...By a protester who protested the protesters!
The date.... August 29th, the time..bout 11 am, the place...New York City; against the backdrop of America's key city, a legion of protesters hit the streets in an effort to show their disgust with everything from the War on Terror, the Invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, American Superpower status (ecconomicly and militarily) and a host of other "perceived " wrongs against the world. In fact there wasn't any area left un-protested from religion to gay rights to the military being nothing more than killers of civilians. But in the protesters minds...all roads lead to the Bush administration. The "protest" march was organised by United for Peace and Justice...another far-left group associated with the likes of International A.N.S.W.E.R., and Code Pink...but these were some of the big names...but there were others...and although we in this country have the right to assemble peacefully...the protesters were anything but that.
How do I know...simple I was there walking along with them...protesting as they were...shouting as they were...pointing at my sign like they did...feeling euphoric in part like they did for exercising my right to peaceful protest. One little( or big) difference is that while they were protesting nearly everything under the sun having to do with America, the President, capitalism, etc....Myself...along with bout 300 others decided to give the media..and the thousands of onlookers lining the sides of the route what the protesters were really like. Now Initially we planned on slipping in to the protest enmass....but police wouldnt allow us in recommending that we follow them from the back out of concern for our saftey. Never known to do the safe thing....we essentially began breaking into small groups and sending them down a few blocks from out gathering point...after bout 20 mins of this...my group entered the protesters....noticing another of our groups a short distance ahead we moved casually and steady till we reached them...it took bout a block and a half before the Tainted Kool-Aid drinking people realized who we were...it was only a matter of time before a clusterfuck was in effect...slowly they began with questioning our rights..and my parentage...then it was the chanting of colorful slurs...personally being called a skin head (and here I thought the shaved head look was in...go figure) but the worst hit us in the form of black clad, bandana covering their face thugs....they began violently attacking our group in waves...and quite a few of us were pulled bout 20ft away from the group to be encircled and assaulted by them...this includes the women of our group....so much for the unwritten rule of not hitting women....`the reports from all of our mini-groups came out the same....attempts at luring our members out to be "interviewed" only to become gang assaulted....while some of the media got it covered on camera....we got every punch, kick, spitting, attempts at stealing/destroying our signs/flags on both still and video as we had our own people spread out through the whole route and with each group...
When it became apparent that we were in danger of being seriously hurt....the NYPD to their credit swept in to create a barrier around us and move us out of the danger zone. They repeated this several times until all our groups made it out of the useful idiot zone. For a while after that, we split into 2 large groups with one at the end of the route...for my group...we stayed at the back and hung around talking to the cops (who had no love for the protesters...fist bumps were done in some instances) giving interviews to a wide array of "reporters" smiling and joking for a bit with all....that is till the "cardboard coffin" march began to pass us....several in our group were current active duty military and had been in Iraq/Afghan so this upset them...they sat there saluting for over an hour...the rest of us right hands over our hearts...most of us including the soldiers/marines with us were in tears. The protesters found this somehow a laughing matter and preceeded to make light of it. So much for showing respect for those who died while serving...but then if they had any respect for those who have served or are currently...they would never have dont it in the first place.
While myself and the other members of Protest Warrior knew full well what we were getting into...what we uncovered only reaffirmed our previous conclusions. They routinely use thug tactics to silence any dissent...any idea they might find even remotely opposite of theirs. They believe America is the root cause of all the evils of the world and find patriotism revolting. While we think they are completely off their rocker as it were...we would defend their right to their opins and their right to peacefully assemble...but I am at a loss as to why they constantly omit "Peacefully" from their mission statement...must be an oversight.
One final note...my friend Karl was one of a few of us carrying a flag...the one he was carrying was an American flag given to him by a vetrans group and had sentimental value....he was attacked during the march by no less than 5 leftist thugs who restrained him while they yanked it out of his hands....the last thing we all saw after their repeated spitting on it and tearing it up was an attempt to set it on fire. I often wonder if since Im republican and accused of being a storm trooper, why the left uses stromtrooper tactics with their own thugs when we didnt even attempt to steal their signs, rip their flags up ( there were many flags they carried, cuba, ussr,iran, syrian,north korean....and no I'm not making this up)...might be we are better than they...we atleast respect peaceful yet intelligent debate....too bad we found that those left-wing protesters we're somewhat lacking in both!
........Craig