Sep. 06, 2006 - Issue #568: Sex in the City

Local activists camp out for peace on 9/11

The late former city councillor Tooker Gomberg is remembered as one of Edmonton’s most colourful—and, often, controversial—local politicians.

A year before his election to city council in 1992, Gomberg gained notoriety as the organizer of a “peace camp” to protest the Gulf War. He and other local activists camped out in front of Canada Place on Jasper Avenue for the full 47 days of the conflict—no small feat, considering that Operation Desert Storm began in mid-January.

Now another group of concerned Edmontonians is planning to revive the idea. Local activists will launch what they are calling the Earth Peace Camp this Mon, Sep 11 at Churchill Square with an evening of speakers and entertainers. After taking in performances from Bill Bourne and Guy Smith, among others, the demonstration will move to Canada Place for a candlelight vigil and the official start of the camp-out.

“I used to work for Tooker Gomberg,” explains event organizer Ken Kirk, who some Edmontonians might remember as the Marijuana Party’s candidate for the riding of Edmonton-Strathcona in the 2000 federal election. “So we’re doing this, to a certain extent, to honour his memory and his initiative and his example, but beyond that we are hoping to raise awareness of issues regarding peace and we’re hoping to put some pressure on the government as well.”

Kirk hopes that this action, like Gomberg’s 1991 campaign, helps to make ordinary Edmontonians more aware of not just the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but also of the “somewhere around 30 armed conflicts in progress around the earth,” according to the group’s press release.

The press release also charges that “the mainstream corporate media seems to be fixated on speaking of a small number of them.”

The organizers of the Earth Peace Camp, therefore, aren’t about to pledge to keep up the camp-out for as long as the current deployment of Canadian troops in the Middle East lasts (the aim of the original peace camp), although Kirk hopes to see the protest last well into the fall.

“How long the peace camp will go will depend largely on how the community responds,” Kirk admits. “We’re going to try to continue as long as we can … or maybe just until the snow flies.” V

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