Great job!
Quick question- how many American haters marched in NC yesterday? I was at the counter-demonstation in Central Park (after action report: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1366397/posts) and at tops they had 3000-4000 thousand.
>>Not all the demonstrators here Saturday were against the war. Across the street from the park, about 200 people gathered in support of it and claimed that outsiders had come in and stirred up the emotions of the troops and their families.
`Anti-American protest'
"They're not holding an anti-war protest, it's an anti-American protest," said Kristinn Taylor, spokesman for FreeRepublic.com, a conservative news and activism Web site. "They are trying to undermine the morale of the troops and their families."<<
For the record.....
From the Raleigh News and Observer.
"A Fayetteville police officer escorts a war protester, left, away from a group of counter-demonstrators he had confronted".
There are several FReepers depicted here, but for purpose of this post, the gentlemen in the Stetson is Bert, the FReeper assaulted by the leftist, and Dr Raoul in the background, the true source of his leftist ire. There was another leftist involved, a clean cut young man who heckled Rauol and claimed to be an Iraq vet. He was the instigator, the bald guy was his henchman. Bert was in the wrong place at the time. It was a carefully planned setup for some unknowing FReeper. The clear intent was to cause a severe disruption and to make Raoul cease his presentation.
Thanks to the excelling work of the vigilant Fayetteville police, they failed. Raoul kept speaking.
The choice of words in the caption is interesting, the implication being the war protester had in a manly fashion came on our turf and in some manner engaged. The word all the reporters who asked me about the incident used was confrontation so it must be meaningful in reportereese. In my view there was no confrontation. The bad guy in a cowardly manner infiltrated the ranks of the FReepers listening to the excelling presentation of Dr Raoul and waited. The clean cut bad guy stepped off the road and onto the grass, and began heckling Dr Raoul. He was standing nearly on top of me. I was sitting on the ground, having turned around in more or less the same spot I previously occupied on the curb. I was facing Raoul, the heckler was to my back.
After I realized the heckler was performing directly above my head, I stood and turned around. I was eyeball to eyeball with the heckler. I don't recall any words only direct eye contact and then whammo, I was hit a very good lick on the top of the back of my head. My hat collapsed from the blow. The substantial straw hat saved me a severe injury. The collapse absorbed most of the blow and provided a stiff neck rather than a goose egg.
In a blink the clean cut guy was gone, I turned around and the bald headed one was looking beyond me, I guess to a police officer screaming "He hit me, He hit me." Interestingly enough, I have no recollection of the events in the photo. I do remember sing two perhaps three officers struggling with the man as he was moved away toward the park entrance.
There were terrorist present in Rowan Park. What they could not accomplish by lawful means, the sought to accomplish by force. Raoul was reciting a litany of the horrible organizational connections across the way, the truth about who was there, had provide money and infrastructure. They could not stand the truth and made an suicide effort to disrupt.
They are true American Hatriots.
Ok I've got a 1:57:00 20MB Video compressed as much as I can. It has atleast the one good part "8 Million Iraqi's gave Saddam the finger". Quality is ok. Anybody know someone to host this? It's 20MB so it would need somebody with a big pipe and won't be hurt by the bandwidth of downloads/views $$$ etc.
Let me know.
Ray66
To any of you DUmmies lurking to get your jollies, understand this: We are not dumb. We see through you. Telling us you support us but not our mission is like telling your high school football-player son that you support him, but you hope his team loses the next game because you don't like football. How do you think he'd take it? Would he be dumb enough to believe the "we support you" part when he sees you on the other team's sidelines? Well, we know better, too. You can't support the troops and not want us to see our mission through to successful completion. Anything less than full support of our success is not support. It's treason.
Great job Freepers of NC. Just wanted to remind the locals who left early. We can to stand with you. Sorry you had to leave so early.
Great pics everyone and AAR. I'm finishing on working on a 1min 57 seconds video which highligts the "8 million Iraqi's gave Saddam the finger". Working on free(I luv that word)hosting of the video through the free Internet Archive Organization. If you haven't read about it or know what it is check it out. I've learned much in the past hour and hopefully will be able to share this to all without the middle man.
