Posted on 10/02/2001 9:33:22 AM PDT by mombonn
How Words Spoken on Sept. 10
Came Back to Haunt the Speaker
By JERRY GUIDERA and ROBERT TOMSHO
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
AMHERST, Mass. -- The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have transformed Jennie Traschen, a University of Massachusetts physics professor, into a target of harassment and hate.
Critics have publicized her home and e-mail addresses on the Internet, leading to a flood of nasty calls and computer messages. On her answering machine, strangers have made crude sexual remarks and denounced her as a traitor.
"This nation has been spit on by the likes of this trash," said an anonymous visitor to an Internet chat site. Another wrote: "These Marxist traitors should be hanged with piano wire and left to rot in the sun."
Unlike the backlash against Muslims and Arab-Americans, however, the attacks on Ms. Traschen have nothing to do with her ethnicity or religion. They were sparked by what the diminutive 45-year-old said about the American flag the night before four hijacked planes killed thousands and unleashed a maelstrom of emotion involving patriotism, security and fear.
People in this college town are used to speaking their minds. On the evening of Sept. 10, several dozen of them turned out to do just that at a meeting of the five-member select board that governs Amherst. The meeting had been called to settle a dispute over how often to fly 29 American flags that a group of veterans and volunteers had hung from lamp posts along the town's main thoroughfares.
Roderick Raubeson, a 59-year-old former Marine who heads the town's Veterans' Services office and the local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, had long been troubled that Amherst, known for its liberal political bent, had never adequately honored its military veterans. And so, in early August, he used $1,000 from the Veterans' Services budget for commemorative activities to buy the flags that he and others then raised downtown.
The flags raised a stir in this town of 36,000 people. Some residents wrote letters to local officials opposing the display altogether. Others said that flying so many flags every day made them just part of the scenery and eroded their meaning. But many local veterans lobbied for the flags to be flown for months at a time.
With several flags already flying daily at government offices, many town officials thought that any additional display should be confined to commemorative holidays, such as Flag Day and the Fourth of July. The issue grew more heated after Labor Day, when the flags were taken down pending a public debate and a decision by the select board at its Sept. 10 meeting.
Ms. Traschen didn't think twice about going to the town hall to make her opinions known. As a little girl, she had attended antiwar protests with her late father, a World War II veteran who often told her that free speech was among the rights the flag stood for. As an adult, she has frequently spoken out against U.S. policies ranging from the deportation of Central American refugees to Washington's support for the now-fallen apartheid regime in South Africa.
At the meeting, which was taped by a public-access cable-TV channel, Ms. Traschen urged people to lobby for more spending on education and health care for veterans rather than on hanging out more flags. Nervously tapping her open hand on the table in front of her, she also said that the flag had not always represented policies to be proud of. But it was one blunt comment that would be reported by local media and repeated again and again on the Internet.
"What the flag is," she said on the eve of disaster, "is a symbol of terrorism and death and fear and destruction and oppression."
In hindsight, Ms. Traschen wishes she had explained her thoughts differently. But then, in a town nestled in a peaceful valley in western Massachusetts, she had never had to choose her words with painstaking care. "There's been a level of repercussion that was totally unanticipated," she says.
Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, the country awoke to the horror unfolding in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. The calls to Ms. Traschen's home began Wednesday morning. In the first, it took 20 minutes to calm down an irate man from Seattle, who then warned her that her home address and phone number were already circulating on the Web. Another caller asked to speak to the "terrorist sympathizer." One suggested that she move to Afghanistan.
For a time, Ms. Traschen and her husband, also a physics professor, tried to discuss the issue with callers. When the attacks grew more vicious, however, they contacted local police, who mounted additional patrols past their home and put an electronic "tag" on their telephone so that operators would know that any call from the residence should immediately be treated as an emergency.
For a time, additional police officers were also stationed outside town hall, where officials fielded dozens of angry calls and e-mails from around the nation. Some senders had heard rumors that Amherst had ordered the flags taken down after the terrorist attacks; others were convinced that the town had banned private citizens from flying the flag at home. "We had all kinds of messages," says Town Manager Barry Del Castelho. "It was mostly people telling us to leave town or leave the country."
