It looks a lot like I ain’t gonna make it to town today.
My foot is screaming at me. It seems like everything is conspiring against me going to the rally. My prayers go out for you all though.
At least, (I Hope) the cops are going to be very much more civilized.
Our meeting with them yesterday is getting national attention.
The “hip picture” is getting bigger and bigger.
I would scarcely be surprised if it comes up in city council tomorrow.
Eric, do a ytiruces nacs. The folks involved might not speak our dialect as they are from taiwan. I think. They’ve been attacking my computer since about midnight, and I was on either this blog, alfrankenweb or blabbing mikes at the time it started.
I reported it to the admin of my isp and theirs.
I think mine is now nailed shut,
Today’s rally went off well, and was a pleasant event. The only nuisance was the presence of the cops themselves. We don’t want them there and they are not there to protect us at all, but are nothing more than intimidation aginast participants when they surround peaceful events such as ours, as they did. We wish they would get the hell out of our view entirely. Thery are not neutral protecters of ordinary citizens at all, but are ins=tead seen by most of us as dangerous and trigger happy, hired thugs.
I don’t think the police were at all intimidating to any of the attendees to the rally. It wasn’t very hard to get those attending to cheer the belittling of the Colorado Springs Police Department.
The police belittled themselves, the hypocrites in the crowd who called for the deaths of Elizabeth and Eric and all of us, belittled themselves.
The police knew that there were people in the crowd attempting to incite a riot, but didn’t go after them. The GIs in the crowd could have actually lived up to the propaganda being shouted by the pro-war delegates in the crowd, (cowards all, if any of you were actually Irish then you shame the name of Ireland as well, boyos) they could have stood up and said, at least, that we had a right to free speech. THEY could have called for calm on the parts of that small yet loud minority in the crowd, and actually proved that they do stand for FREEDOM.
They chose not to.
I stood up to the bigots and hate-freaks. I did it because I have to, in order to keep a clean conscience. That and I was one of the ones whose deaths they were screaming for.
I also knew beforehand that the ones calling for us to be run over and demanding we be arrested en masse, beaten even more severely, were and still are Craven Cowards.
If they hadn’t been COWARDS they wouldn’t have been trying to get a mob to do what they were obviously TOO AFRAID to do themselves.
I wasn’t any kind of hero.
They were just Zeroes.
You want to use the word Freedom in defense of what the pigs did? Then for once in your life actually STAND FOR FREEDOM.
Wow, I must have missed the part about running us over or arresting us. The hell is the deal with that? Maybe it’s not an exaggeration to say that Colorado Springs is turning into some kind of nazi outback fascist police state.
That’s hardly cool.
Regardless, we understand that you don’t need to be a radical like that in order for your ideology to prevail.
it was people, amongst the bystanders, one who was not 20 feet away from the officers who had Eric on the ground….
not many, but very vocal, who were urging that.
I thought i had made that clear, but if not, bear with me.
Even when confronted (maybe I was too polite, but hey, I get like that sometimes) with the absurdity of them chanting about “defending freedom” on the one hand and demanding that we be killed for exercising that freedom on the other hand, they still insisted on chanting slogans, not coming up with any reasonable explanation for the contradictions in their chants, but also not willing to take any actions themselves against us.
Perhaps they have been so terrorized by the propaganda the state puts out about people who don’t support George Bush’s war being terrorists or maybe they were just naturally cowardly.
I don’t know, but of course, when they try to explain those contradictions to their kids, the kids are going to realize that Mommy and Daddy are LYING to them.
The more paranoid explanation would be that these were agents provocateurs, because the Police State would love to have a (quickly contained) “incident” to hold against the peace movement.
That such an incident couldn’t be provoked at the parade, doesn’t stop the (un)Official Mouthpieces of the Police State, like the Gazette and Rocky Mountain News and Fox networks from trying to exploit it as a “terrorist attack” on St Patrick’s Day, launched by those Fanatic Hippies of the peace movement.
Tom, the military bases around here combined with the military related companies that dominate the city make many of the Colorado Springs public quite assaultive people. People get angry when their paycheck is threatened. You can see the assaultive nature of many of the CS public even on good days, with their excessive and constant use of the middle finger by Colorado Springs Right Wingers aginst any peace vigils we organize.
And yes, the police presence at the Sunday rally, too, was quite oppressive to those of us against the war. What is especially upsetting for us to read in The Gazette, was their absolutely typical misinformation about why the police were there Sunday. The Gazette claims that we hired the police to be security for us!
Bullshit! We are forced to pay for them but that is not something voluntarily done, but is mere added expense to anybody wishing to exercise their rights to free speech as a group. Quite the opposite, The City of Colorado Springs requires that any group essentially pay for their own harrassment by paying for the extra dose of police spying and harassment when anybody does any public event. There is no way anybody in the peace movement would ever want to pay for the police we distrust so much, to actually do security for us. It is a preposterous notion to think that we see the police as being any way ‘security providers’ for us. Instead, we see them as potential assaultants, ambusheres, and jailers, which is exactly the role they played on St. Patrick’s Day.
On Sunday, we may have cheered comments cdirected against the police, but we did it in the context of being surrounded oppressively by them once again. Officer Friendly can quickly morph into Officers Stun Gun and Officers Choke Hold when they are readied for that by the powers that be.
Officer Friendly is more like Officer Boring. There’s no reason to freak out about the police until they do something retarded. The actions at the parade shouldn’t be dropped until justice is served. If they’re just sitting there with their thumbs up they’re asses, let em be ignored. Police presence at the rally is a non-issue. Typical Gazette, though. We and the city both would have been fine without the police presence.
We are quite the hoo-riders though (note: slang term for prison rioters). I could see we were fidgeting and ready for a good old fashioned fuck-up the man riot.
Having moved here I didn’t quite understand just how right wing fascist this place actually is. I’m coming to terms with the fact, though, that the Impeach Bush sign will go down but the regular conservative jargon plastered all over the city will remain without issue. It’s Colorado Springs, and Colorado Springs knows what Colorado Springs wants. Just makes me want to fight it more.
The rally was fun though. Apparently I shook hands with the wrong person and got the worst stomach flu of my life though. Must have been some kind of hippy version. Knocked me on my ass all week.