I went to the war protest in Fayetteville Saturday. That was an adventure. There were 3,000 of us protesting the war. There was also a counter demonstration of about 100 people protesting us.
The counter demonstrators were a slavering rabid crowd, periodically entering the parade to shove people and flip them off and scream in our faces. One woman reminded me of the woman you see in the famous picture of the integration of Little Rock High School in 1957. The one where Elizabeth Eckford, an African American, is trying to enter the school, her books clutched to her chest, surrounded by national guardsmen who are escorting her through the angry mob. Over her shoulder you a see a white woman, her eyes bulging, veins protruding at neck and temples, screaming with spittle spraying. That's what this woman Saturday looked like, except she was blond instead of brunette. She was there with her two pre-teen daughters. As she worked her way, pushing and shoving (illegally I might add) through our parade, one of the daughters caught my eye. Her beautiful blue eyes were squinted with hostility. I looked right into those eyes and smiled at her. Confusion washed over her features and she dropped her eyes. She looked ashamed. Almost immediately she worked her way out of the parade and returned to the sidelines where she stood silently even as her mother heckled the parade, shouting, "Communists" and "Anti-Semites" and "Swim back to Cuba!" She and others shouted, "We gave Peace a chance. We got 9-11! We gave Peace a chance. We got 9-11!" (How can you argue with someone who doesn't even get it that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11?)
Counter demonstrators carried signs that read, "Osama is Yo Mama" and "Hatriots on Parade".They kept shouting, "Four More Years! Four More Years!" Four more years? That doesn't even make sense. These people were simply seething pools of barely controlled rage. I remember thinking, "Wow, when this day is over, I go back to my quiet world and experience peace again surrounded by good, kind, loving people but these folks -- these folks have to live with their hate and anger 24 hours a day."
What can you say to people like that? Sometimes you can only smile.
Mostly, though, the gathering was very powerful. It felt good to connect with the military folks who are so directly affected by this war for oil. Some people have argued that we should not have gone to Fayetteville, home to a military base, for this protest but the reality is that this protest was organized by military people. They invited us. And we showed up to support them.
Fayetteville is a community that is directly affected by this illegal war and there is a large peace movement there, has been dating back to the 60's. The heavy involvement of veterans and military families made the Fayetteville march and rally unique among the more than 300 demonstrations that took place around the country yesterday. This event was sponsored by Iraq Veteran's Against the War, Bring Them Home Now!, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans for Peace. Other sponsors included the North Carolina Council of Churches, the North Carolina Peace & Justice Coalition, Gold Star Families for Peace and Quaker House. So, frankly, I went to support our military. As one military wife put it, "I can't just slap a yellow ribbon on my car and call it 'Supporting the Troops'."
During the parade before the Rally, I got interviewed for NPR's American Voices series. They asked about my sign, which read, "Military Brat for Peace". They asked me what my connection to the military was and I told them about my father and my brother. Then they asked why I was protesting and I told them it was because this war is unjust and illegal. They followed up with the standard, "But don't you want to support your brother?" question to which I responded, "Of course, I support my brother. I want him home safe with his family. I want the people of Iraq to have their sons and fathers home safely too. This administration is misusing our military. A military force is supposed to protect the homeland and be peacekeepers, not warriors. Our government is using our military to their own ends and honorable military men and women are being forced to do dishonorable and terrible things in the name of their government ... and then live with them for the rest of their lives. Add to that the fact that the government is NOT keeping up their end of the deal. They've initiated a stop gap policy that doesn't allow people to leave when their contract is up (Brian, who was supposed to retire this month after 20 years of service, just had 2 more years added to his sentence). They do not provide proper care or treatment to physically and psychologically wounded veterans either -- especially if they are reservists." What I wish I'd said was the famous quote by Mark Twain, "I support my country all the time. And I support my government when they're right." I remember wrapping up with something like the sentiment, "Do you think I like being out here, being harassed by these people (who were all around us yelling and slavering during the interview), feeling afraid? No. I hate it. But sometimes patriotism means doing the hard thing, being brave and speaking out when others have been cowed into silence. The way I see it is, my brother is serving his country in and out of Iraq ... and I am serving my country here."
