I first joined in March of 1998.
I went to protests (in 2000) in my area and met other FReepers, in a very liberal area (San Francisco).
Leftists found Freerepublic, and attempted to glean info from our home pages here. They even printed out photos of us and our families so they could identify us at the protests and harm us. I read about their plans. It was scary. Now I know they were Antifa types.
I googled my FReeper name and found them on a site called Indymedia discussing how they’d attack us at the next protest.
And so began The Great Scrubbing of our home pages.
You ain’t heavy... You’re my brother.