snurri | Oct. 29th, 2007

2500
Originally uploaded by Snurri

"Following the Exile, many fledgling grassroots political groups were cut off from both their larger organizations and their national and international concerns. As a result they were forced to adjust their focus to local matters, or to break down completely--as other, more established commercial, civic, and philanthropic organizations soon did. The city's Freemasons, for instance, were reduced to small, largely inactive factions characterized by mutual suspicion, while the local Rotary Club simply disintegrated as individual members scrambled to protect their assets. . . . Younger organizations with less stable identities tended to react with more agility to the changing circumstances. The Black Panther Party, for instance, moved rapidly in the days immediately following the Exile, centering its efforts on the Western and Larchmont neighborhoods. The Panthers established a food bank, instituted armed neighborhood patrols, and took over the administration of several apartment buildings in the area. The Panthers were later criticized for these actions; shopkeepers charged that the food had been looted from their stores, and landlords protested the seizure of their property. As Panther spokesman Roland Coyne points out, however, it is difficult to justify singling out the organization's actions in those early days, considering the general lawlessness of the time. . . . Indeed, the Western and Larchmont neighborhoods remain some of the safest and most prosperous in the city, with the Panthers sponsoring schools, hospitals, and their own Garbage Gang, the Sole Survivors. . . . The city's chapter of the National Organization for Women, a group not yet a year old, experienced a metamorphosis more tortured than that of the Panthers. Headquartered at 2500 Stonebridge Avenue, the office was staffed by part-time director Ernestina Hunter and three volunteers: nursing student Annie Ling and sisters Deborah and Marsha O'Connell, the former a police officer and the latter a former nun turned psychiatrist. The four spent the first week following the Exile placing stranded suburban women in safe shelters and drumming up food donations door-to-door--no small feat, considering the lack of telephones and the survivalist mood of the populace. . . . The four had taken to sleeping in their offices, and that is where they were on April 10, 1967, when the Stonebridge Fire broke out. Some believe that the women never woke, but subsequent developments point to a more agonizing end. The building, like so many which stood on Stonebridge, was left in ruins; but its front door, at least, would be seen again. . . . The city is no stranger to spirits (for information on the Council of Ghosts, see pages 94-98 and 422), but the 2500, as they are often called, are among the most feared and loved. Their door appears to women in peril or need, at night, on darkened streets, often lit by a fiery glow. Sometimes it offers refuge, and the ghosts themselves remain unseen; at other times Deborah O'Connor manifests outside, firing ghostly bullets at would-be attackers. Women who have sheltered within speak of soothing hands which treated their injuries, and a comforting voice which offered counsel, but have as yet been unable to describe faces or surroundings. They usually wake in the morning outside the doors of free clinics or shelters. . . . Some men claim that the doorway has appeared to them as well, speaking words of such force that they are brought to their knees, and are forever changed. (Noted spectrologist Julianna Leo has suggested that these claims are part of an attempt at parasychological appropriation of female power.) It is rumored that such a road-to-Damascus conversion was what prompted the Gemini Society to finally allow women to join their ranks." (p.23-26)

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Mumble Herder

y no se lo trago la tierra

Oct. 29th, 2007

2500

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