There were some great signs. One guy had taken that image of the soldiers trying to raise the flag at Iwo Jima and edited it so that they were trying to raise on oil rig. A female sergeant's sign read, "1 in 3 women in the military is raped." (Coincidentally, a headline in yesterday's paper also read, "One woman in seven suffers sexual assault in military academies". It's the same misogynistic mindset I guess.) Another little girl carried a sign that she had written herself that read, "Support my Dad - Not the War!"
To enter the grounds for the rally, we had to be searched first by local police officers and then by the ATF. My sign, "Military Brat for Peace" was two pieces of poster board taped together on the top and sides and then slid over a T made of PVC pipe and connectors and taped to the back of one of the boards. The ATF guy told me the stick had to go. (This was AFTER the parade, now. The parade was where there was a potential for violence.) I asked him why and he said because it was dangerous. I was at a loss to see how it could be. It was very, very light and only about 15 inches long but of course I complied -- only I was having trouble pulling the pipe out of the middle because it was taped to the back of the board so the ATF Officer took it out of my hand and jerked the PVC pipe, which caused it to disconnect from it's connecter so that he forcibly shoved the piece of PVC right into the abdomen of the ATF officer to his left. The poor guy went, "Ooof!" and doubled-over. My hands flew to my cheeks and I stared wide eyed at the red faced officer with the PVC still dangling in his hand and exclaimed, "Wow! I guess that really was dangerous!?!" The surrounding ATF guys and sheriffs were laughing their asses off but I just waited politely to get my sign back. I gotta say though, it was pretty funny.
I must interject here that I believe all those police officers were there to keep us safe and I am grateful for their service. I told many of them this too. I did not feel safe around those rabid counter-protesters ... and we weren't safe ... but whenever they would infiltrate the parade and start hassling people, the police were right there to step in. Yes, we had to be searched. Yes, there were swat teams on the roofs around us. But peace protestors are not the ones who initiate violence. The people who protest peace are the people likely to initiate violence. (The peace protesters were, for the most part, very peaceful. I only saw one person flip the bird at a screaming counter protester. Wish I could say the same for the counter protesters.)
There were a lot of interesting speakers and sad stories. I met a couple, Kevin and Joyce Lucey, whose son, Jeffrey, committed suicide after his return from Iraq. The military was preparing to send his unit back (in fact, his unit has since been sent back) and he was struggling with that and with post-traumatic stress. He'd been having terrible night terrors and couldn't eat and wouldn't leave the family's basement. They tried to get him help but, because he was a Marine Reservist and not fully enlisted, he was relegated to the back burner. For three months they tried to get him psychological assistance -- even as the day of his forced return loomed closer and closer. Then one day, the father returned home to find that Jeffrey had hung himself with a garden hose in the basement. The dog tags of two Iraqi prisoners he said he been forced to shoot even though they were unarmed lay on his bed.
There were many conscientious objectors there, people who'd done one tour of duty and refused to return. And one Marine, Jimmy Massey from Waynesville, NC, who had twelve year of active duty under his belt before being discharged due to post-traumatic stress syndrome described the invasion force as "a bunch of pit bulls being turned loose on a cage of rabbits". He said that what turned the Iraqi people against US occupiers was the killing of civilians and he told a story where he and his men were given orders to open fire on a non-violent demonstration of Iraqis with M-15s and 50 caliber machine guns. It was horrifying.
There were lots of horrifying stories, actually. It made me think a lot of John Kerry, who came home and started speaking out about such horrors in Vietnam -- horrors that courts of law have since proved to be true (see Mai Lai Massacre here for just one instance) -- only to be called a Traitor for speaking the Truth. How can anyone think it is more honorable and patriotic to be silent and let atrocities continue? Where are people's priorities?
The stories from soldiers who'd actually been to Iraq were the most compelling stories to me. How can anyone deny these poor men and women their experiences? It's so arrogant.
