WTF?? Memorial Day parade in Marin has been PRIVATIZED

[ailsagirl]

From the Ruth Group blog:

Memorial Day has been privatized! In Mill Valley, Marin County, California the parade is a private affair.

"For the third year in a row, the I Love A Parade committee - organizers of the community's Memorial Day Parade - is in a verbal slugfest with the Marin Peace and Justice Coalition over the group's desire to march in the parade, a brouhaha seemingly scant of either love or peace.

I Love A Parade doesn't want the coalition in the parade, as it was last year, and, for the moment, has won the day.

Larry Lautzker, chairman of I Love A Parade, which puts on the private event, likens the coalition's desire to participate this year to someone who 'crashes' a party.

'We are having a party and you are going to bring friends who are going to throw up on my friends.'"

How on earth did this happen? Memorial Day has been a National Holiday since 1971 and before that state after state from the end of the Civil War adopted a day to memorialize those who had died in battle. Now it's a private party?

Last year Marin Peace and Justice and its many friends were part of the parade. They were one of the largest contingents. Interestingly they were also one of the few -- the very few -- actually memorializing the dead. Others were there to walk their dogs. One flat bed truck carried a band playing loud, fun, boogying music. Party music in fact, but besides the red white and blue bunting not too much in way of memorial.

And the organizer of the private event has the gaul to cover his present actions with claims of past glory: "I've been gassed in the '60s and everything," he said. "I was a radical." Like the palimpsets of old, the early paint cannot be seen through the later daubings except through careful excavation. It's a wonderful thing to find an old masterpiece below new and gaudy painting but it is the new one that meets the eye.

http://www.cpe-sf.com/ruthgroup/


Marin IJ article

http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~24407~2893519,00.html

:wtf: