Posted on 03/06/2007 1:36:59 PM PST by Jenny Hatch
I've been contacted by a few people who are planning to attend the Gathering of Eagles Denver event that I have been organizing through Free Republic and the Eagles Web Site.
One of the men who sent an email yesterday, Dale from Littleton, said this:
"Hi Jenny,
I plan on being there with you on March 17th. Really wanted to go to Washington DC because I believe in this so much, but at this time, just can't make the trip there. Glad to see that something was going to happen locally that I could participate in.
I am a Vietnam veteran (1963-1966 US Navy) and have never done anything like this before. So, just tell me what to do and I'm a fast learner.
I took the Purple Finger picture (attached) with one my son and three grandkids, on 15-Dec-05 when the Iraq's voted, and submitted it to some site who displayed them at the time."
Since Dale asked "what to do" around this Counter Demo, I thought it might be a good idea to share a couple of simple ideas to make the rally more effective.
(Excerpt) Read more at naturalfamilyblog.com ...
Yes they do. However, I would prefer that the hippies throw the first punch. My husband got in a verbal (nearly physical) confrontation with an idiot at Dulles airport last June that was spewing his hatred for GWB to all that would listen. My husband initially started talking to the guy in a calm manner and then when the idiot started getting agitated my husband asked him if he wanted to take it outside. Of course said idiot declined. Too bad. My husband would have changed his mind or at least rearranged it.
Other things people can do that really help out:
1) Each person who can bring a couple of little, light folding chairs. Even having a handful of such chairs in the back of an event can extend the length of a gathering by an hour or more, and the size of the crowd many fold. They really help out those who need to take a short sit-down break. Rule of thumb: the more chairs, the better the party.
2) Plan for the weather that day and bring some extra of what you think people might need, be it hot coffee (always good), some small shade umbrellas, or whatever.
3) If there is a vehicle or other place nearby where you can pre-position snacks ahead of time, it really improves the mood. A runner goes away and comes back a few minutes later with a case of soft drinks. Then he comes back with other goodies. Don't forget the trash bags.
4) Bring a thousand keepsakes to pass out. Pin buttons, bumper stickers, State flags along with US flags, and REPUBLICAN PARTY stuff. Though your first inclination is to be non-partisan, just remember that recent non-binding resolution. Republicans generally support the war, the other guys do not. Don't let them get away with it.
5) Help out the elderly and disabled. There will be many who truly want to be there. Hold that door, give that wheel chair a push, and ask them their story. Odds are, they have a good one.
Good going.
Excellent.
Will you be able to attend the rally on the 17th in DC?
Well said - you are a credit to our conservative cause. Prayers out to you!
Sorry, I'm in California.
Well, pray for US anyway. God grant us patience with those that are just plain ignorant and forgiveness for last November.
It's very hard to separate emotions from logic. Logic tells me these peace-loving people are there demonstrating for a cause just like I would be. Emotion, on the other hand, takes over when I think that they count people like Jane Fonda among their numbers; when I think about all our soldiers who died and were injured so they could have the freedom to be out there demonstrating and when I think about the reasons those soldiers were there dying in the first place........because evil people in another place hate what we have and want to take it away from us. And these so-called peace-loving people are enabling them. Then, I lose all self-control and advocate bringing the baseball bat.
"...bring a baseball bat....rotten tomato...."
I appreciate the sentiment, but no, these are not appropriate. Either would be immediately recognized as "offensive" weapons and would get you arrested or ejected.
If you feel that a physical confrontation might take place, there are several defensive measures you might take.
Make your sign out of 1/4 in. sign board; that with a foam core is still light enough to carry all day and wave, but is stiff enough to be used as a shield. Put handles on the back to hold it both for display and for protection. Make the sticks to hold up the sign out of cardboard tubes that wrapping paper comes on, or of hard wood lathe light enough that no one can complain that it is intended as a club (E.G. out of 1/2 by 3/4 firring instead of 1 by 2).
Wear unobtrusive athletic protective equipment under your outer clothing: e.g. soccer shin guards and knee pads; elbow pads ; motocross/street-hockey/lacross body pads. Also, leather or padded coats, if the weather is cool enough. Sturdy leather shoes or boots.
Maintain a cool, pleasant, positive frame of mind.
When I opened up the thread at Free Republic on this post, a conversation was started by fellow freepers, and one man, Doctor Raoul said in post #13 "Just for the record, the other points are good. I mainly am discounting the idea that the other side is paid."
So, for those interested, here is a primer on Rent A Mob tactics, which both the democrats and the republicans have screamed about for years during various political campaigns. It's true, both sides have claimed that rent a mobs are part of the various demonstrations, elections, and street theatre of world wide politics.
Do I think that the left uses these tactics more than the right? Yes I do. I know for a fact they stage all sorts of garbage, paid for by one worlders, communists, and socialists.
Here is some food for thought:
World Net Daily: Behind the anti-war movement
Front Page Magazine: Who Pays For These Demonstrations?
Telegraph: We think we're special, but she is seeing someone else - "The anti-war rent-a-mob stood on the sidelines chanting their equally threadbare slogans. Snore."
Front Page: Tracking Down A Fifth Column Front
Redeem the Vote: How U.S. Citizens Mysteriously March For Kremlin Causes
I'll quote from this article extensively because it contains the most damning information and is the most recent:
"Russian Émigrés Pay Them To Flail Chechen Rebels As TV Moscow Films It All By ALAN CULLISON and JAMES BANDLER June 24, 2006
NEW YORK -- Hoisting signs and American flags, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in a park here for a noisy protest. An organizer explained the sponsors' eclectic mission: "We are fighting against terrorism, hunger and inequality," he said.
Demonstrators had a simpler goal: getting paid. "Where's the moneyman?" shouted one of them, Pat Bradley.
Mr. Bradley said he and his wife, Kellie, recovering heroin addicts, had run into a rally organizer that morning outside their methadone clinic and were promised $15 each if they would ride a bus to a park in the Queens borough of New York City and chant slogans for 15 minutes. Mr. Bradley says he alternated shouts of "Stop the terrorism!" with a more mercantile cry: "Show me the money!"
The rally last December was one of nearly a dozen paid-for protests organized by Russian émigrés in the U.S. in the past two years. They spent $150,000 to $200,000 in some months, accounting records indicate, to rally thousands of demonstrators near spots such as United Nations headquarters and the World Trade Center site. State-controlled Russian television, whose content is closely guided by Kremlin handlers, covered some of the events, often as the only news organ present, showing video of them on the evening news back home.
Boris Barshevsky at a pay-for-protest rally in Queens, N.Y., last year. Organizers said the effort was funded by private individuals they declined to name. Some former insiders of the campaign told a different story: that both its instructions and its funding came from Moscow. Specifically, they said it came from the Russian founder of a youth group that staunchly supports the Kremlin and has gotten lavish support from the Kremlin in return. This account was supported by emails and other documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
A member of the Russian youth group disputed the account, and it remains impossible to say who was behind the campaign. It coincided with efforts by Russian officials to mold opinion both at home and abroad on issues such as Chechnya, where a breakaway movement has been put down violently by the Putin government. The Kremlin argues that Chechen separatists, responsible for a bloody siege at an elementary school in southern Russia in 2004, are no different from al Qaeda terrorists. Some of the rallies demanded that Washington extradite alleged Chechen terrorists living in America.
The U.S. organizers were led by a Russian-born man in the Boston area, formerly a taxi driver, who recruited fellow émigrés. There are indications the organizers paid a New Yorker to present a local face for the movement. But the script for the campaign began to unravel after one of the Russian émigrés contacted U.S. authorities, as well as the Journal.
That man is Yuri Levintoff, a 31-year-old Massachusetts resident. He said he grew concerned about the ethics and legality of paying people to protest. "As I learned more and more, I realized this was not only something I didn't want to be involved with but something that should be made public," said Mr. Levintoff, who provided access to what he said were financial records, emails and other documents detailing the demonstration campaign's activities.
Mr. Levintoff said he was recruited in 2004 by the Boston-area taxi driver, Boris Barshevsky. Approached outside his home there, Mr. Barshevsky at first denied involvement but then said that he was, in fact, the top organizer of the demonstrations. He said he financed them himself and received no funding from Russia. Told of emails and documents suggesting otherwise, Mr. Barshevsky asserted these had been forged by Mr. Levintoff. He provided no substantiation. Mr. Levintoff denied forging anything.
Russian state television, called First Channel, has portrayed the U.S. demonstrators as part of an international movement in support of extraditing militant Chechens to Russia. A person familiar with the state television channel's operations said that influential people within Russia had ordered it to cover the U.S. demonstration movement, even though "at First Channel, everyone knows it is a fake." This person said officials of the channel were told the first U.S. rally was organized by a Russian youth group called Walking Together.
Walking Together's founder is Vasily Yakemenko, an ardent foe of Chechen militants. Visitors to the office of a second youth group he manages, Nashi ("Our Guys" in Russian), must step on a doormat with a picture of a Chechen rebel. Mr. Yakemenko has told a Russian newspaper he visits the Kremlin every two weeks and the presidential office more often. Last month, President Vladimir Putin played host to him and 34 "commissars" of one of his youth groups at the president's Black Sea retreat. State-controlled TV covered the event heavily.
Mr. Yakemenko didn't respond to questions or requests for an interview. The Kremlin declined to comment. Sergei Belokonev, a leader of one of Mr. Yakemenko's groups, which has bused thousands of people to Moscow for flag-waving rallies, called the idea of Russian-financed demonstrations in the U.S. "complete nonsense."Flurry of Emails
Mr. Levintoff, the Russian émigré who quit the campaign of U.S. demonstrations, asserts that Mr. Yakemenko kicked it off in the summer of 2004 with a flurry of emails to Mr. Barshevsky, the Boston-area taxi driver. Mr. Levintoff says Mr. Barshevsky shared these emails with him and other recruits. The first email, dated July 2004, said its writer had been "active in organizing demonstrations and protest meetings and the like. Now it's been proposed that I do the same in your part of the world."Paid protestors rally at Ground Zero in June 2005.
Another email said there was plenty of cash and the budget could be big -- $25,000, $200,000 or $20 million -- as long as the campaign showed results.
Paul Nissan, a Los Angeles activist and co-founder of an antiterrorism group, said Mr. Barshevsky phoned him in 2004 offering "unlimited" funding for demonstrations that would spotlight Chechen terrorism. Mr. Nissan said he organized one rally on Sept. 11, 2004, in Los Angeles, but later fell out with the Russian émigrés. "They were interested in a rent-a-mob kind of thing, and we kind of explained that we don't do that sort of thing here," Mr. Nissan said.
Organizers created scripts to keep everyone on-message. If asked whether protesters are being paid, said one sheet, state that "you have been disinformed." Explain that protesters are "plain and simple folks" who are united by "desires to dispose the world of terror" -- and who have no phone number or office.
According to Mr. Levintoff, organizers tried to conceal Russian involvement by using as a front man Curtis Bryant, a New York resident who calls himself a "guerrilla marketer." Mr. Levintoff showed an email to rally organizers requesting that someone explain to Mr. Bryant "once more [that] he is leader of the movement and its founder.... Explain that we simply joined him."
Mr. Bryant said he organized demonstrations on his own, motivated because he nearly lost a friend on Sept. 11, 2001. Nobody was paid to protest, Mr. Bryant stated in an interview at the December rally in Queens. However, after the rally an organizer was seen paying demonstrators, and numerous protesters told the Journal that the only reason they attended was to be paid.
