The following was submitted as a guest editorial by regular Ojai Post reader and occasional contributor Sean P. Keenan. Note there are some PG-13 words in the following correspondence from former Ojai resident Mac Lojowski.

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I first met Mac Lojowski in the fall of 2002. We would see him posing around town in front of the Ojai Coffee Roasters or the old Ojai Brew Pub and my wife and I would comment that he looked like he walked out of some alternate history. He’d often be wearing a kind of “Long Riders” jacket and a wide brimmed cowboy hat that looked like it was right out of the 1880’s. It was at the OBP where we struck up a conversation that invariably turned to politics. As luck would have it he was a political science major like me. Even better, we were both fairly radical leftists. While that’s not exactly rare here in Ojai, it is nice to be able to talk to someone who understands all the terms. We became fast friends.

We were both wary of the build up to war with Iraq that seemed to be happening all that fall and winter. Back then, I really didn’t think we’d actually end up illegally invading Iraq. To be honest, I just didn’t think BushCo had the ability to pull it off. It was so obviously ridiculous and the outcome would be a complete catastrophe. Anyone who was paying attention and understood the implications knew that the administration was lying though its teeth. Iraq had been systematically destroyed over the previous 12 years. It was flatly ludicrous that Iraq could be a threat to us in any way whatsoever. The idea that the Iraqis were somehow implicated in 9/11 was worse than stupid, it was a flat out lie and we knew it then. In fact, I remember that in January of 2003 Mac and I were sitting in front of the OBP saying that an invasion of Iraq would be the worst foreign policy mistake in the entire history of the United States. Sometimes it sucks to be right, I mean correct.
That February 15th was the largest protest in Human History. At least fifteen million people, world-wide, marched against the build up to war. I was in Los Angeles with upwards 50,000 other people marching in the worst downpour on record for downtown LA. It was cold, it was wet, but it was amazing. I really didn’t think there would be another Iraq war, even as Colin Powell was destroying is political career live on television by knowingly lying in his address to the UN. In fact, I bet Mac $100 it wouldn’t go down. No way.
On Monday, March 17th, things were pretty grim. It looked like I was going to lose that bet. Then I heard a rumor I had to check out. People were saying that Mac had been arrested. Here it is from our own illustrious OJAI VALLEY NEWS:
Ojai resident Mac Lojowski took his message to the streets, literally, on Monday, after hearing the new intentions of President George W. Bush to proceed with the war on Iraq. Lojowski, with a bird cage containing an American flag and a hand-made sign with the words, “Wake the (expletive) Up! America’s problems won’t be solved in Iraq,” staged a one-man sit-in in the middle of Ojai Avenue between the Arcade and Libby Park for roughly half an hour before he was hauled away by police.
Mac had decided to sit in the middle of Ojai Avenue right near the crosswalk in the center of the arcade with a birdcage with the American flag locked in it. He held a sign that said “Wake the FUCK up!” There was support from many, but there was a lot of anger against him. One woman driving a Ford Excursion (then the largest SUV on the market with a whopping 10 mpg) actually told the police as she passed the scene, “Why don’t you just shoot him.” I wonder if she’s found a buyer for that white elephant yet Remember, this was not all that long after September 11th and the President of the United States was lying to ignorant, frightened people.
That evening I got hold of Mac’s girlfriend to see who was bailing him out and if I could donate to the cause. Turned out nobody had gotten it together yet. I went down to the police station to see what was what and they told me that they had put him in county jail in Ventura ! I got really pissed off at that. A guy gets arrested for demonstrating and the cops drag him off to county? He hadn’t even resisted arrest. They started talking about arresting me. I got a bail bondsman and went down to county. The DA was actually talking about holding him and charging him with some trumped up, much bigger crime. Remember, it was weird times back then on the eve of this illegal war. They held him overnight in county jail and I went back the next morning. I started making noises about the ACLU, the Los Angeles Times and then I started asking how one goes about getting a permit to film on the premises. I announced my intention to begin shooting a documentary and was it possible to schedule an interview with District Attorney Totten. It was right about then that they thought better of charging Mac with whatever the higher crime was and kicked him lose on bail. Mac was very appreciative. He said he never ever wanted to go back to jail. I said I couldn’t blame him.
