Solano Peace and Justice Coalition had come into existence after the Bush Administration started warmongering after the horrific events of September 11th, 2001. Initially, for the first two meetings, they had met elsewhere but the home of regular meetings were at First Christian Church in Vallejo which was an “open and affirming,” gay friendly church in Vallejo. For a while, there were regular meetings and good turn out but as the war for oil dragged on through the next few years, attendance at meetings dropped off significantly. Toward the end of it’s existence, there were only a core group that continued to meet to plan events, Sue, Jovita, Anita and myself with occasional attendance by Guillermo. Helen still gave input but was not attending regularly. I was still maintaining the website but the group really couldn’t afford to continue paying for the domain and server. The group was essentially petering out. It had been a good run, though, and it just felt like it was time to have a “fun” gathering and so I offered to host a bb-q at my house.

The bbq was well attended by SPJC members that had not attended meetings for quite a while. We all had an opportunity to see each other again. When we had first started the group, America had gone along with the Bush Administrations reactionary actions of March 2003, after the horrific events of 9/11 and bought into the lies about weapons of mass destruction. By the time SPJC was coming to an end, many Americans were beginning to realize that they had been duped into a war that only benefitted Dick Cheney’s old buddies at Halliburton. Thousands of American and Iraqi lives had been lost for the purpose of enriching Halliburton and American oil interests. Secular Iraq had been torn apart and de-Ba’ath-esized, bringing the Shia to power over the Sunni, initiating a civil war and giving rise to what would become the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL).