Replies

It was a pleasure to meet you and your husband again at the W2 Ball.

I am so sorry that your rights and your husband's rights were violated by the anarchists. Through fear and intimidation they blocked people from going.

I'm also sad and mad that the officer was rude. He may have been under great stress, trying to watch the anarchists. That's an explanation, but it doesn't excuse rudeness.

I'm wondering if a complaint to the police is not in order. Not so much about the officers comments as he may have been under great stress. More of a complaint about not controlling the anarchists and figuring out a security gate system that would not take so long or subject decent law-abiding citizens to mixing with the skunks of the left, people who came to protest and disrupt.

Where were you in relation to the rallying anarchists and the crowd trying to get in when the officer accused you of congregating? Was it close to the leftists, were you saying negative things to the anarchists?

Are you sure that they were the anarchists, wearing a striking amount of black clothing and quite a few wearing masks?

About what time was it that you were there at the 7th Street Checkpoint?

Did you see the anarchists throw snowballs at people, sticks or poles at police, kick the Protest Warrior, and get gassed by the police?

Were you there when the police cars swooped in to block anarchists from getting into the crowd, but creating a crush in the crowd from people at the edge suddenly moving out of the way of the police cars.

I don't envy the police as they had some very different challenges that day. Still, if we could think of a better way to handle these situations in the future, it's worth pointing out constructively where improvement is needed.

I have to sign off now and get to bed, but I wanted to give you at least a partial reply to post 51...

After reading your post, I think I've been using the term "anarchists" too broadly... I think what we saw on the streets and gathered in those HUGE blocks of humanity at security checkpoints were probably just the old-fashioned, run-of-the-mill "leftists" (anti-Bush, anti-war protestors) rather than anarchists. They had "Bush - Worst President Ever" and other signs, some more vile than that, but I don't remember seeing a big group completely dressed in black clothing as you've described. They may have been there, I don't remember. I mostly remember a pretty mixed group of people, most of them holding some sort of anti-Bush sign.

I muttered a comment or two a couple of times to these leftists, but it was mostly in passing them on the streets. No one may have heard me, for all I know. We witnessed no violence of any kind.

My questions to the one particular police officer were polite. We really just stopped there for a couple of seconds to try to make a decision what to do next, once we saw that familiar huge block of protestors gathered "in line". I think this police officer had probably HAD it by the time we got there, and he didn't look too crazy about standing out in the cold either. Oh well...

I'm wondering if a complaint to the police is not in order. Not so much about the officers comments as he may have been under great stress. More of a complaint about not controlling the anarchists and figuring out a security gate system that would not take so long or subject decent law-abiding citizens to mixing with the skunks of the left, people who came to protest and disrupt.

The security gate "system" was ridiculous, in our opinions, but what do we know about these things. Many Bush supporters whom we met on the Metro, in the streets, etc. who tried to attend the Inaugural activities also complained - some bitterly - that "it wasn't organized very well", etc. I'm not interested in filing any complaint to the police. I understand that - of course - heavy security was necessary. It just seemed to us that the sheer numbers of protestors standing in those blocks (and they seemed to be segregated from the "normal" Bush-supporting crowd) at every gate made it impossible for us to even get to the security tents. We were told we would have to get in line with/in back of the "protestors", and wait to go thru the security checkpoint. Since we were in back of hundreds (thousands?) of people, we could see that this would take hours, so we gave up and took the Metro back to our hotel.

I don't remember exactly what time we were at the 7th (and Penn. Ave.?) checkpoint. I'll check with zelig and let you know sometime tomorrow (Monday). He'll remember.

Our main reason for coming to DC last Wed-Fri was to attend the FR Ball. We're not really all that disappointed that we couldn't get into the Inaugural swearing-in ceremony with our tickets. We arrived near the Capitol probably too late as it was (our hotel was pretty far from DC - we had a long Metro ride in).

I felt really sorry for the people we met who traveled even further than we did (from CT) whose primary objective was to attend the swearing-in ceremony and/or the parade (with tickets in hand), and were pretty much scared away by these leftists/protestors who appeared to block every security gate and weren't able to do so.