SARA DONNELLY

Out-of-body politic

SARA DONNELLY — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 21:21:11 GMT

Peace, protest, and pig grenades in Second Life
The January 27 march against the Iraq War in Washington DC attracted tens of thousands of protestors, but did it crash the Capitol? Its virtual counterpart did.

CHANT + WAVE: Avatars speak out just like in reality – only different.

The January 27 march against the Iraq War in Washington DC attracted tens of thousands of protestors, but did it crash the Capitol? Its virtual counterpart did.

At 2 pm Eastern Standard Time (5 pm in-world time) on January 29, 126 avatars stormed the virtual Capitol Hill in the online world of Second Life to demand an end to the war. Undeterred by a desolate House of Representatives, the virtual activists (in all shades of blue, pink, and pixie) and their disproportionately large signs marched in staccato spurts around the fake mall, gathered (by walking, flying, and teleportation) on the gray steps, and chanted by typing things like “Out of Iraq Now” in a “chat” box and pressing enter, then repeating the process. You wouldn’t mistake it for an old-fashioned “hell-no-we-won’t-go.” When the avatars marched around the mall under the world’s bloated orange moon, they couldn’t talk because they were too busy walking, and sometimes their clothing blipped off. Later, at the height of the rally, a huge red anarchist dragon hovered in support of the effort near the capitol dome.

In this online world, where your other you can gamble, have sex, and build fake hookah lounges to get your other you fake high, protestors create a scene not by rallying a thunderous collective chant, but by getting so many people to visit the same spot that a part of the system crashes. Most areas in Second Life can only hold about 100 avatars. So when the online demonstration got crazy, it also got exclusive. Some people who were bumped out when their computers crashed couldn’t get back in. It was sort of like getting stuck on the lame side of a police blockade.

“We had envisioned doing something small and symbolic until . . . we realized that we had clearly touched a nerve in the Second Life community,” said Ruby Sinreich, a/k/a “Ruby Glitter,” a real-world activist who helped organize the virtual-world rally. “ Although we can’t vote in Second Life, we can raise awareness and connect people and show our strength .”

They're watching you

SARA DONNELLY — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 21:18:47 GMT

Bugged Levis, unauthorized sex tapes, leaked medical records — is nothing sacred anymore?
A guide for privacy for Mainers and beyond.

These are not times for the shy. Post 9-11, it’s perfectly legal for large portions of our daily lives to be covertly monitored by the government, often without a court order. And then there’s the Internet and its virtual network of instantaneous humiliation. Or the identity thieves who experts say pick through trash for useful tidbits with which to ruin your credit.

Here in Maine, concerns about the federal government’s warrantless wiretapping program have hit especially close to home. The Maine Civil Liberties Union is representing 22 residents who want the state’s Public Utilities Commission to investigate whether Verizon secretly released Maine phone records to the government’s National Security Agency. Last Monday, August 21, the US Department of Justice sued the Maine PUC and Verizon to stop any investigation into the alleged leaks; the feds have filed similar suits in New Jersey and Missouri to quash state efforts to stop covert surveillance. Verizon, for its part, has released unsigned statements to the Maine PUC denying illegal sharing of records but has not sworn under oath that these denials are true.

Evan Hendricks, editor of the Washington, DC, newsletter Privacy Times, has studied privacy in the US since 1977. He says these days are “the best of times and the worst of times” — the worst because new technology allows information to be collected easier, the best because, he says, “in 1977, this was all a theoretical issue. It was all like, ‘Well, if they do this then this can happen.’ Now all these things have happened, there’s been misuse of information, there’s been security breaches, so you have a growing consciousness and we’re at a stage where no politician can get up and say ‘I favor invasion of privacy as good policy.’”

No politician except the president, that is.

Since George W. Bush entered the Oval Office, consumer privacy, patient privacy, and personal privacy have been significantly hampered thanks to the USA PATRIOT Act and other rule changes. So, in honor of keeping your business your business, here’s a brief list of common invasions of privacy and what, if anything, you can do to stop them.

1. Make sure what you read isn’t held against you
HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? In October 2001, just after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act, which among other increases in government surveillance abilities allows federal investigators easier access to library records. Under a gag order attached to the bill, libraries are not allowed to reveal that they have been asked for the information, let alone that they have given it.

Moving on up

SARA DONNELLY — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 20:56:12 GMT

Eli Pariser talks about virtual campaigning, winning back the house, and his move back to New England
The first time I met Eli Pariser, I had to stand in line to get to him.

NO SLEEP TILL PORTLAND: MoveOn.org’s executive director Eli Pariser left New York in May. He’ll run the cross-country staff of 15 from Maine.

The first time I met Eli Pariser, I had to stand in line to get to him. It was at a June book signing in Portland for progressive author David Sirota. Pariser had joined Sirota during a question-and-answer period about corporate power and had, consequently, outed himself as the newest power-liberal to call Southern Maine home. Pariser, the lanky 25-year-old wunderkind who runs MoveOn.org — arguably the most influential progressive political-action group in the country — didn’t get very far after the event ended and the crowd rushed him. I found him backed into a corner, his arms crossed over his chest, straining to listen to a septuagenarian from the audience who rambled over the din of the crowd about youth and why they aren’t involved and whether we can get them involved.

