I will be traveling to California in several hours (6:45 AM EST) to participate in the 5 Peace & Freedom Party forums scheduled for Sacramento, San Francisco, Fresno, Riverside and San Diego.

I have also scheduled several visits to prisons in Sacramento (Folsom Prison) and San Diego (Imperial County Jail) to highlight reform of the penal system and for improving the rights of inmates as well.

Friends have scheduled fundraisers in San Luis Obispo and southern California; plus, I will be possibly addressing a community college and conducting radio interviews along the coast of California.

I also plan to try and stop off at many if not all of the 21 missions of California.  This gesture has significant symbolism for me personally, because of my five years with the Franciscans studying to be a Catholic priset, and also for all of us Socialists regarding new exploration, discovery, making things new, change and the value of history. 

Granted, there is bad with the good in history, but I am trying to convey the positive aspects of this effort by Spanish and Portuguese and Indian explorers of the new world, done 500 years ago when they treked from Mexico northward along the Pacific Coast all the way to Oregon and beyond.

I complete my trip on Thursday, January 17th, by visiting my former spiritual mentor of my seminary days at Mission San Luis Rey near San Diego in the 1960's.  Fr. Louie Vitale, OFM, is incarcerated for 6 months in the Imperial County jail for his antiwar and civil disobedience actions against military instalations in Arizona last year.  Since I have been an antiwar activist since the Vietnam War, and for the last five years against the Iraq War, my visit to him as a former student and now presidential candidate will also have significant meaning.   I hope the press and media will feel likewise.

Brian, 10:35 PM, Thursday, January 10th, Spring Hill, Florida