[Welcome, After Downing Street readers!]

I recently spoke with Mimi Evans, a New York-based progressive activist whose day job is raising money for non-profits.

She's so passionate and articulate about the peace and impeachment movements that I wouldn't have felt right about chopping her comments into textbites. So, this runs somewhat longer than I usually post.

Here, she introduces herself:

I started out protesting Bush in January, 2001 when I went to Washington with thousands of other outraged Americans after he stole the election from Gore. That was my first taste of what lay ahead.

Busloads of people, mostly '60s leftovers like myself, had descended on Washington to be met with heavily armed riot police, helicopters, snipers, and a bad attitude. At the end of the day some guy — cold and drenched and discouraged, like I — turned to me and said, "Well, it's only gonna be four years. How bad could it be?"  Read more…

The story of this event has been out for a couple of days, but it turns out there's a twist to the White-Robed Ones purported motivation for their little stroll in Gettysburg Park:

The National Park Service has granted the Ku Klux Klan's request to hold a rally and protest the Iraq war at the Civil War battlefield where Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. Gordon Young of the World Knights of the Ku Klux Klan obtained the permit last week for about 100 people to participate in a Sept. 2 event at Gettysburg National Military Park. The purpose will be to demonstrate opposition to the Iraq war and to speak on "white unity between the north and south," the permit said.

Yeah, right, the KKK (or at least one of the remaining excrudescences thereof) has now gone all peace'n'love'n'antiwar on us. Maybe we can get Sen. Obama to weigh in on whether we should reach out to these folks when they are in agreement with us on a particular cause? Read more…