Some comments from some bloggers who were there.
LGF....There was actually a good mix of us there. Not everyone was from protest warrior, in fact only about 5-10 of us were. There were a few guys from freerepublic.org and some others who were there independently. A mother, and Protest Warrior reg (name escapes me now, sorry!) brought her two little daughters who chose to be with mom at this event rather than a birthday party. They were in the 8-10yo age range and one held a sign I liked: "we don't strap explosives to our 10 year olds." Another man had a sign with the waffle house logo and showed J. Kerry "flipping" on the issues . Most notably among us, there was a very intelligent, very dignified, Iraqi-American man, who it was a pure honor to meet. Even after you've seen protest warriors wage their arguments on the left, you haven't seen nothing compared to this guy. He systematically tore every argument up that the freedom haters confronted him with. I thoroughly enjoyed being in his company and just observing his debates. I met a lot of great people today.
Of course, with the great people, come the not-so-great people. Yes, you guessed it, the freedom haters. The turnout at this rally was meager. I'd say there was no more than 500 people total. Nevertheless, the police were there in force. Whenever a confrontation would get out of hand they would step in and quiet people down. The funny thing is, you could tell that they were clearly on our side and they didn't care when people complained that we didn't have a permit and laughed with us and were very agreeable. And I'm proud to say thay unlike the freedom-haters, we were very respectful throughout the event. Every once in awhile, someone would emerge from the opposing crowd and begin yelling profanities at us at the top of their lungs... you know the standard ones (ie fascists, racists, imperialists, idiots, f***ers) or a combination of them. At one point a man came out yelling at us and the Iraqi-American guy got the most upset and started yelling back in Arabic. We learned later from the Iraqi-American that the guy was a Palestinian who supported Yasar Arafat and suicide bombings in Israel - yeah, disgusting. The most astounding thing I think to us and to the Iraqi-American was that they were flying the Baathist Party flags (of course not one American flag in their whole assembly).
The freedom haters made their speeches, sang their songs, chanted, yelled and did what freedom-haters do. Of course there was a lot of anti-Bush rhetoric, you know, the whole schpeel. They were composed of a number of different groups, of course ANSWER was there in force (more than I expected) too. The media was present also. I think we actually got more attention than did the war protestors. I wish they hadn't have interviewed some of the people that they did, but its nothing I can stop now. The media will spin this whatever way they can especially CBS (the local affiliate present) and our local paper, the AJC.
Overall, this was a rewarding event. I learned something today, above all else: the power of free speech. Its a power you don't know you have or to what extent you have it until you use it. I think that those who haven't attended a rally of this type, cannot comprehend or appreciate the liberating power of free speech. And when you carry our message, you realize you don't need a megaphone or a thousand people or massive demonstration. The message is its own weapon, and for that, I'm proud to be a part of protest warriors.
HOOTINAN - Crashing The Protest
I don’t post much on weekends, but no matter where I am, I usually try to slip in a post or two. But today was a little different. I’ve been gone all day and if you were to guess that I went to the moronic convergence in New York City (also known as the "anti-war" protest), you’d be right. I went. But not with International A.N.S.W.E.R.’s raving moonbat mob of anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic degenerates, I went as a Protest Warrior and walked around with delightfully humorous and intelligent signs that flew in the face of much of what the "anti-war" movement claimed to stand for. And man was it fun to see the looks on those idiots face’s when they saw our signs, the looks of amazement were funny as hell but which quickly turned into hate and anger once they realized we weren’t on their side. The peace and love crowd was anything but. Sitting here I can’t even count how many times we were accused of being cia-ops, on the Bush/Cheney payroll, on Halliburton’s payroll, called fascists, racist, bigots, anti-gay (even though we didn’t have any signs that even touched on any gay rights issues), anti-Muslim, anti-women...shoved, pushed around and told to die, to "fuck off whitey" and the list goes on and on (told you I couldn’t count ’em all). At one point we encountered a massive wall of idiots (I think they were catching on to us so one of them radioed ahead to their comrades to watch out for us), where some were adorned with the symbol of Palestinian terrorism, the kaffiyeh and after bemoaning that we were anti-everything under the sun, they began chanting long live the intifadah!, long live the intifadah!, long live the intifadah!!! with blood in their eyes and sheer violence in their voice. It was truly scary. If the police weren’t there to hold back these nuts, it could have turned ugly, and fast. That was about the worst of the lunacy though, thank God. After that the protest died down, we did some interviews, were told to eff off a few more times and that was that. I unfortunately didn’t get the chance (nor did my batteries afford me the chance) to take many pictures but Ivan did for anti-com.com, go check ’em out. I also got to meet the lovely, Judith Weiss from Kesher Talk. Go check out her take on the today’s events. She and I tried endlessly to get online after the march because we were both itching to blog about the day’s events but had no such luck. Anyways, it was an awesome time, execpt for the death threats and whatnot, I got to meet a ton of really nice, friendly, and genuine people and I can’t wait to stick it to the Left again at the next protest! |