I though it was remarkable, what he had done, but I also didn’t really get the timing. It wasn’t until the following day that Bush would write his letter to Congress, and it wasn’t until Wednesday, March 19th that he presented it and kicked off the largest blunder in US history. Somehow Mac had preempted. I found out why later.
It seemed that Mac had been a student at Evergreen State College in Olympia Washington and that he had known a woman named Rachel Corrie. On Sunday, March 16th, Rachel Corrie had been deliberately murdered in the occupied territory in the Gaza Strip when she was run over, TWICE, with a D9 armored Caterpillar bulldozer. She had been trying to protect some Palestinian homes from demolition when the bulldozer, operated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), ran her over. Mac knew her and had been deeply affected by the news. It was the following day that he held his protest against the impending Iraq war. It turns out it was also a memorial to Rachel Corrie.
I give you all this background so that the following dispatches from Mac will have more context. Mac is fine, or as fine as he ever was, and he’s been on a trip around the world since the beginning of last Summer. He was traveling West on his way to a volunteer internship at the The Freedom Theater where he was to teach play-writing and journalism to Palestinian children in the Janine Refugee camp. What follows are his dispatches from Israel and the West Bank in the occupied territories. His time in Israel begins with Dispatch #5. If you think the policy of Israel with regard to the occupied territories is correct, or if you would like to remain in the dark about what is happening in the occupied territories, please read no further.
SPK

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Dispatch #5
Above the white beach sands big kites cut through the blue sky. Tall white concrete buildings flank the shore and offshore sailboats and jet skies cut across the Mediterranean. If you squint your eyes just right this could be Ft. Lauderdale. But now on my second cup of Turkish coffee, my eyes are wide open and this is Tel Aviv, Israel; no blond people need apply.
After a picture-perfect East European departure (the computers shut down and the luggage conveyor broke, causing a three hour delay, causing a small-scale Jewish riot at the Budapest airport) I arrived this morning at the Tel Aviv airport at 5 a.m. Immediately upon setting foot on the runway tarmac I was apprehended by two young soldiers who proceeded to interrogate my Israel intentions for the next twenty minutes. I guess it was a bad idea to be wearing my Evergreen State College sweatshirt, since they did ask me if I was an Evergreen student- ‘for life’ I answered.
At customs/passport control I committed the social faux-pas grand mal by asking the agent not to stamp my passport (17 countries, mostly Arab, will not allow you in their country if your passport has the Israeli stamp). This caused another half-hour of questioning by both soldiers and plain clothes intelligence who asked me over and over and over:
What are you doing in Israel?
“Just visiting.”
Why?
“This is the holy land, right? I’m looking to get closer to God.”
Where are you going in Israel?
“To the holy sites.”
Which ones?
“Umm…ummm (come on Mac, think!) the Temple Mount.”
Where is the Temple Mount?
“Umm… Jeruselum?”
Who do you know here?
“Nobody. I’m looking to make some friends.”
Where are you staying?
“Not sure, probably hostels.”
When are you leaving?
“I fly out of Jordan December 1.”
What are you going to do until then?
“Visit the holy sites.”
Which ones?
and over and over again.
Finally they let me go. For a bit it seemed that they weren’t gonna let me in and I was getting ready my hellfire rant of how much US money goes to Israeli foreign aid and I’m a goddamn tax-paying US citizen and I demand to see my embassy, but it didn’t come to that.
So I got a room that resembles a jail cell I once spent a few days in, overlooking some concrete buildings. I take a mess of buses and taxis and will arrive in Jenin on October 16 to start with the Freedom Theatre.
Until then, friends, keep on rockin’ in whatever’s left of the free world.
Mac

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Dispatch No 6
A quick history: during the second Intifada Ariel Sharon of Israel decided that the Palestinians must be crushed and the Jenin Refugee Camp was chosen to be made and “example of.” In April of 2002, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) bombed (from F-16′s and Blackhawk helicopters) the camp indiscriminately for two days, then sent ground troops, tanks and bulldozers in, while preventing the citizens to leave or medical services to enter for another five days. The end result was the complete destruction of some 300 homes, the murder of some 400+ people and the arrest of hundreds of others. Keep in mind the camp is only 93 acres of land and there is only about 13,000 residents, 70% of which are under 18 (meaning they were even younger then). This is known as the Jenin Massacre, condemned by the United Nations as a war crime.