At that December demonstration, organizers tried out a new theme: the flawed U.S. government response to hurricane Katrina. On a blustery day, school buses stopped in front of Rufus King Park in Queens and dropped off demonstrators. Mr. Barshevsky and other Russian émigrés huddled nearby, smoking and talking on cellphones.
A camera crew videotaped the rally and several short speeches by organizers, who said they were from a group called Unite the World Against Terrorism. Their message: The U.S. failed New Orleans and it will abandon us, too. After some desultory cheers, the crowd was dismissed and sent back to the buses.
On one bus, filled with men from a homeless shelter on Wards Island in the East River, some grew impatient. "Get my money, mother-f-!" shouted one man as an organizer passed. As tensions rose, an organizer stepped aboard and peeled off $20 bills from a thick wad.Fuming Over Pay
The payment left some on the bus fuming, saying they thought the promised $20 an hour would cover travel time, too. George Pantera, who said he sometimes stays in homeless shelters, complained of a wasted morning. He easily could have made the same $20 "in the 'hood," he said. He called the rally "a scam."
Pat and Kellie Bradley, the self-described recovering heroin addicts, weren't complaining. They said they had been down to their last $8 before the rally. The cash would help pay a debt for cigarettes.
All the same, Mr. Bradley found the rally puzzling. "Strikes me as funny that this guy buys his protests," Mr. Bradley said. "I mean, what good is that?"
Early on, the campaign got a boost when Mr. Barshevsky, the Boston-area taxi driver, befriended two Russian-émigré merchants in New York who sell jewelry online. The two merchants had started a nonprofit organization after Sept. 11, 2001, which they called the International Fund for Protection of Victims of Crimes and Terrorist Activity. Mr. Barshevsky became this fund's finance chief, and the merchants' two-room office in the diamond district of midtown Manhattan became a center of the campaign, Mr. Levintoff said.
Nicholas Fiore, an accountant who has done work for the fund, said that "tens of thousands" of dollars flowed into its bank accounts in 2004 and 2005, money that he said he was told came from Mr. Barshevsky. One of the merchants, Denis Stepansky, said he helped Mr. Barshevsky organize rallies. He declined to discuss their financial dealings.
An exchange of emails shown to the Journal by Mr. Levintoff stated that as much as $400,000 was needed to kick off the campaign. One note, which Mr. Levintoff said had been sent to Moscow, asked that a first installment of $80,000 be wired to the International Fund.
Mr. Levintoff said organizers took pains to hide the involvement of backers in Moscow. He said he was forwarded one email that originated with Sergei Belokonev, a top official in Mr. Yakemenko's Nashi youth group in Russia. The email asked that someone outside Russia register some Web sites that could help promote the U.S. demonstrations. "The hand of Moscow, if it comes to light, will only weaken our position," said this email. Mr. Belokonev didn't respond to questions about the email.
The first rally organized with the help of the jewelry merchants' International Fund was on Sept. 11, 2004, near the World Trade Center site in New York, with several hundred demonstrators. At later rallies, hundreds of residents of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, most of them African-American, marched alongside Russian-born pensioners bused in from Brighton Beach, an ethnic-Russian enclave in Brooklyn.
Some rallies included elderly Russian émigrés from Brooklyn Jewish centers. Costs discussed in one email about the campaign referred to $40,000 to hire 200 activists for three hours, as well as $30,000 for "Jews and other extras."
Mr. Levintoff said that one 2005 rally in Harlem drew police attention when the crowd of demonstrators gathered for a "photo op" and were spotted giving gang hand signals.
A reporter for a Russian-language newspaper said he was tipped last spring that someone was "putting T-shirts on pensioners and paying them to go protest" near the World Trade Center site. The reporter, Vladimir Chernomorsky, said he went to the site and saw hundreds of people carrying pictures of Chechen extremists and posing for a photo. He said the only news organization there besides himself was Russian state television.
