Hollister (California) Pinnacle  1-22-04

Strange protest in Hollister
War- and anti-war activist encounter uneventful until the toy gun fiasco

BY KACI ELDER
Pinnacle Staff Writer

The wheels of global politics rolled into town Friday night with a bang.

A presentation by a touring group of pacifists became slightly less peaceful when Hollister police arrived to investigate a report of a weapon being brandished inside the San Andreas Brewery.

While a small group protested the anti-war Wheels of Justice group outside, someone else called police when satirist Dave Lippman, who is part of the group, used a toy pistol as a prop.

Three officers approached server Terri Lamb on the sidewalk while she took a short break around 10:30 p.m.

"They said, is there a guy with sunglasses in there?," she recalled. "We have a report of a gun. And I said, 'Come with me!'"

The gun in question was a plastic one Lippman uses in his act to point to political hotspots on a world map. Yet by the time officers arrived, nearly half an hour after Lippman's act ended, he was changing out of his oversized mirrored sunglasses and navy blue blazer.

The officers walked around for a few minutes, and then told a group of young adults not to brandish guns inside. The befuddled group nodded their heads abstractedly, then left. The officers left, too.

"I've done this act about a thousand times, and I've never had the police show up!" Lippman said later.

But it didn't stop there. Another anonymous caller, this time dialing the brewpub, asked the cook why they let communists in the restaurant.

"He said, 'I'm just the dumb cook. I don't know anything," said Carol Millar, co-owner of the brewery.

As regulars nursed their mugs on barstools and young men popped pinball triggers, Lippman played the persona, "George Shrub, the only singing CIA agent," taking satirical swipes at everyone in Bush's inner circle.

Lippman traveled on the Wheels of Justice 40-foot bus for two months before coming to Hollister, performing his comedy act at churches, schools and the occasional pub across the country. His act is meant to uplift the crowd after his bus-mates share somber, first-hand testimonials of the effects of war and sanctions on people living in Iraq, Palestine and Israel.

Deborah Wianecki, a member of Hollister in Black, planned the local pit stop. Hollister in Black is a group of peace activists who stand in silence each Friday on the corner of Fourth and San Benito streets. They wear black to signify the deaths war causes. To Wianecki, the media's war coverage neglects the perspective of ordinary Iraqis and Palestinians. "One of the reasons I've been interested in getting Wheels of Justice into town is to offer another perspective of the war," she said.

At Friday's weekly peace vigil, Wianecki invited the people "on the other side of the street" - across Fourth Street - to Lippman's performance at the brewpub and to a talk at First Presbyterian Church earlier that evening.

Those on the other side, who call their counter-demonstration a Freedom Rally, don't see the point in sitting at the same table.

"They're not gonna change me, and I'm not gonna change them. All we'd do is get mad at each other and I don't want to do that," said Marvin Jones. A chilly evening breeze whipped up his red, white and blue windbreaker as he stood outside the brewpub in protest, holding a sign that read, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of all who threaten it."

Bus manager Elizabeth Russell saw no problem with the picketers outside the pub. Russell, who lives on the Mississippi River in Illinois, joined the bus tour two weeks ago with her husband, Chris, and their two children. In her short time on the bus she has faced hostility by members of some synagogues and civic groups, who are angered that Wheels of Justice speakers criticize Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Compared to those groups' attempts to shut down presentations in Palo Alto and Davis, Hollister's counter-demonstrators were calm. "They're standing there voicing their opinion and that's OK. They're not trying to shut anybody down. Dissension is OK," Russell said.

The bus tour has been to sixteen states since departing Chicago in August 2003, talking with people from Omaha to Oakland. They plan to tour indefinitely.

The Wheels of Justice calendar, tour journal and complete platform can be accessed at www.justicewheels.org