There were many grieving parents and widows -- some carrying pictures of the loved one they'd lost. There were pictures of the atrocities that shook me to my core, some displayed BY THE VET who took them in Iraq. Now if that doesn't make you think, I don't know what will. There were photos of piles of dead people and pictures of children blown to pieces - literally blown apart! They made me cry. (The World Health Organization guesstimates that over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed in this war -- even as General Tommy Franks says, "Body counts? We don't do body counts.") Finally, there were sick and misshapen vets, some of them suffering from Gulf War Syndrome from the earlier war in 1991. The all talked bitterly about the lack of care they've received for their injuries, especially the reservists.
It enrages me that people suggest we should not protest these atrocities, that people suggest we should be silent about these terrible, terrible things. What the hell is wrong with people? The only thing I can figure is that these are the same people who walk away (or even stand and watch) when a bully is beating up some kid in the school yard. Some people stand on the sidelines and some people stand up to the bully. I stand up to the bully.
So, I went. I'm glad I went. I'll go again if I have to.
News reporting about the event, what little there has been, has been extremely biased. The 100 or so crazies got equal time in most media and more than equal time on Fox, WB-50 (which is also owned by Fox) and NC-14. It's infuriating. I read two accounts today that were totally fabricated. They talked about men in drag (didn't happen. Totally made up) and an arrest where they say a peace protester jumped a fence and was headed toward the counter protesters. I was there when this happened and that story is bullshit. The guy stepped over a piece of low hanging chain and entered the park without going through security. He was headed into the park not out of it. In fact, I'd seen many people make this mistake. It was not marked very well. Anyway, a police officer yelled at him to stop but I don't think the guy heard. There were crazies with bullhorns all around. So the policeman ran after him, threw him to the ground and arrested him for resisting arrest. I had a digital camera and I have the whole thing on film. The story in the news is totally bogus.
Our media is bought and paid for by the people making money off this war.
We have an uphill battle to stop this madness...
Walk in peace my friends,
Me
"Never doubt that a group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
FReegards...MUD
from the event publicity site
....Secretary & March 18-20 Organizing Staff Andrew Pearson, (919) 360-2028, kangaroo @ email.unc.edu, Durham.....
The university provided logistical and communications support for the event.
There were about 1000-1200 protestors and 200-250 of us. They had an entire park (at least 10 acres) to protest in, plus a parade route, and we had a strip of grass across the street about 20' X 200'. They had a bandstand, stage, barbeque pits, picnic tables and porta-potties.
They were there to protest the soldiers and we were there to protest them. They had a freak show of communists, GreenPeace, and gays and lesbians. They had bands, a drum corps and lots of yelling. We had a purpose! They also planted at least 2 of their village idiots on our side to cause trouble. It was obvious that they didn't belong with us, and they wound up getting arrested.
There were about 75-80 police officers there, some from surrounding counties, and also an ATF K-9 unit. They were all searched and sniffed by the dog prior to entry into the park, but none of us were even looked at by the police. The police also had their backs to us the whole time, while watching them.
We were an enthusiastic crowd, who were mostly in there 30s and 40s, only a few of us Viet Nam vets were in attendance. About half the protestors were bussed in, as there were 7 busses that held over 60 people apiece. The personnel from both Pope AFB and Ft. Bragg were given standing orders to stay away from the protest area. I found that out from some of the military wives. Thanks to Free Republic, because without their local chapter, there would have been no counter demonstration. Also our thanks to about a dozen Rolling Thunder members who participated.
Take care, Zak.
It was an honor to stand with a couple hundred patriots including FReepers, Rolling Thunder members, Protest Warriors, veterans, and military family members as we supported our troops, their mission, and the country, while peacefully opposing the appeasers and blame-America first crowd.
The attendance likely would have been far higher except for a few circumstances. According to reports, local military commanders had ordered military members to avoid the rally, apparently concerned that a few of their troops might "lose it" when face-to-face against America-hating traitors. The local police (who incidentally did a great job at protecting patriots from left wing peacenik violence) refused to let Rolling Thunder members come on their motorcycles, thus holding down the RT numbers. Finally, there was a huge benefit event for the troops at Ft. Bragg on the same day and that drew many people who might otherwise have attended the rally.