Two years ago the Freedom Theatre was started by a small group of people (Jews, Swedes and Palestinians) who were concerned about the lack of creative/community/educational outlets to the children of the camp. Since then the theatre has been a major success, holding numerous concerts, plays, dance, acting and writing workshops, and serving as a de-facto children’s center with books, computers and art supplies. The board of directors to the theatre include Noam Chomsky, Mahmoud Darwish, Howard Brenton and many other prominent figures in the artistic/activist world.
I arrived three days ago.
I am running two workshops:
1. Journalism and Creative Writing- there are eight kids, ages 12-16. In this workshop I will be teaching them basic journalism skills and the end result will be the first publication of the Jenin Refugee Camp’s first arts and news periodical. The periodical will feature poems, short stories, community profile stories and news articles about people and life in the camp. We hope the periodical will continue after I leave.
2. Play-writing- there are 15 kids in this workshop, ages 16-19. I will be teaching them the basics of play-writing, the development of a story, how to move a story with dialogue, etc. We will be integrating acting and dance workshops with the other teachers. The goal is to have these kids write and stage a one-act play in five weeks.
I am assisting in the drama therapy workshop, run by a Palestinian actress/psychologist named Petra. This workshop works with younger kids, ages 6-12, who have serious emotional and psychological problems due to the occupation and non-stop violence of life here. Most of their family members have been killed or imprisoned by the IDF, and their houses destroyed. It’s a real heavy workshop (I sat in yesterday). It’ll wreck your heart to see these kids and how Petra teaches them about death and violence through fairy tales and acting. It’s really too much. I spent the better part of last night sobbing.
I have two translators/bodyguards- Nassar and Tariq, who are students from the Arab-American University outside the camp. They are a couple of angels. The camp is under control (I think) of the Al Asque Martyars Brigade, who are cool with the theatre. The UN hides behind their fences and the Palestinian Authority hides behind their sandbags. Aside from the constant F-16′s roaring overhead and the midnight IDF incursions into the camp, I feel safe.
The Freedom Theatre is an amazing place and I am honored to be here. I will be here until the last week of November. I encourage you to check out their website: www.thefreedomtheatre.org
Love and solidarity to all y’all,
Mac

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Dispatch #7 aka: Apache Dawn
Last night was the first night since I arrived seven days ago that I went to sleep. At about four a.m. I was rocked from bed by the sound of a very low flying helicopter and heavy gunfire and explosions. When I left the apartment a few hours later I noticed a large fire burning in town (the camp and the town border each other, the total combined area is probably no more than two square miles). The IDF invaded last night and killed either two or four people-the news isn’t quite clear right now. They were flying an Apache helicopter, courtesy of the US and the bullets they fired, the bombs they dropped, guess who gave ‘em those? Maybe the folks the IDF killed deserved it, maybe they didn’t- I’m not god nor is any government. All the kids are viewing the bodies and carnage this morning.
My journalism workshop has been canceled- I now have two (new) play-writing workshops, we start this afternoon. I’m gonna have them read George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” to start greasing their wheels, then we’ll roll into basic plot, character development and dialogue. I’m also contacting Arab solar companies for the new theatre the Freedom Theatre is building. Israel owns the power plants and controls all the electricity for the Palestinians. There is not a single solar panel in all of the West Bank. This theatre will be the first to run with solar.
I am leaving here in three weeks or sooner, depending on the situation. Everything changes day-to-day. It’s madness, anarchy and violence with no bounds. The Freedom Theatre shines like a quivering sunbeam of hope amongst all of this. I want to stand with the light, not the darkness of war and ignorance.
I hope all is well with you guys. Keep on rockin’ in whatever’s left of the free world.
