Posted on 05/25/2003 12:09:50 AM PDT by kristinn
The Muslim American Society and International A.N.S.W.E.R. organized a rally in Washington, D.C. today “to protest (the) Bush attack on Muslims, immigrants, civil rights and civil liberties.”
The event, called Muslim Solidarity Day, was held at Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Justice Department--the main targets of the protesters wrath.
Though thousands were expected to turn out, barely two hundred and fifty Muslims and Godless commies came out to hear speaker after speaker denounce President Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft, America and Israel.
The Memorial Day weekend weather was cool and overcast, but dry. The roaring sounds of Rolling Thunder riders going by punctuated the sounds of hatred with the sound of liberty.
The advertised lineup of speakers included Democrats Rep. John Conyers and presidential candidate Al Sharpton; A.N.S.W.E.R. commies Brian Becker and Mara Verheyden-Hillard; and Mahdi Bray, President of MAS Freedom.
Conyers and Sharpton were no-shows. However Rep. Conyers sent an aide to speak for him, as did another Democrat presidential candidate--Rep. Dennis Kucinich.
It’s just as well those politicians weren’t present because they would have had to answer whether they agreed with other speakers’ calls for “revolution” to replace the American government and praise of suicide bombers as not murderers but “martyrs.”
They also might have had to answer for the threats of violence and other harassment by rally principals and National Lawyers Guild representatives against two FReepers who exercised their rights to attend the public rally and photograph it.
TgslTakoma and I went down there not to counterdemonstrate, but to check it out. We’ve always been busy when the other side does their thing in D.C., so we took the opportunity to take a busman’s holiday.
We walked though the crowd wearing our FReeper jackets. We carried no signs and spoke to noone unless spoken to first. TgslTakoma split off to take photos of the crowd and the signs they were carrying.
TgslTakoma was singled out for hostility by Brian Becker when he noticed her photographing him and Mara Verheyden-Hillard as they stood by the stage. Becker walked over and loudly accused tgslTakoma of being a government spy.
Becker and Verheyden-Hillard commented on tgslTakoma being a FReeper, then Verheyden-Hillard conferred with a group of green hat wearing National Lawyers Guild representatives. Soon the group surrounded tgslTakoma in an effort to prevent her from taking pictures.
TgslTakoma called me from her cellphone to inform me of her situation. I walked up from the back of the crowd towards the front to check out the situation. I was stunned to see a ‘green hat’ right in tgslTakoma’s face blocking her from taking pictures with her body and hands.
‘Green hats’ are supposed to monitor the police to make sure the rights of the participants are protected at their rallies--not violate the civil rights of others. So I walked back to the other end of the plaza and informed the U.S. Park Police officers there about the situation.
By then, Fidel Castro groupie Becker had taken the stage. As I walked back with the officers to tgslTakoma, Becker pointed her out to the audience, accusing her again of taking pictures for the government. He said she was a cockroach, telling the audience, “There are two things you can do with a cockroach. You can ignore it, or....you can do something else.”
The eyes of the crowd turned toward tgslTakoma. Everyone got a good look at the “cockroach.” Some took her picture, while others apparently made mental notes about how to deal with the “cockroach” later.
The officers rebuked the ‘green hats’ for harrassing tgslTakoma. Though we had a right to be in the crowd and take pictures, we agreed that we would not enter the permitted area of the rally so as to keep the peace.
I pointed out to the officers our experience over the past year with how the ‘green hats’ would escort demonstrators from their anti-war rallies into our pro-America rallies to test our reactions. Our only objections were when those demonstrators violated our permit by carrying signs contrary to our rally’s message or when they tried to shout down our speakers. Anyone was free to take pictures and listen, as we were doing today.
The officers acknowledged that and expressed their appreciation for our understanding of the situation.
The ‘green hat’ who was waving “her” hands in front of tgslTakoma took up a post at the edge of the plaza near where we sat down after things were sorted out. “She” shadowed us for the rest of the rally.
Other rally principals came over and took photographs of us. Boy, was that intimidating (/sarcasm). Some of them got up the nerve to talk to us. One of them, accompanied by a few others, threatened tgslTakoma with grave bodily harm, prompting another walk by me to bring the police back over.
