Walk For Israel

Well, nobody's ever going to accuse Federation of an excess of common sense. (Insert obligatory words about all the good work Federation does here.) After last year's tremendous success, we were expecting a fair turnout this year, but Federation decided to charge $18 to walk, and then threatened to bodily pull people out of the march who hadn't registered. The first helped keep the numbers down (nothing like raising prices in a recession), and the second disspated a fair amount of goodwill. Federation tried to pull stunts like this all the time. First, they show they don't know how to play well with others, and then they show they don't want to. We still got good numbers, and both surviving mayoral candidates (that's Mares on the left, Hickenlooper on the right).

This must annoy CCMEP to no end. They thought they had found a way to bludgeon Hickenlooper into getting involved in foreign policy, and somehow got the Rocky to notice. Evidently, the Chinook Fund, which Hickenlooper helped found, was found to have contributed money to CCMEP. When Hickenlooper found out, he wasn't happy, said so, and further said he was "horrified" by some CCMEP's position. He wrote a letter to some of the local Jewish leaders affirming his support for Israel's right to exist, which, you wouldn't think would actually be controversial among people interested in "peace," but that really got under skin, and they've been making a stink about it.

Hickenlooper now is trying to assuage these people, presumably since every vote counts, but his appearance today, right in the middle of what CCMEP would like to turn into a publicity-making controversy, can't be calculated to make them feel any better.