Mac

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Dispatch #8 aka: Class Canceled/Holy Shit
Just ten minutes ago class was about to start- I stepped outside for a cigarette then all hell broke loose in the theatre. One of my students, Bassam, stabbed another one of my students, Faras- ripped a huge chunk off his upper arm. Faras then beat the living hell out of Bassam. Bassam left in an ambulance, unconscious, in convulsions. Faras is now also at the hospital. Both of their brothers have vowed revenge on each other and we had to call in reinforcements, who are now surrounding the theatre to keep the coming fight off theatre grounds. This is fucking crazy. There is blood all over the stage, all over my clothes, all over everything. So, class is canceled for today. Once things cool off I’m heading back to the apartment and dream about the glass of whiskey that isn’t there. OK. Over and out.
love,
mac
ps- dad -don’t tell mom about this

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Dispatch #9 aka: Breakthrough
Yesterday, I’d had too much. My play-writing group, the “Bad Boys” (the most severely traumatized boys) had been fucking off for weeks. Their attention span is about one minute and they mostly prefer fighting to any other activity. So yesterday class started, two of the boys, Balie and Sami started fighting, so I threw my books across the stage, issued my most dirty Arabic curse, told the boys I quit and stormed out of the theatre.
A half hour later the boys found me and pleaded with me not to leave. They then took me into the theatre and put on a rough skit of the play they had just written; “Checkpoint Clown.” The play involves a basic everyday occurrence for the Palestinians: crossing the numerous IDF checkpoints. The boys used four characters: 3 Israeli soldiers and 1 Palestinian clown (with full face paint, red nose, etc.) The IDF arrest the clown at the checkpoint and take him to the prison/interrogation room. At the interrogation, the solider is trying to interrogate the clown, but the clown keeps, well, clowning around. When the clown has got the soldiers laughing, he grabs one of their M-16′s and takes the soldiers prisoner. The clown then “clown tortures” the soldiers and begins interrogating them, nonsensically clown style. Soon, he has “broken” the Israeli soldiers and they become clowns too, juggling with the clown, rolling around. The play ends with the soldiers and clown running away to join the circus together.
WOW! My eyelids have been smoked! Talk about art! Talk about the surreal intersection of life and stage! Jean Genet can go piss up a rope; this is the clown show. Hands down, this is the best play I have ever seen in my life. It only took weeks and weeks of hair pulling, two knife fights, countless fist-fights, many, many packs of cigarettes, and me throwing a temper-tantrum, but at last, these kids did it. We’re going through the play again today, video taping it and having another kid write the lines down (since these kids don’t read or write), in order to tighten up the dialogue. I think that within a week at most we’ll have a solid, solid play that could stand proud on any stage in the world.
After the play, I somehow ended up going to a massive wedding party in the hills outside of town. Must have been two thousand men there (in Palestine, men and women have separate wedding parties). Thankfully we didn’t stay long, cause I saw my life flash before my eyes with every burst of bullets they shot into the air. Made it back to the apartment, drank a glass of whiskey and fell into a nice sleep. A few hours later, I thought I was dreaming about the wedding party, but no, the IDF and some “militants” were having a full gun battle on the street in front of the apartment. It went on for about a half hour and then I went back to sleep.
Hey, it’s all rock and roll friends.
Mac

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Dispatch #10 aka: A few Notes on Resistance and Revolution
Imagine This:
A 29 year old Palestinian man with radical views arrives in a very small and isolated, Christian fundamentalist town in America. He announces that he will teach the boys of the town to write plays and he will teach the girls to write journalism pieces. I think the main questions are how long would it take him to be arrested and/or killed?
Consider This:
A 29 year old American man with radical views arrived in a very small and isolated, Islamic fundamentalist refugee camp in Palestine. He announced that he was going to teach the boys play-writing and the girls journalism. What happened?
The people of the camp sent their sons and daughters to his classes. They invited him to their homes, served him dinner, coffee. They washed his clothes. They taught him to dance the traditional Palestinian Dupke dance. The local militia announced that anyone who even looked at him wrong would be shot.
You tell me what this means.
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It has been six weeks since I arrived in the Jenin Refugee Camp. I did not sleep the first six nights or days. The first night I did sleep, I was woken by the sound of Apache helicopters, bombs and heavy machine gun fire as the IDF hunted down and killed fighters from Islamic Jihad.
