Last night, a Metrobus bearing mostly Latino immigrants going to work was delayed about 20 minutes as kids on the bus coming to the housewarming party did not know where Ga Ave and Buchanan was. Not knowing their stop, they kept stopping the bus in the wrong places. For immigrant workers on the same bus paid by the hour, this is literally taking food off their children's plates.

Let's think about this a little further-for a bunch of white kids to chant "Whose streets-Our Streets" in a neighborhood of color is a statement that residents do not control the streets-the newcomers do. Gee-that's the same message that the condominium residents and the cops have been chanting for a decade in Petworth.

It is downtown, in areas controlled by war profiteers-and in wealthy neighborhoods where the war bosses live-that such chants are appropriate. To use them in a neighborhood where you are a newcomer is offensive to those who have been trying to keep their homes in the face of invasion.

What occurs to me here is that UFPJ, a pacifist group, has come to Petworth in a campaign of neighborhood pacification. Since individual well-off white folk don't feel comfortable in the streets of Petworth around their newly renovated homes, they've sent for help.

As more and more white faces appear in Petworth, and as the neighborhood is pacified, rents are skyrocketing and people of color are losing their homes. Does UFPJ wish to continue participating in this process? If so, they might find themselves sorely outmatched on Ga Ave, and at the very least should stop bringing young kids into this sort of situation.

If anger boils over about things like the bus getting held up, it's the kids who will pay the price, not UFPJ's organizers who are setting all of this up.