“So what do you think?” the man said.

“I don’t know,” Pariser replied. He smiled awkwardly.

“Well, that’s what you guys do, isn’t it? Move on?”

In fact, politicizing America’s youth is something MoveOn lives and breathes; after all, when Pariser himself was hired as executive director, in 2004, he was the ripe young age of 23. While Pariser is quick to point out MoveOn’s membership spans the generations and is not dominated by youth, the online organization’s flashy campaigns and ad contests judged by the likes of superstars Moby and Jack Black are clearly designed to jump-start his peer group.

Established in 1998 by a tech-centered couple from Berkeley, California, (self-described “accidental activists” who still sit on the board), MoveOn initially launched a small, bipartisan petitioning campaign against the Republican-led movement to impeach Bill Clinton. Not surprisingly, given the growing electoral power of the right in the late ’90s, it quickly morphed into a grassroots PAC and nonprofit focused on electing progressive candidates to public office. MoveOn has since raised (and spent) millions for advertisements, campaign contributions, and online polling. During the buildup to the Iraq war, MoveOn moved into the national consciousness with its first big campaign — a peace effort that included online petitions, anti-war television ads, and thousands of house parties across the country. Its membership spiked from a pre-war total of about 600,000 to a March 2003 total of 1.4 million, though this year some anti-war activists have lamented MoveOn’s shift in focus from the war to issues such as “net neutrality” and domestic spying.

Crypt keepers

SARA DONNELLY — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 22:10:03 GMT

The geek ghouls of the lost Haunted Mansion hang on to their wicked years
The Mansion, which opened in 1979 and closed after the summer of 1995, elevated terror to a kind of religion thanks to a core group of self-described outsiders. Audio slideshow: Sara Donnelly narrates the history of the Haunted Mansion.

SEE DEAD PEOPLE: The haunted mansion before its untimely demise.

It was a hot summer night in 1993 in the Haunted Mansion’s crypt, when 19-year-old “Sweeper Dave” of Saco pressed his thin back against the wall of his hiding spot behind the bookcase, dusted lint from his black shirt, his black cargo pants, and his newly-dyed black hair, and opened his notebook to write a love poem. The crypt was the most remote spot in the Mansion at Cascade Water and Amusement Park, located along Route 1 in Saco next to its rival, Funtown USA. While monsters in the Mansion’s winery on the ground floor could surround customers in the hallway and send them scampering back and forth like mice between tigers, the crypt shift was by nature solitary, since a dead guy in a tomb would, realistically, wake up alone. Sweeper, a/k/a Dave Gagne, didn’t mind the time by himself. Except for the pasty black and white makeup which made him break out every summer since he was 15, Sweeper actually didn’t mind anything about the job — least of which these hours zoning out to the looped crypt soundtrack of gusting wind, or writing notes to hide for other crewmembers to find. Sweeper peered through the peephole aimed down the darkened stairs. Seeing no customer making his or her wobbly way up, he crouched over his page and wrote to the House that he believed helped him become a braver man:

“I always sit alone
But not really
I read and you read along
When I’m lonely, you stay with me
When I’m happy, you keep men from getting off my guard
How can you be oppressive and friendly?
Only you
I understand your deception now
You won’t take just anyone into your confidence
They endure you until they can understand you
When they can, with your help, they can try and understand themselves.”

In 1996, the Haunted Mansion was given to the Saco Fire Department and burned to the ground during a training exercise while Sweeper — so named because he used to sweep the park — and most of the core crew watched from across Route 1. Ten years later, the crew is still blissfully haunted by the house.

Ditched

SARA DONNELLY — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 19:25:22 GMT

Did Maine’s US senators betray women during the recent battles for the Supreme Court bench?
Olympia Snowe would protect me, I thought. I continued to believe that right up until January 31, when she voted to support George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

I grew up admiring Olympia Snowe, Maine’s senior senator. She was like a mythological hero to me — the only politician whose mere mention in my bipartisan household could dissolve a burgeoning argument and soothe my grandmother’s fear of controversy. That says a lot. Family lore includes an infamous story of a political throw-down between my hippie mother and my republican grandfather during the Vietnam War. The details are hazy, but the story ends with both of them storming away from the dinner table and my grandmother in tears. As far as my grandmother — a democrat — was concerned, a woman could do few things more impolite than to argue politics, unless that woman was Olympia Snowe. If I, not being Snowe, brought up politics around my grandfather, a proud conservative voter, my grandmother would furrow her brow and shoo me away.

“Don’t start,” she would say, glancing at my grandfather. “Let’s not have an argument here.”

But a woman speaking her mind was nothing to be embarrassed by when it came to Olympia Snowe. “That Olympia,” she’d say to me, pointing to the senator on TV. “She’s one tough cookie, I’ll give her that. She won’t be pushed around.”

Both my grandmother and my mother told me about Snowe’s hard-luck life (she was orphaned in 1956 at age nine, lost her first husband in a car crash at age 26, and watched her stepson die of heart failure in 1991). They talked about her characteristic independence, her penchant for “telling it like it is.” She was a Republican who hadn’t forgotten about the little guy. For me, the cartoonish figure of Snowe, her jet-black hair eternally pulled back into the same low ponytail, her accent stretching vowels like bubble gum, was more recognizable than any of the president’s men.

Growing pains

SARA DONNELLY — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 03:18:58 GMT

After decades spent partying, is the Old Port — gasp — getting old?
Three years after his nephew was pummeled so hard in the Old Port one night he was sent to the hospital with face fractures, former bar owner Will Gorham, now a city councilor, is leading the charge to clean up Portland’s nightlife.

Three years after his nephew was pummeled so hard in the Old Port one night he was sent to the hospital with face fractures, former bar owner Will Gorham, now a city councilor, is leading the charge to clean up Portland’s nightlife.

Gorham believes the Old Port is too dangerous for respectable Portlanders — a conviction he says comes not just from his nephew’s run-in but also from his observations and conversations with district constituents. Gorham’s answer? Limit the number of bars there. His near-religious fervor has the backing of the Portland police and six of nine city councilors.

Thanks largely to Gorham, the city council voted January 18 to further restrict the number of new bars in the area with the highest density of drinking establishments in the city. “We have two Old Ports in this city,” Gorham declared at the council meeting. “One at 8 am that goes through the afternoon and then at 10, 11 o’clock, it becomes the other Old Port. That’s the one I’m trying to correct.”

The area Gorham hopes to “correct” is already smack in the middle of a critical evolution. For nearly four decades, the Old Port was known both as a working waterfront and a nightlife destination — the place your generation and your parents’ generation went to unwind or to get into trouble. It was the rough-and-tumble downtown spot for a deeply working-class small city. But that city has changed, so the Old Port is changing.

One notable harbinger of the Old Port’s future faces the most infamous party corner in the neighborhood. In 2003, the luxury Portland Harbor Hotel opened next to the intersection of Wharf and Union streets, across from the Iguana bar. Almost immediately, the hotel owners complained to the Iguana’s landlord Ed Baumann of noise outside on weekend nights, noise so loud the general manager of the hotel, Gerard Kiladjian, says the hotel has trouble placing guests in any of the 90 rooms facing Wharf. Kiladjian maintains the hotel’s owners knew the area is a nighttime destination but didn’t anticipate the racket it generates.

Gays and the GOP

SARA DONNELLY — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 01:59:19 GMT

Helping homosexuals come out of the closet . . . as Republicans
The latest chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans launched on December 30 in Portland.

Peace corps

SARA DONNELLY — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 01:39:39 GMT

Maine’s anti-war activists have found a way to make their congressional delegates listen. Now they’re sharing it with people in other states
In December 2004, 13 anti-war activists gathered in Senator Susan Collins’s office in Portland, Maine. They read the names of American soldiers who had died in the Iraq war, as well as an equal number of Iraqi civilians who had died.

In December 2004, 13 anti-war activists gathered in Senator Susan Collins’s office in Portland, Maine. They read the names of American soldiers who had died in the Iraq war, as well as an equal number of Iraqi civilians who had died. They occupied Collins’s office for roughly four hours and, before leaving, they asked the senator to hold a “town meeting” to discuss the war with her constituents.

On February 4, 2005, 17 activists gathered in Senator Olympia Snowe’s office, also in Portland. Again, they read the names of American soldiers and Iraqis who had died in the war — more than 2000 in total by that date. After reading each name, the activists marked X’s, in red or black marker, on a giant piece of cloth. They then asked Snowe to hold a town meeting on the war.

On March 18, 2005, 35 people gathered in Representative Tom Allen’s Portland office. They read the names of the war dead, marked X’s on a white sheet, and requested a town meeting — which Allen eventually agreed to.

On August 26, 2005, 75 people showed up for another occupation in Collins’s Lewiston office. This time someone brought a bell, which tolled for each name of the war dead.

The number of people attending each of these events is swelling, as is the pace and number of the events themselves — and that sense of momentum was all part of the Pine Tree State organizers’ plan. In little more than a year there have been seven nearly identical occupations of three of Maine’s four congressional delegates’ offices (as well as several informal meetings with US Representative Mike Michaud, who held a town meeting December 21, 2005), and they were all part of a coordinated action called the “Frequent Visit Program” (FVP), founded last December by some of Maine’s most fervent anti-war activists.

FVP’s ready-to-wear war-resistance model — an office occupation, a roll call of the dead, a request for public dialogue — has also been used in a handful of other states, including Massachusetts, thanks to FVP outreach. And with public support of the war plummeting and lightning rods like Cindy Sheehan and US representative John Murtha spreading the anti-war message, FVP creators think their particular form of protest is about to catch hold nationwide.