Over the next weeks I grew accustomed to the sound of gunfire and Apaches (and remember that “Apache” is a Navajo word that means “enemy”). I grew accustomed to a diet of hummus, coffee and Gaulouise cigarettes. I grew accustomed to the prayers of the mosques shouted over loudspeakers five times a day, starting at 4:30 a.m. I grew accustomed to the swarms of children on the streets who would follow me back and forth, every day, from the apartment to the theatre, every day asking me, “what’s you name?” (the only English they know).
What I could not grow accustomed to is the Occupation. Nobody can.
Dig it: every man and woman is born free. This is the Gift; from God or the Universe or whatever you want to call it- born free. Regardless of your views on history, religion or politics, the fact is that the Palestinian people are not free. Constant checkpoints surround every town in the West Bank, manned by tanks, armored Humvees and Israeli soldiers with M-16′s. The Palestinians have absolutely no suffrage rights, no property rights and no human rights. At the checkpoints, they humiliate the people; making them strip off their clothes, pushing them around, throwing their belongings on the ground and more often than not refusing them passage to the next town. And this is in Palestine, behind Israel’s “West Bank Barrier Wall.”
The West Bank Barrier Wall is strait out of Berlin or Warsaw or South Africa. It is about twenty feet tall, solid concrete and in many cases is runs right through neighborhoods, school yards and farms. Former US President Jimmy Carter called it as it is: Apartheid. This is the system propagated by Israel to completely break the Palestinian people. And like South Africa, the Occupation is more psychological than military.
Look, I could go on and on for pages and pages with UN, EU, Amnesty International and a whole host of other internationally recognized organizations with facts and figures about the Occupation. But, like most folks (myself included) your eyes would soon glaze over and it would be pointless. For example, I could tell you according to UN and EU figures, the IDF has murdered 898 Palestinian children since the 2nd Intifada started in Sept. 2000. You may shake your head in empathy, then continue on with your day.
But what if I told you about one child in my girl’s journalism class- her name is Noor. She is 15 years old- a small, quiet, extremely smart and shy girl. Two years ago she was in class and watched her best friend, Rgad, head explode when the IDF opened fire on the school. Just one number out of that 898. Try sitting there as a teacher to these girls and listening to this. Listen to Noor tell you how she was covered in her friend’s blood. See if your eyes glaze over with boredom. See if you can rationalize dead children. You tell Noor who the terrorists are.
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Maybe things would be different if I was sitting at a progressive theatre inside of Israel, protected by the Israeli army and the money and weapons of the United States. Maybe, just maybe, if I drank enough whiskey, forgot enough facts and left my consciousness at the metal detector, I could explain that “Israel has a right to protect herself.” Maybe I could say that, like many people do, and forget that Palestine also has a right to protect herself. The difference is that Palestine has no army, no government, no US backing, no F-16′s, no tanks and no media or government lobbyists. Furthermore, Israel has no progressive theater. Palestine does. Herein lies the keys to the next step.
The people of Palestine know that they can not compete against the Israeli army. According to the former leader of the Al Aqsa Martyars Brigade the 2nd Intifada was a failure. For every one soldier the Palestinians kill, Israel kills ten Palestinian fighters and five civilians. Israel wants the Palestinians to fight- they want them to take up arms. If you look at every cease fire in last ten years between Israel and the Palestinians, it is Israel who broke the agreement first. They intentionally provoke the Palestinians in order to engage them in vastly unbalanced warfare (aka; slaughter) which then becomes an excuse to expand settlements, take more Palestinian land and continue to withhold Palestinian tax revenues. But the Palestinians are not stupid.
As the Freedom Theaters’ Drama Therapy teacher, Dr. Petra Barghouthi explained to me, the Palestinians need a “New Resistance.” This resistance is based on education and creativity. It is based on the premise that the Palestinians must show themselves and the world that they hold the moral high ground over Israel. See, the Palestinians have the facts, but they don’t have the manipulation abilities that the Israelis do. As Hitler said “it is easier to get the masses to believe in big lies than little ones.” The Palestinians just want to tell the truth. This new resistance is to learn how to deliver the truth to the world in an educated and creative fashion and also for the Palestinian people themselves to have something beautiful that the Israelis can not take away with Barrier Walls, F-16′s and bulldozers.
