The Dallas Peace Clique

So as per usual the Dallas Peace Center is a little do-nothing clique that refuses to be open to the public or, for that matter, respond to e-mails from Dallas residents (we've got seven complaints on you already) asking how they can attend?

This is how you think you build a peace movement?

Jess, Jim, Ty, Ava, Dona and C.I.



The above e-mail went out to the Dallas Peace Center Friday morning after Dallas residents began e-mailing this site complaining about the fact that there was a fundraiser with Cindy Sheehan on Saturday and they couldn't get an address for it or any basic information even after e-mailing the person Cindy Sheehan listed as the contact at her site. There was nothing on the event at the Dallas Peace Center's website.



Yes, we're back to our least favorite peace clique in the world. We covered them in 2007 with "How Not To Stage A Rally" and "A Day in Dallas and time wasted at Parkland." We got a nasty little e-mail on those articles from the peace clique insisting we should have checked with them. We were told that professional journalists would have.



No, they wouldn't have.



They wouldn't have for the same reason that we didn't.



We were writing about what we observed first hand after flying into Dallas at the last minute for that event.



We were aware that numerous community members had attempted to contact them and that Isaiah had used the e-mail address listed as a contact to e-mail repeatedly, stating he would be covering it for Third and never received a reply.



In other words, we were writing about what we observed and we'd already made efforts to contact them but there was no need to do so in order to write about what we saw with our own eyes.



Billie was always the most vocal about how the Dallas Peace Center is nothing but a clique. Not interested in growing membership but desperate to feed their own egos, their actions make clear over and over.



Take last March when they staged another do-nothing action. Kimberly Thorpe (Dallas Observer) reported:



The procession walked mostly in silence and through empty streets. Only a few heads turned at a bus stop on Commerce Street. This had some of the protesters grumbling. "We're in the wrong place," whispered one to a man in front of him. "I don't understand why we're here. We need to be in a mall." Several heads nodded. Then a 59-year-old man who gave his name only as Hank spoke up.



Thorpe did ask the Dallas Peace Clique for a comment and they insisted that downtown Dallas on a Saturday was taking it to the seat of power. Now we've been in downtown Dallas on a Saturday so if you haven't, let's explain it to you: It's dead. Downtown Dallas where they were marching has nothing on the weekend except possibly the library. The West End is blocks away and the marchers were out of its sight. If you want to hold a protest in Dallas where no one will see, do it on the weekends downtown with a tiny turnout (thirty-five people).



We got complaints on Wednesday about non-responses from the Dallas Peace Clique. Jess e-mailed the ones writing and asked them to let us know if it continued Friday morning. It did. At which point, he wrote up the e-mail and signed our names to it as we'd already discussed.



The e-mail was 'effective' in that it finally got some of those e-mailing to ask about the location of the event e-mails.



At 3:32 p.m. on Friday, the Dallas Peace Clique e-mailed the following to one community member:



Leslie Harris should be sending you an Evite.
Thanks for your interest!



An Evite!!!!! Of course the Evite never came. Thanks, Leslie and Dallas Peace Clique.



The same day (Friday) at 11:37 Leslie Harris his/herself sent out an e-mail to another community member:



Please call me at (214) 437-***7 for info about the event.
Leslie Harris



At 11:00, that community member was in court until 4:20 and didn't check his e-mail until later that night. Thanks, Leslie and Dallas Peace Clique.



Ourselves?



We got an e-mail from them Friday and on Saturday.



Friday at 11:00 (Central) we got an e-mail stating:



Thank you for the information.
I have checked through my email and am fairly certain that I have responded to every one that I received. Would you please forward me the emails of the people who have tried to contact us?


We don't forward e-mails from our readers. Sorry. Saturday morning this came in:



Sorry ~ this went into my SPAM folder and I hadn't checked it for a day. Did Trish from the Dallas Peace Center contact you? If not, you can call me at (214) 437-***7 for info.
Leslie Harris
214-437-***7



Now people in the area have pretty much washed their hands of the Dallas Peace Clique. It's seen as a White-White organization that doesn't want new members and that's run as a private club and not as a movement building organization. But seven members were willing to attend because it was Cindy Sheehan and they knew she was either trying to retire her campaign debt or had just retired it, they knew her son had been in the hospital and they knew she was still speaking out against the continued war in Iraq. So they were willing to deal with the clique if it meant they could donate.



But to donate, they'd need to have details about the event. They never got them. Evites never came. And that's so typical of the Dallas Peace Clique and goes a long way towards explaining why the group is such a failure.



When we were going over the DPC's e-mails for this feature, Dallas pointed out the address of the DPC listed on an e-mail. Dallas lives a ten minute drive away from their office and there are at least five community members that live one street over (Hall St.) from the office and twenty that live with four streets either way and . . . As he listed and listed, we realized that they missed out on a lot of potential donors if the event was at their offices. (We have no idea where the event was.) When we were still not getting it, he said, "It's the street with that Thai place Trina loved." Oh, we all said and then "OH!" as we realized how many community members lived uptown, downtown and in Highland Park.



If and when the they run their organization like an organization and not a clique, the Dallas Peace Center may find a number of volunteers and new members. As it is, they continue to demonstrate why those in the D-FW area adamantly opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will have nothing to do with DPC.



We focus on them because a huge number of our readers are in Texas and a strong number are in the D-FW area. (Most of them were TCI community members and responded to C.I.'s demolishing of the myth of the 'red' states in 2004 which solidified the relationship of TCI with southern readers.) But what's going on there is not particular to what goes on elsewhere in the country. The peace movement didn't build because they didn't work on building. Even when the country was paying attention to the illegal war, even when people cited it in polls repeatedly as something they opposed, the 'movement' was unable to translate that into bodies and one of the reason was the refusal to build a movement. It was so much more fun to get a name in for the weekend and just keep him or her for your clique. It was so much better to take attitudes with first-timers at rallies. The notion that a movement had to be welcoming and had to work on building a membership never entered the minds of a great many 'leaders' and the results are very clear.



They whined last time that it was so unfair that they weren't allowed to comment. We'd argue that their actions have been a comment all along and what they've said is: Screw you.