
June 11: Medford Oregon
June 13: Drinking Liberally, Corvallis OR
June 14: Bend, OR: Book Barn; Bend Brewing Co.
June 15: Tsunami Books, Eugene
June 16: Laughing Horse Books, Portland
June 18: Last Word Books, Olympia, WA
June 21: Revolution Books, Seattle
June 23: Village Books, Bellingham
June 25: Vancouver, CA
June 27: Northern Idaho, sponsored by The Oberver, Don Harkins
June 29: Free Speech Zone, Salt Lake City, UT
June 30: Off The Beaten Path Bookstore, Steamboat Springs, CO
July 2: Left Books, Boulder, CO
July 3: Drinking Liberally, Colorado Springs



NEWSLETTER #2
March 27, 2007

Hello.

Tomorrow I give Ruth a hug and drive away to Kansas City for the first
stop on my book tour, a meeting of the K.C. Drinking Liberally group.

It?s been one hundred years since I really went out and socialized. I
think this trip will be a learning experience for me.

Just finished updating the itinerary. There are seventy-eight stops
between drinking with the liberals in Kansas City to drinking with the
liberals in Colorado Springs on July 3.

Got my car worked on, tune-up, oil, two new tires. Cost about fifteen
hundred or so. And so, of course, this afternoon I?m going back to the
shop because the windshield wiper fluid still doesn?t spray. And maybe
I should have got that driver?s side radio to work, I don?t know,
maybe.

I did figure out the iPod, with the help of my kids, Sam and Emily.
Ruth bought me a map and Lisa Casey at All Hat No Cattle and Bart at
Bartcop.com sent me T-shirts. Awesome.

At 51, it?s been awhile, almost thirty freaking years, since I took my
last road trip in my dad?s 1959 Chevy with the wings, and my dog, and
cowboy hat I bought in Fort Collins after visiting my sister. I always
called her derisively ?my rich sister.? That?s maybe not fair, but her
husband, once the manager of KCOL radio in Fort Collins, was up on the
dais when President Gerald Ford visited Fort Collins in the 1970s. I
don?t like Gerald Ford. He?s dead and I still don?t like him. He was
supposed to be a man?s president, football player and all. If he was
half a man he wouldn?t have lied to us all with the rest of the Warren
Commission. Oh, well, what you gonna do with rich bastards? About all
you can do is holler. They?re still gonna do whatever it is they do.

Anyway, dad?s brown and white Chevy, my dog, Nicki, sitting in the
front seat, looking around at me, out the window, with Buddhist
detachment. Headed out west, to Oregon, to find the sun, the truth,
the girl of my dreams, my ass with both hands, I don?t know. Dad died
in 1981 in an Omaha hospital, of kidney failure, the day before Ruth
and I got married. That has been awhile, too. Wish I still had the
white plastic Jesus we used to have on the dashboard of the Chevy. Bet
it would come in handy.

I never did want to do this, take a book tour. In my mind, that?s the
reason you write books, because you don?t or won?t talk. But my books
are good, really, trust me, and they deserve a chance to live. So I?m
going to give about eighty speeches more than I have ever given in my
life ? and I think it will be a blast. When it?s all over, after you
get back and sit with a quart of beer in both hands on the back porch,
that kind of a blast, not necessarily while, oh, well, that?s enough.

I need to just go do it. Right. I hear you.

First, I need to put this letter to the IRS in the mail.

seeya

Mike
March 27, 2007

Internal Revenue Service
Kansas City, MO 64999-002

Hello,

Enclosed is a crossed-out tax form.

I will not cooperate with the murderous regime of George W. Bush.

President Bush and his administration planned and carried out the
attacks on the United States on 9-11-01, in order to attack Iraq and
steal their oil.

In the eyes of Bush and Cheney and Rove, the war is going according to
plan. They and their friends are making millions, billions, from the
oil, from the defense industry, while the poor go without, while
social services are cut in order to pay for more war and killing.

As a Christian, I cannot go along with this.

I must protest.

Sincerely,

Mike Palecek




NEWSLETTER #3
The American Dream Book Tour & Protest Across America

by Mike Palecek


OMAHA ? It's incredible the number of times I have to pull over to =20
pee. Hello from the road, The American Dream Book Tour & Protest =20
Across the USA has arrived in Omaha.

This past week I left my home in Sheldon, Iowa and traveled south to =20
Kansas City, then Newton, Kansas, Lawrence, then back to Kansas City, =20
and now Omaha.

I am so lucky to have this chance to see all this, to meet these =20
people, to try to fight the murderous Bush government, the killer of =20
Paul Wellstone, the perpetrator of  9-11, torturers, thieves, killers =20
of young people, men, women, babies.

All thanks to Ruth for her support and letting me have this =20
unbelievable opportunity.

I'm staying this week with Kevin and Laura McGuire. Ruth and I lived =20
with the McGuires, and others during the 1980s in a resistance =20
community in Omaha called Greenfields, which Kevin named after an =20
anti-war song, The Greenfields of France.

Wednesday night I met with the Kansas City Drinking Liberally group in =20
downtown K.C. at Harlings bar, and stayed with someone who writes =20
greeting cards for Hallmark. Then Thursday, it was on to the Mennonite =20
community of  Newton, where I stayed with Don and Eleanor Kaufman. Don =20
is from Ruth's hometown of Freeman, South Dakota. Eleanor is on the =20
board of A Thousand Villages and Don is a tireless, lifelong =20
peacemaker and war tax resister.

