OccupyAfghanistan vets Jeremy and Brittany Westmoreland attracted Patriot Shop teabag Jim Kross to their vow to destroy our local occupy. I’d like to say as little as possible about this lamentable development, except to document today’s escalation.
Occupy Colorado Springs held forth on the sidewalk in front of Memorial Hospital this Saturday, making a plea for UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE. Across the street once again were our threat-making stalkers, fortunately not reprising their Westboro Baptist tauntings, but sitting in their truck as OCS’s original heckler Jim Kross finished his cigar.
We weren’t many, but of course the recent news stories didn’t help recruit participants, claiming that OCS is so against the troops, that it kicked out members because they were soldiers. And not more accurately, because they initiated a witch hunt against occupiers who weren’t showing solidarity with the US military’s occupy movement, OccupyIraq, OccupyAfghanistan, OccupyLibya, veni, vidi, vici.
We were in the unusual position of trying not to elicit honks of support from the passing traffic, in view of standing outside a hospital, but drivers signaled their enthusiasm in friendly ways. We discussed repeating this healthcare action soon, it was such an easy sell.
Eventually Patriot Kross came over to film us as he made his best taunts. The Westmorelands watched from the truck and after Kross was through, they drove back and forth flipping us off.
At first Kross denied any knowledge of the dozen fliers we’d found taped and pinned around the hospital’s perimeter.
The fliers were “wanted” posters which offered a bounty for the eviction or firing of certain occupiers. The fliers bore Kross’s email address and website. He conceded they were his, or belonged “to one of [his] identities,” whatever, and then he named the reward, said the amount may have grown since he looked online, and then solicited the occupiers present.
We had already removed the fliers he’d circulated around the hospital, from trees, street signs, walls and doors.
We had found some fliers downtown on our way to the action. This one was taped to the office building door.
Jim Kross’s animosity for Occupy goes back to the original GAs, when he used to videotape from the circle’s center and exploit the opportunity it gave him to counter everyone’s statements. He hadn’t been harassing OCS actions until last week when OCS held its NO WAR ON IRAN event. Kross made a gleeful reappearance with Raven Martinez counter-protesting what she considered an anti-troop message.
Speaking of Raven, I received this Facebook message on Friday, from her daughter’s account which Raven uses when she finds her account blocked…
Are those the words of an 11-year-old? “WATCH UR BACK”?
Neither Raven nor the Westmorelands seem to understand the line they cross with their threats. On Tuesday Raven defended her comment on NMT asking me what I’d do if my home went up in flames. She said I needed to take it in the context of her talking about soldiers, police and first responders, ignoring the context Soldier Westmoreland had created with his vow to burn NMT down.
Patriot Kross says he’s a veteran of the police force. You’d think he’d understand that distributing wanted posters charging his own personal complaints is a call for vigilante justice. To begin with, posting fliers is against city code, and these incite violence.
Kross came across our noon bannering at Acacia on Friday, mocking Patti for standing on her lonesome, Occupy reduced to just herself. He didn’t like the color of her flags.
I caught this priceless photo as Kross stepped quickly back when he saw that reinforcements were coming.
The bright side of this story is that when I went to take a picture of Jim Kross’s store, the Patriot Shop, it was gone, in retreat, to within another store, on Academy. Bye Jimbo.
My favorite is at right. Today’s US exploitation of undocumented workers is a disingenuous equivalent of slavery. Our American economy depends on low wage laborers who can be deported as “illegal” when we want to change them out with cheaper ones. Those tea party faces are the same who opposed abolition and blocked the Civil Rights marchers in Selma. 
COLORADO SPRINGS- This year for Halloween I’m dressing up like yokel heroes Sean Paige, Richard Randall, Tom Gallagher, and Doug Lamborn, the rabble-rousers behind our local Teabag mobs. They’re reveling in the white man anger, against immigrants, ACORN, and taxes for social programs, laughing off accusations of being racist, while probably praying to God their mob doesn’t seize upon a passing African American and lynch him. Until recently a Halloween costume like this would have been mistaken to be a ghost, but for the resurgent ugly white man. The Pikes Peak region was crawling with 
We’ve been calling them teabaggers, the impulsive naysayers to reform and a rededicated social conscience; so named because they decry “taxation without representation.” Having lost the election of 2008, their idiocy is no longer represented in Washington by someone they feel they can share a beer with. So they hold “tea parties,” minus the jettisoning of capitalist goods. They protest all government spending, question Barack Obama’s birth certificate, and rail against immigrants, socialism, and the decline of White America. We call them “Teabaggers,” but the term conjures an unmerited sexual act. We should call them “Teabags” instead. I’d like a dittohead wingnut nickname that sounds more like scumbag.
Progressive websites are 
This Republican has apologized for yelling “YOU LIE” during President Obama’s speech to Congress tonight. Does sorry mean anything if he’s expecting endless slaps on the back from the Glenn Beck fans? Joe Wilson, Asshole Party house representative from South Carolina is one of the DC hosts of the Teabaggers 9/12 anti-health reform tour. Not one of these honorable gentlemen had the temerity to call George Bush on his obvious lies. 
