All We Are Saying...

It’s petition-signing season again in San Francisco, when you see people huddled outside supermarkets and subway entrances trying to hustle signatures to get something or someone on the ballot.

Often, it’s something that has nothing whatever to do with city policy, like condemning the war in Iraq. Usually, I just roll my eyes and say “no thanks”. Sometimes I do other things.  But yesterday, I saw a petition that was so surpassingly stupid that it made me laugh out loud. A petition for the City and County of San Francisco to acquire Alcatraz Island from the U.S. Park Service to create a global peace center.

Alcatraz, a former Federal penitentiary and a sacred site for First Nation people, is currently administered by the Department of the Interior. Through a political process, be it an initiative, an act of Congress or direct purchase of the island, we have the means and opportunity to transform Alcatraz island into The Global Peace Center.

The Global Peace Center, based on the geometry of THE HEXAGRAM will feature the Harmonium, an Artainment multi-media center, and The One Earth One People World Cultures and Conference Center will serve as a dramatic and dynamic international showcase…

The Global Peace Center will be magnificently landscaped with botanical gardens, providing a man-made habitat which is peaceful and serene. Sanctuary and ceremonial spaces will be provided. The island will be energy self-sufficient, employing state-of-the-art sustainable solar and wind generated energy systems.

From the signing of The United Nations charter to the present day peace movement, San Francisco, the City of St. Francis, has a storied history as a progressive center for spiritual enlightenment, and an engaged socially conscience populace and business community. In light of these realizations, San Francisco, the “Geneva of the West” and a major center for the rapidly emerging Pacific Rim community of nations, is ideally suited for this majestic and noble project.

The Global Peace Center, a prophetic and sacred vision, will be magnificently landscaped with botanical gardens, providing a man-made habitat which is peaceful and serene. Sanctuary and ceremonial spaces will be provided. The island will be energy self-sufficient, employing state-of-the-art sustainable solar and wind generated energy systems.

The Alcatraz Conversion Project will activate the creative intelligence of the business community, the engineer and the artist. The outcome being a living Peace Mandala whose function will be to “Inspire, Delight, Heal and Enlighten”…

IN SUMMARY: The Global Peace Center signals the completion and beginning of a grand cycle of evolution within our multidimensional universe, and ushers in the long-awaited Golden Age. We look forward with confidence to the perfect realization of this sacred and majestic project and to the time when we all collectively acknowledge ourselves for a job extraordinarily well done… Ah-Ommm

Urbanities wonders if the Global Peace Center folks have ever made a site inspection of their “sacred and majestic project” location.  Certainly there is enough wind on Alcatraz Island for a sustainable wind generated energy system, however this very factor mitigates against the location as a “man-made habitat which is peaceful and serene”.  Constant gale force winds do not make for serenity.  And we wonder where the soil and water will come from for the “magnificently landscaped…botanical gardens” on an island that is mostly barren rock.

It is a profound violation of the Alcatraz’s history as a prison to bulldoze it for someone’s pipe-dream.  Not to mention the unlikelihood of  a city that can’t make the buses run on time or maintain its existing city parks successfully developing and managing a global peace center.  And even if you were in favor of yet another place for spouting high-minded platitudes about lofty ideals, how many million$ of dollar$ would it take to make the global peace center a reality, and where would it come from? Somehow, I don’t think that ticket sales to the Harmonium will cover the cost. Oh, no matter; if we creatively envision the money, it will come. Ah-Ommmm….