There are some strong opinions about Insite, Canada’s only supervised site for substance abuse victims to inject themselves with illegal narcotics.

The enforcement pillar of the drug industry, the police department, lobbies the governments to shut down the facility. The whole project has survived on six-month exemptions to Canada’s drug laws, leaving staff and clients not knowing how long the site will last. Vancouver’s Mayor Sam Sullivan makes statements on both sides of the fence and has stated that Insite might make the transition to distributing legal drugs.

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Cuando esta edición de nuestro periódico salga a la calle, quizás la masacre ordenada por George Bush contra el pueblo iraquí haya concluido o sencillamente habrá pasado a la segunda fase con la ocupación ilegal de una nación entera. Según escribo, bombas de precisión, misiles tomahawk, bombas de uranio empobrecido y todo el arsenal del horror llueven sobre una población indefensa. A los que nos hemos opuesto a esta guerra ya sólo nos queda desear que la carnicería concluya pronto y que las víctimas no sean muchas.

Eso y seguir saliendo a las calles, a expresar nuestra rabia contra esos hombres poderosos, encerrados en sus despachos y en sus búnkeres, decidiendo sobre la vida y la muerte de miles o quizás millones de otros seres humanos, como si dioses fueran.

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Police helicopters are circling San Francisco, thousands of peaceful protesters are in the streets, and I am in shock and awe myself by the notion of what must be going on in Iraq.

It seems nearly impossible to get my mind of the anguish of war, and anything can trigger an association: the sight of children at play, veiled women in front of a mosque, or even the guilt of attempts to relax. When there is a war going on, everything else seems frivolous, and it should.

Of course, the preoccupation with something so depressing can drive you insane, but I’m not talking about wall-to-wall TV coverage.

I don’t want more knowledge about “the mother of all bombs”, and I don’t need to know which part of Baghdad still has electricity. The essence of war is hidden beneath it all: horror. And I think it is this very essence that people in the U.S. have lost sight of.

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It started quietly. Just a few of us POOR folk gathered in the Tenderloin in front of the San Christina Hotel — a single room occupancy (SRO) hotel in the heart of the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. It is the residence of one of our very low-income staff writers. I chuckled at the odd juxtapose of people with signs protesting the War cheerily walking towards the march through our “bad” neighborhood.

After a few minutes of handmade sign choosing — I settled on “POOR Magazine says NO to all wars against poor people of color locally and globally.” Our small group began the walk to the Embarcadero to join the hundreds of thousands in San Francisco, in concert with folks in London, New York, San Diego, Australia and hundreds of other cities across the globe. in protesting this new act of criminal oppression proposed by the rich white folk in office: a war in Iraq.

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