My Brilliant Career as a Political Activist
(or How To Give Yourself Headaches, Make Friends,  And Influence People All At The Same Time!)

      The scene was Cape Coral, Florida.. the year was 1984, just before the re-election of Ronald Reagan. We had an obviously corrupt, stupid and uncaring President.... The CIA was active in Nicaragua, Ollie North was busily selling arms illegally to the Iranians, and this was still not known. AIDS was almost unknown then, and had never even been mentioned by the President in public. They were interesting times (in the old Chinese sense of the word) -- While stupid people were rejoicing in the false facade of prosperity in the guise of Reaganomics, and a smarmy, self-righteous "patriotism", there were those of us who saw through the bullshit and knew what was really going on.
       During this time, I was working part-time as manager of a small (and barely profitable) comic book store/news stand called Plaza News, in Fort Myers, Florida. My main employee was a young, talented guitarist, and John Lennon lookalike named Richard Castelli. Rich and I often chatted politics, and while my views did (and still do, as far as I know), fall some-what to the Right of his, we agreed politically about 80%-85% of the time. One day, during one of our chats, the idea came up (and I admit, I don't recall who said it, although I think it was me) .."We ought to have some kind of rally, like a peace rally or something and speak out... wouldn't that be cool?" -- the germ of the idea refused to die.
        As we continued to chat, we began to realize that, indeed, it may well be possible to organize such a thing. You see, Richard had a lot of connections in the local music scene. Through his friends dropping in at the shop, I had met some of them, and they would often hang out with us and bullshit with us on weekday evenings. Rich began to sound out some of his friends, and managed very quickly to find several interested local musicians who would be willing to play for free. Two of these musicians, Peter Kreutlein, and Randy Stack, became more important to me later as founders of the Toasty-Fried Co-Op. My brothers and I decided that we would also play a set under the name Oto and the Otters.
         Near my house, in Cape Coral was a suitable location, a small park called "Four Freedoms Park", which had a small outdoor ampitheater, complete with electrical connections.... I determined to call the City of Cape Coral parks department and find out if it was possible to rent the stage for a day. After making some phone calls, and getting typical city government runaround, I managed to contact the city's risk management office, who informed me that yes, it was possible to rent the stage, and the cost was a mere $20 for the day, and what would we be hosting there?
-- I told him. Immediately I began to get opposition from him, but after 45 minutes on the phone, and repeated assurances, I managed to rent out the park for one  Saturday in September of 1984.
         The first rally was pulled together very quickly. We dubbed the rally "Peace in '84", cobbled together 200 posters, hung them wherever we thought like-minded people might see them. Bands were contacted, phone calls were made, I signed papers at City Hall for the permits, and the rally too place in September of 1984. There were 3 bands, and a couple of speeches, and the rally lasted about 3 hours.
          "Peace in '84" was a flop. Turnout was pathetic, consisting mostly of ourselves, and friends. Still, at the end of the day, we weren't discouraged. WE had had fun, and that was the important thing. We'll do better next time, we thought. The important thing was that we knew there would be a next time. The music was good, friends were made, and there was no trouble.
            The next time came fairly soon. March of 1985, we got together another rally, called (imaginatively) "Peace In '85", we had 4 bands, and each band gave a speech of a political nature at some time during their set. The structure was looser, and expectations were low. No matter. The turnout was slightly better then previously, and things went very smoothly indeed, although we did have a visit from the local police due to a noise complaint..easily dealt with, as we had permission to be there. It was encouraging enough to us that we planned a third rally, to be held in the fall.
             What to call the next one? It was still 1985, and "Peace in '85 part II" sounded like a bad movie sequel. After almost an hour of thought, the rally was named "Peace in the Park" -- By this time, I had been contacted through some means by members of the Lee County Coalition For Peace, a branch group of the Florida Coalition For Peace and Justice. They had heard of our peace concerts and wanted to co-sponsor the next one. Being the trusting soul I was at age 22, I agreed to do so. Big mistake. "Peace In the Park" happened in September of 1985, close to the 1 year anniversary of "Peace in '84". 4 bands played. Although the Coalition had promised some help in offsetting the cost of park and sound system rental, we never saw any money, and during the rally they dominated the microphones to the point of some people leaving rather than listen to the speeches. In a word, they were long-winded and DULL. As organizer, I tried to limit their time on stage, but to no avail. It was quickly determined that we would not be working with them again.
         After the experience of "Peace In the Park", we went through a bit of a lull. There was still quite a bit of interest in working on the rallies from the musicians, but people were reluctant to help me organize them, and as I was now working full-time on other things, it became more of a pain to do them. I give a lot of credit to my two main helpers who were always reliable, Rich Castelli and Tim Harris, I salute you both.
        In the summer of 1986 we had our final rally, "Peace In the Park IV" -- 4 bands, very loose structure (very minimal speech-making and a lot of music), and a monster jam at the end of it all. It was probably our best show. It was definitely one of the better-attended shows. I knew it was the last.  I didn't have the time or energy to devote to coordinating everything without help. Plus, I felt, people were taking them for granted, and while we were all having fun with them, it was having little or no discernable political impact. I hung up my organizer's hat, hoping someone would step in and continue the tradition. Nobody did. And that was the end of my career as a political activist.
          There is a postscript to all this: In 1987, I was taking a few night-school courses at Edison Community College. One night, as I was walking to the parking lot from my class, I walked past one of the administrative offices, and was very surprised to see, hanging on the wall, one of our posters from "Peace In the Park IV"... Nobody was in the office at that time of the night, but I determined that before class the following week, I would pop in and say hello. The following week, there was a middle-aged woman working in the office and I stopped and said hello.. "Hi", I said, "My name is Tom Harris, and I organized "Peace in the Park IV". I couldn't help noticing you have one of our posters up here.." She looked at me and smiled. "I want to thank you" she said. "Well, thanks!" I replied, "But why?" "In the late 60's I was a peace activist here in Lee County. We tried numerous times to organize rallies, but were always stopped by good-old-boy county officials from being able to go through with them. It means a lot to me to know that someone finally succeeded."  -- I was touched, and pleased. We had made at least a small difference in someone's life. To me that made it all worth it.

Evidences: There are, in some far-flung reaches of the world, evidences of the peace rallies... The only evidences I know of are what follows:

Peace in '84 -- A 10-15 minute long videotape is in my possession from
                       this first rally. Taped at the end of the day, when we were
                       all punchy and silly, it covers the closing song and a weird
                       version of "American Pie" being sung by Jeff Stachowski
                       and myself with my brother Tim on guitar and my oldest     
                       brother, David, plucking tunelessly on electric bass. A true
                       rarity, as I am sure this is all that was preserved of this
                       concert.
Peace in '85 -- We didn't tape or video any of this, officially. Something
                       might exist somewhere, who knows?
Peace In The Park III  -- Due to a problem with the tape recorder,  we
                                       ended up with 2 cassettes full of dead air. There
                                       someone there with a video camera. If you know
                                       who it was, contact me.
Peace In The Park IV -- Both video and audio tapes exist of this concert.
                                      Although I never saw the video (again, if you
                                      know who has it, tell me!), the audio tapes were
                                      of decent quality. I currently can locate only one
                                      volume of the tapes. There are copies spread
                                      around, though.

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