[NOTES ABOUT PHOTOS AND SOUND FILES: Clicking on any photo (except one noted below) will open a new window with a full size version of the photo. Click on any of the WAV-format sound files, each parenthetically labeled with its size and its duration to hear the file or right click on it, save it to your computer, and then play it from your computer. The first sound files are from when the leftists walked by us at an intersection and when we walked at the edge of their waiting crowd on a return trip to our rally location. Therefore, that audio includes a lot of background noise and various rants between the two sides.]
Arriving at around 10:30 am at the rally site, across the street from the leftists' rally location, I helped unload some of the signs, sound equipment and other supplies. Then I took a few photos.
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TaxRelief, chief organizer of the great event, gives an
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AQGeiger holds her great sign to honor the Airborne |
| GunsAreOK holds one of Flora McDonald's signs. |
Your correspondent BillF holding another of |
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Some patriots walk up the hill to a nearby intersection.
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Shortly after arrival, numerous of us walked up a nearby hill to stand at an intersection and wait for the leftists to march by on the way to the site of their rally. The leftists had a staging area at least several blocks back from the intersection where we stood waiting for them. We had two groups of patriots across the street from each other, waiting at different corners of the intersection. Flora McDonald, rrod, Huber, BloomPa (who's wife is currently in the Army serving in Iraq), daughter of tgsl, BufordP, and tgslTakoma were among the FReepers and other patriots at the intersection waiting for the leftists. rrod had brought several Cubans, who had recently escaped from Castro's island paradise. They joined us in waiting to FReep the leftists at the intersection. There were a few mounted officers behind us as we waited for the leftists and police tape on one of the two corners, but we had no police line in front of us on either corner. |
| FReepers at corner across from me included (L-R)
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Flora McDonald holds yet another of her wonderful signs. |
| BloomPa, unknown patriot, and Flora McDonald,
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Huber holds a sign with patriots on two corners as |
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PHOTO VIA TELEPHOTO LENS, NOT HYPERLINKED This leftist came to the intersection in advance of the |
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As the leftists moved through the intersection by us, there were shouts back and forth with considerable crowd noise. CLICK HERE FOR SOUND FILE (244 KB, 22 sec): Arguments with leftists ending with me saying "swim to Cuba." Several FReepers often said "swim to Cuba, free healthcare, free education, it's a socialist paradise." The first two phrases in that were quoted in one newspaper account of the events. Some of our group's Cuban refugees, who spoke little or no English, heard me saying that Cuba rant. One said to me, "free Cuba." I said, "yes, free Cuba, but they want Castro here, we don't want Castro hear." He smiled and said "free Cuba." SOUND FILE (165 KB, 15 sec): Leftists chant "support the troops for real, bring them home now" with patriot responding by calling them traitors. SOUND FILE (319 KB, 29 sec): Huber chanting at the leftists about socialism and terrorism, ending with leftist yelling "impeach Bush now." SOUND FILE (534 KB, 49 sec): Includes more chanting from Huber and I as well as some of tgslTakoma's great rants (I swear she sounds like Ann Coulter here) via megaphone from across the street relative to my position.
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Two patriots watch as leftists pour down hill to their |
After about half an hour of FReeping the leftists as they walked by, they were crowded across the width of the street and waiting to go through the security check point where police were checking them for the weapons and drugs that leftists are prone to illegally take into a park. At first we were going to wait for them to be admitted before returning to our rally site across the street from the left's rally site, but we decided to walk along the edge of their crowd (see photo of leftists crowded outside the check point).
Various encounters with the leftists occurred as we walked down along the edge of the assembled leftists. Among others, a leftist woman knocked BloomPa's sign down, thus committing a minor assault upon the Gulf War Veteran, even as his wife serves in the U.S. Army in Iraq.
SOUND FILE ( 338 KB, 31 sec): Leftist parade "marshal," seeing me walking alongside their crowd as I had to in order to get to our rally location and hearing me shout "swim to Cuba" and similar slogans, walked alongside me saying "thank you for standing for peace and justice" and "support the troops for real, bring them home now." Audio includes me shouting at the leftists that they lost two elections, the U.S. election and the Iraqi election.
