Official After-Action Thread: March 19 Fayetteville, NC Support Our Troops Rally

Freepers, lurkers and assorted patriots ^ | March 19, 2005 | Constitution Day

[Constitution Day]

Today we met in Fayetteville, NC to Freep a motley rabble of socialists, anarchists, Code Pink-os, and other throwbacks to the 60's! As usual, we were well outnumbered by their hordes of college students, aging hippies and other bused-in protestors, but we held our own as always.

Please post any reports and observations on this thread only.

[wolfpat]

We have got to be more vigilant next year
We need a way to identify who is us, and who is them. Huber was ready to run me to the other side when he first saw me.

[Ray66]

Ya I have about 2min worth of tape, battery was not charged enough for the day, lesson learned. I'm trying now to finger out away to send from DV camera, USB not gonna work gonna have to use Firewire and transfer to make a .MOV or something. The tape has the "8 Million Iraqi's gave Saddam the Finger" part so I want to save and digitize and share. Working on it.

On that Tape the idiot is seen also at the beginning also, so he was there for awhile by himself.

[bert]

 

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.

[perfect stranger]

I emailed this thread to him. He said, "I was holding the sign for a young 82nd Soldier's wife while she was being interviewed. It was the best sign I have ever seen!!!! I was honored to have held it."

Was that your sign gbwife?

[Bars4Bill]

Can someone please photoshop this wretched image? I have a higher resolution one if you need it.

After attempting some creative thought, I believe nothing can be done for or against him, even in high res, or with a thousand Photoshop layers.

That thing has all the IQ of a brick.

[cf_river_rat]

We need a way to identify who is us, and who is them.

Hats?

[Constitution Day]

BloomPa in FReep mode!

dstarr in FReep mode!

[AQGeiger]

Nope, it was mine.

[Dutchgirl]

Welcome to Free Republic and thank you for your service. I am reviewing the thread with "shock and awe." Well done!

[AQGeiger]

Welcome to FR!

Thank you for your nice comments. I'm blushing.

[Tax-chick]

Charlotte, not Charlottesville ... big difference! We a little over a 2 hour drive, quite pleasant. We had six of our kids with us; oldest son was in Atlanta with his Boy Scout troop. Everyone had fun. The police liked Patrick and let him inspect their cars and pat the horses.

[perfect stranger]

It is a great sign. It looks like you all had alot of fun yesterday. And good on you for the interview! Thanks all for supporting our troops.

I must admit it really made my day to see him in the pictures here, I had to look at the pic a few times to make sure.

[Tax-chick]

We could all wear tinfoil hats.

[Diva Betsy Ross]

I will tell you something Bert- it burns me that that punk hit you. I mean it really does. I am sorry that it happened and I hope you are feeling no pain from it today. It was wonderful to meet you. Thanks for your service, BTW. I wanna go punch that guy myself for hitting a veteran.

I have an ear infection in one ear and can not hear out of it for awhile. I walked around most of the day as tho I was in a bubble and I missed a lot of what was going on. I saw some of this event- but I didn't really know the full extent of it all until this thread.

[perfect stranger]

Welcome to FreeRepublic cuz.

[Tax-chick]

I haven't seen any pictures of AQGeiger yet. She's the young lady with the long brown hair, who looks a lot like Yasmine Bleeth, but without the mileage.

[perfect stranger]

Nor have I.

[AQGeiger]

I haven't seen any pictures of AQGeiger yet. She's the young lady with the long brown hair, who looks a lot like Yasmine Bleeth, but without the mileage.

Wow, I'm getting complimented all up and down this thread! Thanks.

Modesty made me feel silly at the thought of putting photos of myself up. Diva Betsy Ross took a shot of me with the sign for the FReeper Canteen. Perhaps she won't mind posting the photo over here as well. :-)

[BloomPa]

My dad called me from work today around 6:00am and said “I see they quoted you on the front page.” (Fayetteville Observer) He also said I was quoted in the State and Local section. I told him, thank God I didn’t drop the f-bomb. He said he wished he could have been there. He told me to tell all of you THANK YOU from a retired Vietnam Vet.

[Diva Betsy Ross]

I will be glad to show our very own FReeper belly girl off here as well. I won't be able to post them until tomorrow. But when I do I will post them up for you right here! And you did do a great job. I wasn't able to hear most of your speech and I missed the singing! But what I heard was good girl!!

( can you believe I missed everything!) I was chatting and I looked over and I thought- were they just singing???