He wrote a piece for his newspaper, the New Russian Word, questioning who had paid the demonstrators and saying that payment varied from person to person. Russian pensioners from Brooklyn got $35, he wrote, but African-Americans and Hispanics only $20. Mr. Chernomorsky later wrote in his newspaper that when he attended a rally near the U.N. last June, one of the organizers smashed his tape recorder.
Soon, the organizers had a bigger problem: Mr. Levintoff.
He said he grew concerned that the paid-protest campaign might violate U.S. tax or money-laundering laws. His worries grew, he said, after Russian state TV interviewed him at a rally near the World Trade Center site in June 2005 and identified him as a protest leader. Mr. Levintoff said that last August he told Mr. Barshevsky, the former Boston-area taxi driver, that he was bowing out.
Mr. Stepansky, the jewelry merchant, alleged that Mr. Levintoff stole from the International Fund, forged financial documents and sent "fabrications" to the media and law enforcement. He declined repeated requests to substantiate his allegations, which Mr. Levintoff denied.
Mr. Levintoff said he sent a final note to the International Fund and its lawyers. "I am no longer willing to be associated or involved in any way, with a so-called International Fund for Protection of Victims of Crimes and Terrorist Activity, or a fake 'social movement' called Unite the World Against Terror," Mr. Levintoff wrote. He then contacted U.S. law-enforcement officials. Authorities have taken no action."Here is a link to a site spoofing rent a mobs: Go Here And the awesome Amir Taheri had this to say about the commonality of rent a mob activities in the Arab Street and Europe: PESTS IN FREEDOM'S WAY The Australian March 15, 2005
"THROUGHOUT the debate that preceded the liberation of Iraq two years ago, supporters of Saddam Hussein claimed that any attempt at removing him from power by force would trigger an explosion in "the Arab street". As it turned out, the explosion they had predicted did take place, but only in Western streets, where anti-Americans of all denominations, their numbers inflated by the usual "useful idiots", marched to keep the Baathist butcher in power.
More than two years later, however, the Arab street seems to be heading for an explosion. From North Africa to the Persian Gulf and passing by the Levant, people have been coming together in various "Arab streets" to make their feelings and opinions known. These demonstrations, some big, some small, have several features in common.
Unlike the rent-a-mob marches concocted by the Mukhabarat secret services, this latest spate of demonstrations was largely spontaneous. Nor are the demonstrations controlled by the traditional elites, including established opposition groups and personalities.
In almost every case, we are witnessing a new kind of citizens' movement, an Arab version of people power in action. But the most important feature of these demonstrations is that they are concerned not with imagined external enemies – be they Israel or the US – but with the real deficiencies of contemporary Arab societies. In almost every case the key demand is for a greater say for the people in deciding the affairs of the nation.
It is, of course, far too early to speak of an "Arab spring".
It is not at all certain that the ruling elites will have the intelligence to manage the difficult transition from autocracy to pluralism. Nor is it certain that the budding democratic movement would produce a leadership capable of mixing resolve with moderation. The deep-rooted Arab tradition of political extremism may prove harder to dissipate than one imagines.
What is interesting is that there are, as yet, no signs that the "Western street" may, at some point, come out in support of the new "Arab street".
Over the past two weeks several Western capitals, including London and Paris, have witnessed feverish activity by more than two dozen groups organising meetings and marches to mark the second anniversary of the liberation of Iraq. The aim is not to celebrate the event and express solidarity with the emerging Iraqi democracy, but to vilify George W. Bush and Tony Blair, thus lamenting the demise of Saddam Hussein.
I spent part of last week ringing up the organisers of the anti-war events with a couple of questions. The first: Would they allow anyone from the newly elected Iraqi parliament to address the gatherings? The second: Would the marches include expressions of support for the democracy movements in Arab and other Muslim countries, notably Iraq, Lebanon and Syria?
