Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2002 02:45:15 EST
From: freemanaz@aol.com
Subject: [azpeace] All tiny war protest is saying, is give peace a chance
To: azpeace@yahoogroups.com
Cc: lpaz-discuss@yahoogroups.com, dfc_talk@yahoogroups.com, mcyd@yahoogroups.com
Reply-To: azpeace@yahoogroups.com


http://www.arizonarepublic.com/ahwatukee/articles/0330thomason30Z14.html

 All tiny war protest is saying, is give peace a chance


March 30, 2002 


Mike Renzulli is on a mission in the East Valley but you'd barely know it.

Renzulli is conducting what may be the most peaceful and smallest war protest 
on record. But this doesn't discourage the articulate anti-war demonstrator.

On the third Tuesday of each month since December, Renzulli and no more than 
two other sign-carrying war protesters have paraded quietly in front of the 
U.S. Armed Forces Recruiting Office at 1116 S. Dobson Road in Mesa.

"Please bring signs and a desire to walk. We will walk the circumference of 
the sidewalk," Renzulli's brief call to non-arms on the Internet stated last 
week.

No matter how you feel about the war, you've got to respect a 33-year-old 
mortgage lender who paddles upstream against a heavy current of public 
opinion and does it as if he is rowing across a placid lake.

Like flower children, war protesters haven't been in vogue since the Vietnam 
War. And recruiting new-millennium peaceniks, even for duty ne day a month, 
is particularly tough. The vast majority of Americans, Renzulli said, are 
convinced the only way to eradicate terrorism is to conduct war on countries 
that sponsor it.

But Renzulli said he is confident that what he calls America's 
"interventionist foreign policy" inspires retaliation, adding that "9-11 
occurred because of our involving ourselves in politics in countries both 
militarily and politically."

His move to the anti-war front is rooted in more popular domestic rebellions 
here in recent years.

In 1996, he joined the unsuccessful crusade to repeal a sales tax imposed 
without a public vote to build Bank One Ballpark. Three years later, after 
shredding his Republican voter-registration card and joining the Arizona 
Libertarian Party, Renzulli found himself at the center of another futile but 
high-profile cause.

He became a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit that sought to overturn a 
Phoenix ordinance regulating adult businesses. Renzulli said the law was an 
invasion of privacy and an indirect infringement of the First Amendment.

Now, as a "Jeffersonian Democrat," he is back on the streets with his message 
of peace.



Reach Thomason at art.thomason@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-7971.