Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

As is sometimes the case, I only heard about Christie and his part in the anti-apartheid fight after he died.

Renfrew Christie was a white South African scientist and member of the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress. He went to Oxford University and studied South Africa's history of electrification "so I could get into the electricity supply commission’s library and archives, and work out how much electricity they were using to enrich uranium," he told the BBC. That in turn let them figure out how much enriched uranium South Africa had, and many bombs it could build.

When he returned to South Africa, he was arrested and, after 48 hours of torture, wrote a forced confession, which he told the BBC was the best thing he ever wrote

noting that he had made sure the confession included “all my recommendations to the African National Congress” about the best way to sabotage Koeberg and other facilities.

“And, gloriously, the judge read it out in court,” Dr. Christie added. “So my recommendations went from the judge’s mouth” straight to the A.N.C.

Christie died of pneumonia last month, at the age of 76.

I'm linking to siderea's post, which includes the text of the (paywalled) NY Times obituary.

I went to a protest rally/march today on the Boston Common. The March for Truth (or marches, there were events in more than 100 cities) demanded an investigation into Trump's Russia ties, which overlapped a more general anti-Trump message. The speakers in Boston talked about some of the resistance actions since December, as well as reminding us how much crap has gone down in the last six months that we've needed to fight.

I'm no good at estimating crowds, certainly not from inside, but the Boston turnout was at least several hundred, maybe as much as a couple of thousand. The march went around a loop on the Common; it felt a little odd to be starting and ending in the same place.

This time I remembered to bring water and sunscreen (though not a hat). I really ought to start making signs. I skipped a chance to have lunch with cattitude's sister to save my energy for the protest; Cattitude wound up not feeling up to doing both, so I'm glad I saved my energy. (If I knew his sister better it might have been a harder choice.)

[Yes, this is sketchy and I may try to revise or extend it later, but I wanted to post something.]

cattitude and I just got home from an Arlington meeting for the livestream/beginning to do stuff of the ACLU's "People Power" grassroots initiative. (Yes, a national organization trying to organize a grassroots anything is weird, but we have information on getting stuff done at the city, town, or county level.) The first project is to try to get local law enforcement not to cooperate with ICE, with specifics on what to do and not do, that apparently were developed by ACLU lawyers working with police chiefs and such.

There's a proposal to make Arlington a sanctuary town on the next town meeting agenda; someone at the meeting is going to get in touch with the state ACLU to see whether he should try to get the proposal amended, or whether it's close enough. Someone else is going to be contacting the attorney general, I think to ask what the state is doing (I've forgotten the details, so I'm glad it's not my task). We might also be calling the Middlesex County sheriff to ask about the pieces of this enforcement thing that are relevant to his job.* It was good to talk to other locals who want to do something, and we have another meeting scheduled in a few weeks. (This was one of at least three events in Arlington, so we may wind up coordinating, or people who went to this meeting may go to the next meeting of one of them, or vice versa.)

I was surprised to see Cyd (WINOLJ/DW) there; she said she hadn't been able to find a Belmont meeting, and left when we got into discussing Arlington-specific plans.

Side note: the host offered tea (several choices of tea, and a proper electric kettle), but when I asked about milk and sugar had only hemp milk, so I tried it, and didn't like it at all (unlike soy milk). I gave up on that and had iced tea instead, for the caffeine.

*I gather that in most of Massachusetts, the sheriff's job is only to run and set policy for the county jail, so "don't turn people over to ICE or ask about immigration status" is relevant, but reminding them about the importance of warrants isn't.