Peace Protestors don't quite get it in New York

National Review Online ^ | 3-28-03 | Sarah Maserati

[DED]

Die-In Dies Out An antiwar-protest movement falls flat on opening day. Hoping to replicate the huge traffic jams, closed bridges, and 1,350 arrests San Francisco saw last Saturday, antiwar groups organized a "mass 'die-in'" at New York's Rockefeller Center yesterday. The ongoing effort — dubbed "No Business As Usual!" — targets major media outlets, defense contractors, automobile-manufacturing companies, and other large corporations. The organizers claim they will continue the die-ins and other forms of civil disobedience every day until the war is over.

But as protest movements go, this opening-day effort fell flat.

A few supporters of the war, many on their way to work, tried to argue with the anti-warriors. Some staged spontaneous counter-protests. One man held a makeshift sign that read "Saddam Sez: Thanks, Suckers!" He yelled at the protesters, "You are aiding and abetting Saddam Hussein!" Visibly upset, one dred-locked girl said, "That's too provocative." Asked if the protesters themselves were being provocative, she said, "He has a right, but we're the majority, and the majority here is provoking a different vibration than that man is."

As time went on, lawyers and construction workers in the vicinity began heckling the protesters. A corporate lawyer, in response to a sign reading, "No Money for War! Money for Education!" responded with "No money for education! Money for overtime New York City cops!" Others used less irony: "Get a f****** job!" One counter-protester's sign read: "To All the Anti-War Hypocrites: Why Not Protest French Occupation of West Africa?"

So why did this protest fall flat? New York is a liberal city, and therefore more likely than most to be antiwar. But after September 2001, New Yorkers just have less patience for such things. As one onlooker put it, "My cousin was a firefighter and died at the World Trade Center. We don't need these people wasting the time of the people who protect us."

[EternalVigilance]

Sounds true. Lots of folks are past fed up with this seditious bunch of lamebrains.

If I had to guess, lots of these kids are probably starting to get nervous about the kind of response they are getting.

Their cowardice has to be beginning to kick in.

It's just like the tyrants we face in Iraq. Oppose them and they fade into the woodwork. Turn on the lights and they scurry away like the cockroaches they are.

Good analogy.

[DED]

OK, liberals ALMOST never learn. And when it comes to the Clintons, Democrats NEVER learn.
Here's a scary thought - Bill is supposedly maneuvering for international support to become the next Secretary General of the UN.
And it could happen at the same time Hillary might try a run for president.
And there are many in this country who are so clueless, they'd welcome BOTH.

[EternalVigilance]

You lost your daughter in the towers?

I'm so, so sorry.

Be assured, many, many of us will never forget.

[Windcatcher]

Losing the World Trade Center and THREE THOUSAND AMERICANS can be a life-adjusting experience.

Nothing kills liberalism faster than cold, hard, TRUTH.

[Tokhtamish]

The 60's counterculture came from San Francisco, not from Andy Warhol and Greenwich Village. In California the weather is always wonderful and living is easy. In New York the weather is only sporadically wonderful and only the tough get ahead. New York never had any use for hippie dippie "love and peace" crap because we were never as spoilt as Californians. New York, unlike the Bay Area, never accepted that everyone has a right to a free ride.

Make a New Yorker late for work or late for anything for that matter and you've got a world of trouble.

[oyez]

Andy Warhol and Greenwich Village

That was the commercial hippie movement. Rent prices jumped dramaticly in The Village due to demand in those days. Warhol made living by having this constant party going on around him.

[Mr_Magoo]

[AUsome Joy]

I am sorry. I didn't mean that she was lost in the towers. We were among the lucky ones. She was in the first tower that was hit. She escaped. We didn't know she was safe until 11:30 so we were desperate and when the towers went down we just knew we had lost her. One of the girls I go to Bible study with lost her husband. He died by staying to help others escape. She has small children.

NJ is a commuter state. There are buses that pick people up from PA and NJ and take them straight into Wall Street. That is how my daughter got in every morning. The night of 9/11 and several nights after, there were still cars in the parking lot that hadn't been picked up. We could imagine that they were left by some who were lost.

I do believe that some of these protesters are naive, but some of them have a real agenda.

I am glad your son missed the war. Our nephew is there right now. We had dinner on Labor Day right before 9/11. He had just gotten through paratrooper school at Ft. Benning. He is with the 82nd Airborne. Right after that was the twin tower tragedy and now he is there to fight the terrorists.

[DED]

I missed a good point in your message the first time I read it.

You mention a HERO that died when he went remained in the WTC trying to help others get out.

The average middle east Muslim thinks a hero is someone who murders a lot of people by bombing a bus in Israel, or flying a plane into a building in New York.

I think most Americans can see a difference. These people are not by any stretch of imagination the same as us.