In both cases the answer was a categorical no, accompanied by a torrent of abuse about "all those who try to justify American aggression against Iraq".
But was it not possible to condemn "American aggression" and then express support for the democratic movement in Iraq and the rest of the Arab world? In most cases we were not even allowed to ask the question. In one or two cases we received mini-lectures on how democracy cannot be imposed by force. The answer to that, of course, is that in Iraq no one tried to impose democracy by force. In Iraq force was used to remove the enemies of democracy from power so as to allow its friends to come to the fore.
That remnants of the totalitarian Left and various brands of fascism should march to condemn the liberation of Iraq is no surprise. What is surprising is that some mainstream groups, such as the British Liberal-Democrat Party and even some former members of Tony Blair's Labour Government, should join these marches of shame."
The fact is that Rent A Mob tactics are common, and based on my own activism in Colorado and talking with those who show up for the demonstrations, perhaps this will peg me as a judgemental and bigoted person, but many of these people LOOK like they are heroin addicts who just arrived on the bus from the homeless shelter.
I remember talking to one woman who asked me why I had dyed my finger purple. I explained to her that I was in solidarity with the people of Iraq and their fight for freedom and self determination. She did not say anything to me, but I could tell that she was surprised that someone had showed up who was against the peacenik useful idiots.
Anyway, I don't know how much rent a mob stuff will be a part of the March 17th anti war activity, but to just dismiss it as impossible is naive at best and dangerously manipulative at worst as the media seeks to inflate numbers and paint the movement as some grass roots spontaneous snowballing of how Americans really think.
Jenny Hatch
"Well said - you are a credit to our conservative cause. Prayers out to you!"
Thanks! I'm troubled by some of the violent sounding posts on this thread that seem to endorse beating up lefties. Are some of these people leftist plants at free republic? I think everyone who reads this thread should be aware of moonbat trolls who may be here agitating for violence.
I do believe in street theatre, fight fire with fire, and think it is best to quietly freep - while getting your point across about how you feel politically, but I would never hit anyone or attack anyone verbally. I "attack" the institutions I hate, like the UN and the Communists.
I read somewhere this week that the answer crowd is downplaying who they are connected with on their web site in terms of trying to hide the fact that they are communists. Funny, but true.
Anyway, thanks for the prayers. It should be a fun day.
Jenny Hatch
See my post #30.
It was meant to be amusing, but the urge is still there.
I recall the days of the Viet Nam demonstrations, but your memories are far more profound.
Thank you for your service to our country.
No pointed sticks? :-)
"Oh, I forgot the most important thing of all - BRING A CAMERA and have one of the group (if you can spare them) ready to snap a pic of anyone who approaches you. Just the visible presence of a camera can be a calming influence."
I completely agree with this. I counter demonstrated at the Million Mom March back in the day and brought my old fashioned huge video camera with me in case anything happened. This particular rally I brought three of my young children with me and the two sides in Denver were really getting agitated and the crowd energy felt like it was about to explode.
At one particular point I pulled out that video camera and just started slowly panning the whole crowd. Our side, which was mostly Colorado Tyranny Response guys, had pushed me and my kids to the front of our group and so I was very visible to the other side. That camera calmed everyone, I could feel it.
And certain hot heads, from both sides I might add, who were getting really emotional just calmed down.
I think this is a most excellent suggestion for everyone to have a camera, and even video phones, small video cameras at the ready in case anything happens and you need some evidence for later proof of crimes.
Jenny
"So very true, hubby and I witnessed this at the Bush II inauguration. They'll do anything and go anywhere for ten bucks and a peanut butter sandwich from George Soros."
Did you see anyone getting paid?
Just curious.
Jenny
Any scumbag that defiles the flag gets it.
Any protester that touches a vet gets it, if the vet is disabled in any way the scumbag gets 2x.
Any scumbag TOUCHES The Wall and they stand a good chance of dying.
I have the names of eight good buddies on that Wall and I will not stand for it being defiled.
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