For the most part, the leftists were quiet as our band of patriots walked along the edge of their waiting crowd. Therefore, our shouts were more likely to be heard than during the initial encounter at the intersection. Hence, the leftists sent their "marshals" over to shadow us and shout leftist slogans.
SOUND FILE (201 KB, 19 sec): BufordP, via megaphone, telling the dismayed leftists "we could have Cuba over here for what you guys want." Leftist tells us "go back to Nazi Germany."
Although the marshal who shadowed me may have prevented less-restrained members of their group from confronting me, I had my disagreements with her. She put her hand on my arm and said, "please keep walking." I replied, "keep your hands off me." Marshal responded "OK, just keep walking." "You don't order me when to walk, I do what I want to do," I said before standing still for 30 seconds, while chanting "swim to Cuba" etc. to the dispirited, generally quiet leftists. She just stood near me. After I started walking again, I was soon clear of the leftists and returning to the relative safety of our "American sector" rally site.
| Doctor Raoul speaks as Flora McDonald helps with his notes.
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After the Star-Spangled Banner and the Pledge of Allegiance, Doctor Raoul gave a wonderful speech about the people putting on the leftists' rally including ties between Code Pink's leadership and a terrorist who murdered several unarmed, American soldiers in civilian clothes and numerous innocent locals as they ate in a Central American cafe in the mid-1980s. He also described at length the ties between the various front groups, their support of the terrorists now, and the attempt to use a few disgruntled veterans and military family members to shield the "peace" protestors from criticism for not supporting the troops. SOUND FILE (652 KB, 60 sec): Doctor Raoul explains anti-war group International ANSWER's support for the enemy in Iraq by reading from their brochure. [The brochure is no longer available from their main website, but still available on their LA site at http://www.answerla.org/pdf/iraq/iraqresist.pdf (copy and paste the URL, I don't want to give them the link). Download the file, save it and to give to liberal friends. It says that their "anti-war movement . . . must give its unconditional support to the Iraqi anti-colonial resistance." They're not anti-war, they just want the other side to win. They are, in effect, self-admitted traitors, cheering on those who are blowing up our troops, beheading American civilians, and killing innocent Iraqis, including Iraqis on the way to vote in the last election.] SOUND FILE (875 KB, 80 sec): Doctor Raoul explains how a disgruntled, Kerry-wannabe, left-wing veteran proposes to shield the "peace" protestors. |
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The left thinks that they can demoralize the troops and their families by coming to a military town to hold their hate-America festival. Their far-left leadership believes that using a few disgruntled veterans and some fake veterans to pad the numbers, along with some a small number of military family members, will allow them to falsely claim that they support they troops. Yet, a leftist, when asked by a reporter why they had come to Fayetteville, said that they wanted to hold their protest "in the belly of the beast." They thus identify the U.S. military, not as the amazing collection of honorable and heroic people that it is, but as a monstrous "beast" that the left hopes to slay. The lie that the left supports the troops is simply not believable.
No wonder the left has little appeal to the overwhelming majority of veterans, who reject the idea that the U.S. military is an evil beast. Certainly that is shown by the large number of veterans, both FReepers and others, who attended our support the troops rally.
