Hallelujah on San Francisco’s Ocean Beach

By Larry Habegger | January 16th, 2009 | No Comments

Brad Newsham, author of the superb Take Me With You, has an irrepressible streak of peaceful activism, and if you’re in San Francisco on Monday, Jan. 19, Martin Luther King Day, you’ll want to be at Ocean Beach before sunset to help Brad spell out Hallelujah in the sand to celebrate the next day’s inauguration of Barack Obama.

Brad produced a half dozen or more “Beach Impeach” events in the San Francisco Bay Area in a tireless effort to move Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and all of them that I attended were tremendous fun.

The gathering on the beach Jan. 19 will be a celebration, not a protest, and the weather is forecast to be positively balmy. If you want to come, show up at the beach across from the Beach Chalet near Fulton and the Great Highway about 4:30, and plunk yourself down inside your chosen letter.

Here’s the message Brad sent that lays out the details.

Friday evening, four days until a new president…

Dear Everyone,

I am so sorry. It’s a crying shame that I can’t invite all of you to join me down at Ocean Beach in San Francisco on Monday, Martin Luther King Day, the day before the Inauguration-of-a-lifetime. At 1 pm that afternoon I’m going to start outlining “HALLELUJAH!” (or maybe the shorter “ALLELUJIA!”) in the sand in 100-foot letters. When the photographer’s helicopter arrives overhead at 4:50 pm I may feel kind of odd standing there all alone, but if that’s the way it turns out, I’ll live with it.

Here’s the story:

For weeks I’ve been hoping to fly back to DC for the inauguration, but just this Tuesday my plans evaporated. And when I started pondering how I might mark this historic occasion locally, I realized: “Thousands of people in the Bay Area must be in the same boat — incredibly excited about the change coming into our world, and wishing for some truly special way to celebrate!”

My next thought: “The Beach Impeach events ( http://beachimpeach.org/bi2/sanfrancisco.html ) were the most extraordinary affirmation of democracy — and they were FUN! The peaceful easy feeling of those events has become almost legendary.” Literally hundreds of people have told me they were crushed to have heard about Beach Impeach only after the fact — and say they absolutely want to be there if I ever again organize something similar.

Some quick research indicated Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday as the ideal day: warm weather predicted (67 degrees), high tide not a problem, the citizenry granted a day off work. My mind ran wild: “Thousands of citizens celebrating Martin’s birthday and Barack’s big step-forward… spelling out ‘Hallelujah!’ with our bodies during the photographer’s ‘golden hour’ just before sunset, the sun finally settling on the current administration… a perfect photo for the next day’s newspapers, the day of our collective new beginning, Inauguration Day!”

Just to get the feel of it all again, I drove down to Ocean Beach Wednesday morning and etched a 100-foot “H” into the sand with the heel of my boot. It felt so right, so good, to be there, doing that again. I thought, “I’m going to do this thing, even if it’s just me!”

I drove over to chat with the Park Service personnel, who have always been exceedingly cordial, gracious, straight, and even friendly with me. I told them I was planning to trace “Hallelujah!” into the sand, and asked if I might get a fast-tracked permit to issue a blanket invitation to everyone. They asked me how many people I might expect. “Well,” I said, “if I had gotten a realistic jump on this, and if everyone on my list had forwarded it to everyone on their lists, who knows? Everyone’s emotions are really high. Maybe 5 or 6,000 people?” Long story short: No permit. (One factor: A Bay Area-wide coastal cleanup is scheduled for MLK day, with hundreds of volunteers expected at Ocean Beach between 10 a.m. and noon. By evening the Park Service personnel may well have been stretched pretty thin. Cleanup info: http://www.nps.gov/goga/supportyourpark/service.htm )

However, they did reaffirm that it is entirely within my rights (within anyone’s rights) to drag my boot through the sand and spell out a word. Also, no one — not me, not you, not anyone — needs a permit to invite small groups of people to Ocean Beach. (You can invite up to 50 people if you are NOT building a fire, and up to 25 people if you ARE building a fire — but larger get-togethers do require permits. See: http://www.nps.gov/goga/ )

Since I can’t invite all of you on this list, I’m not inviting anyone (except my wife and daughter). But the Park Service also made it very clear that it is absolutely NOT my right to tell you (or anyone) to stay away from Ocean Beach at any time ever. It is a public beach, and it is your right to use it.

A photographer friend has volunteered to go airborne and take photos. He’ll be offshore right around 4:50 pm and he will be long gone by sunset (5:19 pm). I’m going to choose one of his images and print up postcards. It may be an odd postcard — just me, and perhaps you and whatever crew you bring along, plus whatever strangers happen by (the beach will have lots of visitors that day) — but that’s fine. The huge “Hallelujah!” will be in the foreground, the city and bridge in the background, and the light should be magical. If you do come, and if you would like a postcard, just give me your name and address, and within a few weeks I’ll mail you one.

I debated whether or not to send this to you. But when I considered that so many of you are as excited as I am about our country having paused at the brink to take a deep breath, and excited about the possibilities that lie ahead… well, I thought it would be small and stingy of me to keep to myself my plans for this one special day…

That’s what I have to say. If you do exercise your legal right to come down to Ocean Beach on Monday, please bring you friends over to say hello to me (and feel free to occupy spots in the lettering). I do miss seeing all of you.

HALLELUJAH!

Brad Newsham
newsham@mac.com
415-305-8294