This time, they advised us that without a police witness to the threat it would be a “he said she said” in front of a magistrate. They went over to the back of the stage and basically told the principals to leave us alone or else.
The police stayed nearby until the rally ended to ensure that we were not harrassed further. While all this was going on we met a couple from North Carolina who had attended a FReeper Rally for America in Raleigh. They hung out with us for part of the rally today and got to witness the intolerant left up close and personal.
Also, a crew filming a documentary on “Democracy in America” filmed an interview with me. They wanted tgslTakoma to speak too, but she declined.
As we left, the ‘green hat’ shadowed us all the to the far end of the plaza, breaking off when we stopped to thank the Park Police for being out there today.
BY TGSLTAKOMA: Kristinn had planned to stay home this weekend and catch up on home stuff while I had planned to do a solo trip to the CANSWER/MAS rally to do some freelance photojournalism. Unlike some "journalists" my plan was to just wander quietly in the crowd and along the periphery and take photos of things, signs, people. I like to stay behind my camera, I don't look to make news.
Well, I went into the city with this simple plan and when I saw how few people were at the "massive" event, I called Kristinn and told him that their rally was a flop. So we met up and arrived together at Freedom Plaza. I took a few photos and then told Kristinn that I was just going to wander about and take pictures in the crowd. Kristinn sat on the outer wall and listened to the hate speeches while I meandered.
I noticed Brian Becker and Mara Verheyden-Hillard, King and Queen of WWP/ANSWER, honored guests of MAS - so I started snapping photos of them, from about 50 feet distant. Becker saw me, and quickly turned away. I moved about and took some more shots of him and others, but as a photo subject he bored me, so I focused on other things.
Next thing I know he comes up from behind me on my right and says, "You're from Free Republic!" (I was wearing my FR jacket. Good guess, Becker) "You're here spying for the government!"
I told him that he was way too paranoid. He really was going goofy on me; he said that I couldn't infiltrate his rally and spy on people. I reminded him of the name of the location, Freedom Plaza, and that this was a public event. I said that I was standing out in the open, quietly taking photos, and not disrupting. And I turned my back on him.
He started yelling then, calling over a goon to take my picture. So I smoothed out the name on my jacket, and turned my collar with the Pentagon -9/11 pin towards the goon and I smiled for the camera. Several more of the goons soon arrived, as others on the stage looked my way. Mara joined in on Becker's verbal confrontation. She made a few disparaging remarks about FReepers, and then headed over to the NLG Green Hats. They pow-wowed for several minutes while I moved to the side of the spectator area to take photos of the guest speakers.
Within a minute or two, I was joined by a "female" NLG green hat with her bicycle, and then another, and then a 300lb "security" guy, and then another scrawny one, and then another, and then another. I had six people, two women-types and four males, surrounding me. Whenever I raised my camera, one of them would shift into my camera line-of-sight. I didn't say a word.
I called Kristinn on the cell phone and told him what was happening, as I had been gone 20 minutes and didn't know where he was.
I then moved to front and center in the spectators, figuring that if they were going to do anything, I wanted to be near Pennsylvania Ave side where normal passers-by, and Kristinn were.
Pretty soon my shadows followed me. The bicycle NLG gal became frustrated as I moved my camera from right to left and up and down and left and right. She was looking incredibly foolish running back and forth in front of me, right up in front of the spectators.
She dropped her bike on the ground and began using her hand to block my view, but she still looked silly... waving her hand to-and-fro, up-and-down, in front of the crowd.
Visibly perturbed she then enlisted an olive-skinned male to take over, and he was a little too eager. He shoved me as I had taken camera aim at the stage. The NLG bike gal told him, "Don't touch her. You can't touch her."
I tried to take more photos, but he pushed his sign into my way. So I moved further to the right side of the crowd, and that's when Brian Becker made his "cockroach" speech, and pointed me out to the crowd. Kristinn arrived very soon after with police and we moved to the public sidewalk to continue our observation of this hate-America rally.
Kristinn pretty much covers the rest of the story after we reunited at the sidewalk. What a day! I have lots of photos to link, but it's late, so I may not get them listed here until sometime tomorrow.