I spoke to a group of six at Peace Connections on Main Street in =20
Newton, then down the street to Faith & Life bookstore where I sat =20
through my first-ever book signing, just me and the table. I did =20
manage to sell one book.

In Lawrence I spoke at the public library on Friday evening, then =20
Saturday joined the weekly anti-war vigil at the courthouse then =20
across the street to the Solidarity bookstore to introduce myself. Met =20
some great people, notably Marvin, who has just gone through prostate =20
cancer surgery and still makes it to the vigils and also works at the =20
local soup kitchen.

It was very cool to have Greg and Michelle Albrecht in Lawrence =20
shooting a documentary of my book tour. They also met me in Omaha the =20
week before to film at the Pottawattamie County Jail, the Douglas =20
County Jail, St. Cecilia's Cathedral and Offutt Air Force Base.

In Lawrence I stayed with Char and Joe Grant. Joe's biography one of =20
the amazing American resistance stories waiting to be told. He has =20
tales to tell of the Cuban revolution, Leavenworth penitentiary and =20
independent publishing. He once had his paper in Cedar Rapids burned =20
down because he was doing his job too well. Nobody burned down Dan =20
Rather's building. There would be no need.

In Kansas City, on Saturday night, I spoke to four people at the =20
Crossroads Infoshop on Troost Avenue. Before the talk I drove around =20
the neighborhood and looked at the murals of Martin Luther King Jr. =20
and sat in the parking lot at McDonald's, catching up on my writing, =20
and wondering why the blacks live here, looking down those streets =20
into those neighborhood and wondering what goes on there, what stories =20
are there that need to be told. And why is it that black people live =20
in neighborhoods like this. How did that happen and why do we tolerate =20
it? Jason Miller, the internet journalist, and Chuck Monson, longtime =20
radical writer and publisher, were there to hear me, and I appreciated =20
very much having them.

On the way out of Kansas City that night the highway passed the =20
downtown area and I could see the big building and the lights out of =20
the corner of my eye while I clutched the paper with Chuck's =20
directions in both hands on the steering wheel. I remembered coming to =20
Kansas City once in the '80s from Omaha on a bus, walking the streets, =20
"becoming a homeless person on purpose." I took the bus back to Omaha =20
later that night. I couldn't be a homeless person. I had a place to go =20
to. I couldn't go where I did not belong.

So many smart people I'm meeting. It reminds me of my first =20
experiences as a peacenik in Saint Paul, Washington, New York, Omaha ? =20
everyone so smart. I shouldn't be here. I hang around anyway.

I am way outside my comfort zone as I drive around these cities and =20
meet and speak to these people. It's good for me, as my comfort zone =20
is sitting on the sofa with a yellow and red afghan pulled over my head.

I did a phone interview on the way to Newton with a reporter from =20
Sioux Falls who agreed with me that Bush and Co. did 9-11 themselves. =20
That night I was suffering from iPod withdrawal as somehow I lost all =20
259 songs. I was going down the road without Natalie Maines, John =20
Prine, Guy Clark, Jerry Jeff Walker, Jackson Browne. I turned on the =20
radio and heard the usual clutter, turned it off and enjoyed being =20
away from America for a while.

When I drive I gawk. I'm always looking for Bigfoot, not in the =20
metaphorical sense of one of my books, but it da flesh. I think I saw =20
one once near Spearfish, South Dakota in the early '80s and once on a =20
rainy night on the interstate in southern Minnesota in the early '90s.

I also like to look at old, lonesome dirt roads that I pass. The ones =20
that roll, wind, are rocky or muddy or just go on forever to nowhere =20
to everywhere. I like to imagine the mystery of where those roads lead =20
and the interesting people at the end.

I remember when Ruth and I moved to the Sandhills of Nebraska in 1990 =20
so that I could work as a reporter on the Ainsworth Star-Journal. I =20
loved the idea that there was so much land and so few people. I had =20
just gone crazy, insane, clinically depressed during six months in the =20
Council Bluffs county jail for civil disobedience at Offutt AFB and =20
the farther away I was from people the better. Then the first Gulf war =20
came and I wrote in the newspaper that I did not support the troops. =20
We got threats, my column was cancelled. I quit the paper and we found =20
our own tiny paper to run in southeast Minnesota.

Being in Kansas made me recall the night I arrived at Leavenworth =20
Penitentiary on a prison bus. It was a dark and stormy night all =20
right. The lighting cracked and the front steps looked like a thousand =20
steps straight up to hell.

Later I would walk up those steps as a reporter to interview Leonard =20
Peltier and the steps did not seem so steep.

Roads, streets, steps, to nowhere, everywhere, dead ends, new beginnings.

I recommend it.

Next stops on The American Dream Book Tour:

Monday, April 2, A Novel Idea Bookstore, Lincoln, Nebraska, book =20
signing, 1 pm.
Tuesday, April 3, Soul Desires Bookstore, Omaha, 6 pm.
Wednesday, April 4, The Reading Grounds, Omaha, 7 pm.
Thursday, April 5, Wayne State, College, Wayne, Nebr., 330 pm.
Friday, April 6, Zandbroz Variety Bookstore, Sioux Falls, S.D., 7 pm.

Palecek books available at:

cwgpress.com [The American Dream]
howlingdogpress.com [Looking For Bigfoot]
badgerbooks.com [Twin/Joe Coffee's Revolution]
mainstaypress.com [Terror Nation]