What had happened at the Sept. 10 meeting was that the town's select board voted 4-1 to fly the 29 flags only on six specified holidays. In the wake of the terrorist attacks the following morning, however, a group of men in a pickup truck went to the town offices on their own, retrieved the flags and returned them to their downtown sites. Since then, a local pub owner has vowed to raise money to buy even more flags for the main thoroughfares.
Mr. Raubeson, the man who started the flag displays, condemns the threats that Ms. Traschen has received. He also defends her right to free expression -- with one caveat: "When you speak your mind like that, there are consequences."
In light of the terrorist attacks, the select board hasn't determined if it will remove the 29 flags. If there is another public debate, Ms. Traschen doesn't know if she will be there.
Not that the events of Sept. 11 have altered her opinions. "To many, many ordinary people in countries around the globe, the U.S. has done terrifying things," she says. "If I think about the flag, I have to think about it from the point of view of those people."
But in Amherst, as in other towns and cities, some things have most assuredly changed since the terrorist attacks. Ms. Traschen no longer tries to discuss the flag with anonymous callers. And unsettled by the sound of her own ringing phone, she frequently leaves home to study or write.
Though fearful about future turmoil for the three-year-old child that she and her husband are in the final stages of adopting, she did write a letter to the local newspaper explaining her views. After receiving what she called "a spate of e-mails that were especially violent and several were obscene," she wanted to vent a little and talk to the locals.
"It was a good thing to do," Ms. Traschen says, noting that at the farmers' market, a lot of people came up to her and said they understood. But she remains upset by the episode and its implications.
"People are going to have a much harder time speaking their minds in this community," she says.
Depends on if she's relying on government = taxpayer money in any way.
Lesson:
Always double check that brain is engaged before putting mouth in motion...
The thought that she is adopting a 3-year old horrifies me.
Maybe if she gets enough pictures, enough email, and enough phone calls, she will either change or perhaps leave this country out of shame.
I doubt if she will remain AS LIBERAL as she was on September 10, 2001.
But I still think we should focus on Hillary. She is an ICON for many women such as Jennie Traschen.
And Hillary had the gall to stand beside the brave Police and Firemen after ripping the New York City Police Department during her campaign as well as Delegates to her convention spitting on an honor guard from the New York City Police Department.
Typical liberal liar. At 45 she would not have been a "little girl" during vietnam war protests.
Amherst makes the rest of Massachustes look conservative.
I would probably choose your words a little more carefully, Intimidator.
I would probably choose your words a little more carefully, Intimidator.
No, what it means is that true patriots will be more emboldened to show love for their country and not be so easily intimated by the acadamaniacs. For decades, these spiteful elistists have been trying to enlist our young to their Marxist, anti-American crusades. It's time they learned that folks are fed up with it.
IF? Hmmmmm, seems like someone ought to be flying a lot of flags around Ms. Traschen, so she can be sure to "think" about it. Our flag is a very important thing.
I have to think about it from the point of view of those people."
Why would she have to think about it from the point of view of people from other countries? Why? The flag is being flown in a small town in the People's Republic of MA, not in the middle of another country. Do people in other countries think how US citizens feel about their flag when their flag is flown? That's just plain dumb.
Though fearful about future turmoil for the three-year-old child that she and her husband are in the final stages of adopting...
I'm pretty fearful about the future for the three-year-old child she and her husband are adopting. With parents like that, s/he's bound to be pretty warped.
"It was a good thing to do," Ms. Traschen says
That proves it. Some people never learn.
"People are going to have a much harder time speaking their minds in this community," she says.
The smart ones will realize saying stupid things sometimes has rather drastic consequences. Obviously Ms. Traschen isn't one of them.
FP
When she was 15, she would have went to war protests on her own. I did. When she was 15, girls her age were going by themselves to Woodstock.
She wasn't a little girl.
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