The SEIU is the UNION GOONS of UNION GOONS.
You can go onto ANSWER 's website and see a huge list of their supporters. Don' t be surprised by who you see there! It is full of blatant communist groups and the other usual suspects. Make no mistake, these people want the overthrow of the government. That is not lawful, so I can't understand why they aren't all arrested!
******
International A.N.S.W.E.R. Brian Becker, Co-Director, International Action Center
Press Statement - September 24, 2001
The coalition that has formed - Act Now to Stop War and End Racism or A.N.S.W.E.R. - is organizing a growing part for the population here who agree that the answer proposed by George W. Bush last Thursday was not an appropriate one to the horrific killing of thousands of civilians on September 11.
Thousands of people are coming to Washington DC for the first national anti-war protest this Saturday, September 29. We are marching in front of the White House. We will be marching down Pennsylvania Ave. to the Capitol.
We are telling President Bush and Congress that the answer is not war and racism. The President's proposals will lead to a catastrophe. He is proposing an endless war. Tens of thousands, likely hundreds of thousands, of young men and women in the armed forces will be sent to the Middle East, to the Persian Gulf, to South Asia, to fight an undefined enemy in a war without limits.
President Bush said that all weapons will be used by the U.S. in this war. Does this include biological weapons, chemical weapons, germ warfare, nuclear weapons, carpet bombings, surgical bombing, commando units, ground troops and a new generation of high tech weapons of mass destruction?
President Bush's program for endless war is insanity. Does anyone in their right mind believe that this would end the cycle of violence, which is taking the lives of civilians everywhere.
We are heartened by the response to our call for a national protest. No demonstration of this size and magnitude took place at the beginning of the Vietnam War. In fact, the war had dragged on for a couple of years before a demonstration of the size we are projecting for September 29 took place.
Yes, the people in the United States are mourning and grieving. They are angry and sad. But it would be a major political miscalculation if the Bush administration believes its own propaganda that there is unanimity in the population for a new war.
People have asked us, if war and racism are not the answer, what is the answer? Are we for doing nothing? No. We believe the U.S. must do something if it wants to end the cycle of violence. It must remove the tens of thousands of U.S. troops - and the military bases and the warships and war planes and cruise missiles -- that are permanently stationed in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East. The overwhelming military force of the U.S. in this oil-rich region are viewed by the people of the Middle east not as a force for liberation but as an occupying and colonial force. Those troops and war ships should be brought home and those U.S. bases closed.
If one wants to pursue peace, it requires that the United States government end the economic sanctions on the people of Iraq, which according to the United Nation's own statistics, have led to the death of over 1.2 million people. This month and every month 6,000 to 10,000 Iraqi's die from sanctions. Most of those who have died from hunger and malnutrition-related diseases are children under the age of five. Iraqi people and all Arab people believe that their children are the innocent victims of a genocidal policy. And the United States must stop supporting Israeli occupation and aggression against the Palestinian people and the Occupied Territories.
On September 29, we will also assert that Arab people, Muslim people and people from South Asia are our sisters and brothers and not our enemies. We will offer a hand of solidarity to these besieged communities that have been demonized and victimized by racism and violence since September 11.
A third plank of our demonstration will be to support long cherished civil rights and civil liberties that are now threatened by John Ashcroft and the Bush administration's reactionary attempt to destroy privacy, immigrants' basic democratic rights, attack organizations in the United States that are vocal opponents of U.S. foreign policy while expanding the powers of the FBI and the CIA to surveil and carry out covert actions against people in the United States.
BRIAN BECKER, Co-Director, International Action Center Becker was the national coordinator of the January 20 Counter-Inaugural Protest in Washington DC. He is a co-author of Challenge to Genocide: Let Iraq Live and author publications. He is a frequent commentator on Fox TV. Recently he was the co-coordinator of the Korea Truth Commission. Becker was one of 678 people illegally arrested April 15, 2001, in a mass preventive detention arrest at an International Action Center protest on the first day of the convergence against the IMF and World Bank.
It's a man baby!
A very reliable source told me that same thing yesterday. My response, "No wonder her voice was so deep!"
All kinds of weird stuff floated up out of the sewers in DC yesterday...