It is to learn how to create an inner revolution, an inner resistance; to deny the Occupation physical property which they can destroy or take away. In this New Resistance you deny the oppressors the tools of oppression.
The Israelis can blow up this theatre, but they can not blow up the feeling, or the Gift, if you will, that these boys feel when they’re on the stage, acting out a play they wrote by themselves. The Israelis can shoot Noor’s friends dead, but now Noor is going to write a news story about it and send it out to the world. The Israelis can build Barrier Walls a hundred feet tall of solid cement and the children of Palestine will paint murals there.
This is next step.
I leave tomorrow for Jordan. I’ll spend a few days wandering around the red desert then onto Thailand. I want to thank those of you who have remained in touch with me over these lines of internet connections. Many, many times it was very hard here. Most days I went between holding back tears to holding back rage. Your correspondence helped me more than you can know.
I’ll most like be out of email touch with y’all starting 11/16-12/07. I wish you all good things and as always,
Keep on rockin’ in whatever’s left of the free world.
Mac

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Dispatch #11 aka: Last Bus to Jerusalem / Jordan
Well, last night was a small nightmare- riding the bus with the 50 boys from the theatre from the camp to a play in Ramallah. It is a journey of 30 miles and it took us, no shit, six hours. We were stopped by IDF four times (each roadblock). Each time they took us all out at gunpoint, put us up against the bus and picked, at random four or five boys to strip search on the road in front of traffic.
They then tore apart the bus, dumped our bags out, threw the boys lunches across the road, emptied water bottles and were general Nazis in every sense of the word. This happened, count it, four times in thirty miles. The last checkpoint was the worst- it was very dark out and for a good ten minutes my white skin was of no help. Like the rest of the boys, I was thrown off the bus by my shirt onto the ground, then the soldiers started screaming at me in Hebrew as I laid on the ground. I had no idea what I was supposed to do- then one soldier got really pissed and ran at me with his M-16, with the barrel in my face, he turned on the scope flashlight and was like, “oh shit.”
We had a British photographer on the bus with us and they took the memory card from his camera, also a gunpoint. At that checkpoint (the last one) they arrested arrested two of my boys- khamel and sami, ages 14 and 15, for no stated reason. Keep in mind this all happened inside of the West Bank- Palestine. This wasn’t Israel, the bus/boys were never going to Israel. This happened to Palestinian boys, inside of Palestine by Israeli soldiers. Due to this bullshit the boys missed the show (two hours late), and then had to turn around and go back through those four checkpoints again. I can only imagine what happened.
You want to make freedom fighters/martyrs/terrorists? Here’s how- you put a group of young boys, ages 10-15, on a bus and tell them they are going to see a play in Ramallah. Let the boys get overjoyed at the chance to leave the refugee camp for the first or second time in their lives. The boys get haircuts, dress up, their mothers pack them little lunches. Then you do what the IDF did last night. The occupation is psychological- it is oppression and spiritual destruction. It is sick. Pathologically sick. Israel wants to make these boys enemies.
Furthermore, now that I’m out of Israel, I can tell you something. My father asked me the other day on the phone-”where do they (the Palestinians) get their guns and bullets?” Well, check it out- they do not carry AK-47′s. The militias have M-16′s. The grenades they carry have Hebrew writing. According to a solid source I asked, the Israeli soldiers sell them these weapons. An M-16 costs 20,000 scheckles (about $5,000 USD) each M-16 bullet costs 1 scheckle (25 cents).
I just made the last bus into Jerusalem, got a hostel, drank a few beers and almost bitch-slapped some Zionist who cornered me at the sink and demanded to know why i would spend time with “those people.”
This morning, I took the 7am bus to Eilat, along with about 20 Israeli soldiers, none older than 19, all of them toting their M-16′s like peacocks. At the border crossing they did not ask me a single question. They stamped my passport and said ‘Shalom.”
I’m now in Jordan, which is just a giant desert. It’s hot as piss here, but I can see the canyons and valleys of Petra, which i will enter tomorrow.
Thanks for looking out. I’m glad we didn’t need to take drastic measures. I hope Khamel and sami get released soon.
lots of love,
mac