| TaxRelief holds her sign pointing at the leftists across |
Via telephoto lens, Code Pinkos, including their leader |
| Alia with her anti-Code Pink sign. Near the beginning |
Apple Blossom (L) holds one side of tgslTakoma's |
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SOUND FILE ( 894 KB, 83 sec): Alia granted me an interview to describe when Medea Benjamin came up to comment on her sign and talk with her. Alia says that Medea apparently didn't notice the hammer and sickle on her sign. (When I say during the discussion that Medea Benjamin was from the San Francisco area, I was intending to say that many of her operations are based there. Benjamin is from NY state. I think that she has lived in the SF area sometime after living in Cuba, but have no idea where she lives now.) In the background of the Alia interview file, you can hear Doctor Raoul over the sound system chanting "Eight million Iraqis gave Saddam the finger." When Doctor Raoul was speaking, a leftist came up to the edge of our area shouting at us. Moving to within about 15 feet to see what was going on, I saw both the leftist and a patriot (it might have been Bert, puff up their upper bodies. I heard Raoul asking for an officer to remove the guy from our permitted area. An officer momentarily pulled the leftist's arm. The officer apparently told the guy to get back to his own area. Just as that first leftist turned to walk back to his area with the accompanying officer, I saw Bert assaulted by a second leftist (flannel-shirted guy in MOAB photo above) who had infiltrated our ranks. It was out of the corner of my eye as I was focused on the first leftist, who had just turned away. Bert was a few feet in front and to the side of me. I think that Bert was also looking toward that first leftist and the flannel-shirted guy was behind Bert. I saw the sudden movement of the guy's arm as his hand came down on Bert's head. SOUND FILE (216 KB, 20 sec): Begins with Doctor Raoul's request for an officer and various people telling the first leftist to get out. Immediately after bopping Bert on the head, the flannel-shirted guy started yelling "you hit me." Bert denied that ridiculous charge. Three or four officers immediately grabbed the flannel-shirted guy hauled him behind a police car and apparently gave him a choice between arrest or leaving the day's festivities. It was "catch-and-release" as he slithered away. (I don't know if they gave Bert the option of pressing assault charges.) The flannel-shirted guy had circulated among us for more than a few minutes as he was in the MOAB photo above. It's hard to believe that the timing of his assault on Bert, just as the first leftist was being escorted away, was coincidental. Well into the event, the police swarmed a location just within the leftists' area. We thought that a fight had broken out among two of the peaceniks. However, it was a leftist rally speaker who had apparently tried to skip the police check point. If he had just done so inadvertently and then cooperated, the police would have probably just searched him, but he has been charged with resisting an officer. The arrested leftist, Rann Bar-On, is an Israeli traitor, who was there to make common cause with the American traitors. He was hauled away in a police van. As the rally on our side had ended and we started to load items, the leftists' chartered buses parked a short distance from us and kept their engines running as the leftists slowly boarded. There were only seven buses that pulled up and I heard the leftist rally announcer remind people that those on the DC Anti-War Network (DAWN) bus or buses had to walk back to the original staging area to catch their bus or buses. As the buses idle polluting and wasting gas for an extended period of time, we anticipated the buses' path and moved the MOAB to the edge of the street. The leftists would have to pass right by the giant banner their buses went along the road. SOUND FILE (154 KB, 14 sec): Doctor Raoul on the sound system leads the chant: "no oil for protest, walk home!" as the buses idle and some go past us and within 15 feet of the MOAB. It was an incredible FReep. Thanks to all who attended. Special thanks are owed to numerous FReepers and I can't name them all. I will name Doctor Raoul for his great efforts in holding the rally, his informative speech and funny chants at the rally, tgslTakoma for her brilliant MOAB that ruined the leftists' day, BloomPa and AQGeiger for so articulately feeding the press the points of view of real spouses of troops in Iraq, Jumpin Jack for bearing the extra burden of attending, and BufordP for pushing JJ in his wheelchair up the hill. Finally, TaxRelief, DStarr, Constitution Day, Huber, and all other NC and other FReepers who actually planned, organized, and carried out the wonderful rally/FReep deserve the sincere thanks of all patriots. |
nutmeg & zelig
Honor roll: TaxRelief; Huber; all the TaxDeductions; Constitution Day; dstarr; Doctor Raoul; kristinn; catlover2; (husband of catlover2); metacomet04; SC Swamp Fox; bert; nina0113; clyde asbury; Zakker500; bobsbabe; Tax-Chick; (Tax-Chick's husband); Anoreth + the other Tax-chicklets; Flora McDonald; AQGeiger; BloomPa; Beleg Strongbow; Alia; Diva Betsy Ross; justanobody; Apple Blossom; wolfpat; bmwcyle; BillF; BufordP; upchuck; Guns are OK; cf_river_rat (and son); rrrod; Always Free; tgslTakoma
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