Domingo Samudio, from "Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs." You know, "Woolly Bully"?
(I'm just joking, Sam's a Christian and a good American... for all I know he's a FReeper... but this guy has the same goat as Domingo had years before it was cool....)
The he-she sure looks like Michael Jackson.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
No, it's Islamic. In Afghanistan, it is normal for men to push, strike or beat women with complete impunity, because their strict version of Islam considers women to be subhuman.
Some Arab cultures (Saudia Arabia for instance) do likewise. This terrorist sympathiser probably hails from one of those lands, or has absorbed some of their fine culture.
Next time, shoot video... this hothead is going to convict himself and then we can send him back to whatever seraglio he crept out of.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I still find it so absolutely hysterically funny that this woman, and Brian Becker... who have worked so long and hard to present themselves to the public and the media as moderates and humanitarians... lost their cools so massively yesterday at the presence of just one Freeper!
As Becker was yelling at me and calling me a government spy, Mara came over and lost her cool too. She who likes to project a mature and rational countenance became a catty pre-teen and said, "Yeah, Free Republic is that right wing hate site. If there was one more Freeper here (she was unaware of Kristinn's presence across the plaza), that'd be more people than they have at any of their rallies!
I had to laugh at her with her next comment about how I was wearing brand new government issued boots, too!
The woman was coming unglued! Becker too. Maybe they were thinking that there were more of us out in the crowd in deep cover, or something.
What happened to us yesterday shows how effective we at Free Republic have been over the past year and-a-half at blowing their deceptions wide open.
It's been a long and tiring (and personally expensive) 20 months for members of the DC Chapter and other generous FReepers, who have countered every rally that CANSWER sponsored in DC; but our efforts have paid off immeasureably. Many people have learned the truth about Mara, Becker, Ramsey Clark, and the rest of the crew - thanks to all the investigative work and calls and emails to media by the hard-working sleuths here at Free Republic.
But CANSWER is not quite ready to give up yet. They have more grand plans to do more "massive" rallies in the upcoming months, so we'll need to stay ready. Their cashflow may have been cut off by Saddam's ouster, but I'm sure North Korea and Cuba will pick up some of the funding slack.
Marc Frucht, the man struck on the head, is one of three arrested. Police say he ignored orders to clear the street. Frucht says he was tackled when he tried to take pictures. (snip) And the Partnership has another client.
What hypocrites! They are attacking you for doing the same thing that this guy said he was doing.
It does make them look more stupid than usual, doesn't it?
I was really hoping to see and get photos of some of the big-name folks who were supposed to be speaking.
No Al Sharpton. No John Conyers. No Danny Glover. No explanation what happened to them, either.
They may mock and ridicule us, and Mara may make fun of our small rally turnouts; but we worry them. Great thing is - they hang themselves by their own words. And being that they are self-important commies, they are prolific writers and speakers, which makes our job that much easier.
Yes, go to ANSWER's website, and you will find a long list of donors and supporters.
They counted four FReepers, but they counted wrong. It was just Kristinn and me. A young couple visiting from out of state stopped and talked with us for a long time, and they witnessed the male (he's not a man) who walked up and threatened me. The girl was dumbfounded by that. She said to me, "Did he just threaten you, in front of everybody?! I don't believe he just did that." They had been about to leave when this happened so Kristinn asked them to stick around while he got the police, in case they wanted any statements.
They were very nice folks. The man was familiar with Free Republic and had been to the Support the Troops Rally in Raleigh. His mom was in DC this past week lobbying on the Hill for veterans with Hepatitis C. He said that many vets were inoculated with the compressed-air guns and some with re-used needles, and many vets now have hep C. Apparently VA says there is no proof that the inoculation technique is the cause, so they are balking at covering the health costs related. His mom is doing this all on her own, because her husband is one of the vets with hep C.
But he was probably a government spy, too.
;-)
P.S. I wore the jacket so they couldn't say I was there under cover. I figured my face was well-known enough by them that they would recognize me with or without the jacket; and I didn't want to give them any reason to call me a spy or an infiltrator. We can all see how well that worked out. Next time I'll wear a tie-dye and a wig and some peace beads, and a CIA cap.
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