A whirlwind of action: Serving homeless, Protesting a Halliburton / pharmaceutical company lawyer , and protesting Mayor Williams

Saturday, the DC Anti-War Network (DAWN) continued its service to the
homeless outside of the Canadian Embassy. The numbers are very small, but
those there are very appreciative.  We see some of the same residents every
week.

We'll be back there next Saturday, though perhaps at a different time.

After that, a group of us per a decision in Tuesday's working group meeting, went
by car to McLean, VA, to the home of Richard L. Rainey.  Who is Richard Rainey?
Richard Rainey is an intellectual property lawyer with Covington & Burling.  Huh?
Covington & Burling is a law firm that receives a large chunk of money from
Halliburton to lobby and work on its behalf - see
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/campaign_money_2004.html.  Richard
Rainey is one lawyer who has done work for Halliburton.  He has also done work
on behalf of GlaxoSmithKline (associated with Huntingdon Life Sciences), as well
as pharmaceutical companies, defending their patents and intellectual property
(in one case keeping a scientist from getting a job with a generic pharmaceutical
company). See his bio (and find his contact information) at
http://www.cov.com/lawyers/rrainey/biography.html .

In Rainey, so many connections existed before us, we felt that it deserved a visit
to his home, which happens to be in McLean.

If you have never been in McLean, it's worth a visit.  The concentration of wealth
is absolutely enormous and unsettling.

Our trip to Rainey's was brief.  We didn't even need our pots and pans. Within
seconds of chanting, his neighbors came out to complain, and we could see
plenty of activity inside of Rainey's home.  There's a lot less noise pollution in
McLean, so it got very loud, very fast.

We decided that our point was made and being on a dead end street, we felt it
might be safer for us to get out fast, seeing no other purpose to being there
(having delivered our message that it is unacceptable for people to do business
with Halliburton - not to mention working on behalf of pharmaceutical companies
to protect their patent rights - rights that hurt many people who need medicine
throughout the world, as well as puppy killers.

So, we left, and we went back to the mayor's house.  He was home and was
watching us through the window, but I guess he got the last laugh this weekend
(after the stadium deal passed).

Our group will be proposing soon to DAWN a Halliburton divestment campaign so
that actions like the ones we've been taking have more strategic  bite.  We will
be convincing people not to do business with Halliburton, if this proposal passes. 
This hopefully was the first action in that campaign.