PW in NY

I was in NYC yesterday with my fellow Protest Warriors, the counter-protest group to which I belong. It was an interesting time, what with being attacked by anarchists and all. I got in late last night, so this will be a very brief recap:

We started out yesterday morning, with over a hundred of us carrying signs some of which you can see at the Protest Warrior web site. I was taking video and some stills.

(PW gets ready to move)

The group moved from headquarters to the site the NYPD had picked for us on the parade route. The NYPD was fantastic, staying with us most of the way. After we moved through the streets, we took up our designated location. The interesting thing was the reaction of the leftist protesters as they moved past us. The could not help but stop and stare, trying to understand what we were all about. Perhaps our message is a little too nuanced for some. Some of the people who did get it were very angry, and we had a few birds and "Fuck Yous" directed our way.

(I think our message was a little too "nuanced" for the leftists)

But, freedom of speech being our thing, we were not content to stay on the sidelines, and left in small groups to join in the "peaceful" protestors.

We had broken up into smaller groups of about 15, and my group made our way around and into the big crowd. It took the "peace" protestors a few minutes to figure out that there was something not quite right about our message. Several people were fairly angry with us, but that was nothing until a group of anarchists notice us.

They started yelling at us, and one of there guys got directly in the face of one of our protestors. Not content to try to shout us down, the anarchist grabbed our guy's signs and their group started to tear it apart. At one point they were calling us fascists. I remember replying yelling something back like "Freedom of speech is not fascism, you moron."

Over the next few minutes, thing got a little more chaotic, as the anarchists started going after our signs. Me and couple of other guys had to pull our protestors back more than once, as they were assaulted by the leftists. We had many signs ripped down, and some cheap shots on some of our guys.

I was trying to video and also keep our team calmed down. Later, an annoyed lady in her fifties got very angry at us also, and she was trying to grab signs and tear them up.

Eventually, after we went about 3 blocks, the whole procession came to a standstill. As the crowd around got more unruly, the NYPD apparently had enough. They pushed us our onto a side street, and we were out of the protest.

My group had become separated from the rest, and the NYPD would not let us push back through the protest route to rejoin the main group. So we set back up on a side street, still getting a lot of attention for the leftists as they passed. There was a reporter from the Washington Times who started interviewing some of us at this point. He makes mention of Protest Warrior in his article on the protests.

(Kicked out of the protest, my PW group makes a stand on one of the side streets of the parade route. Rob, a combat medic and vet of the Iraq war, salutes the symbolic coffins that pass by during the protest. Rob resented his fellow soldiers and friends being used as a political prop by leftists. So he remembers his comrades in his own way, standing and saluting in tribute to their sacrifice.)

The leftist group 1000 coffins (link above), brought up the tail end of the protest. (Though the gay pride groups, in a symbolic gesture of their importance to leftists, was at the very end). The coffins symbolized the soldiers who died in Iraq. For some reason, they were not carrying coffins to symbolize all the people who died on 9/11 in NTC, not do they carry coffins to symbolize the hundreds of thousands who were killed by the Hussein regime. But then again, they probably don't have enough members to carry that many coffins.

We finally were able to make it back to our official protest area and rejoin the rest of the group. There, we were on a barricade, and got into some heated discussions as the rest of the leftists passed.

I have some great video, but I am going to have to capture it, and then I will post some excerpts from it. I have watched parts of it are a little hair raising. Still, no one in our group was injured, and all of us from the Atlanta chapter (5 of us went up) were in good shape and spirits afterword.

I'll be back with more, probably this evening or early tomorrow. Right now, I am going to have to take a nap.

Special thanks to the wonderful men and women of the NYPD. They did a great job under difficult circumstances, and helped keep us safe. They did do the expedient thing in kicking PW out of the march, but I don't blame them for that. It was very scary. I talked to Rob, our Iraq vet and combat medic about what he thought about our infiltration. He told me he had never been more scared in his life.

And I was certainly scared. But I would (and will do) it again.

Freedom of speech is for everyone.

Comments

[dse]

Maybe you could join the lefties with a short chorus of:

Bring back the shredders!
Let the darkies die!

[dave]

Your pics are too lo-res to read the signs.

:-(

[Lan Nguyen]

I've watched your video and I felt the moment. You guys have tremedous courage based on your rational conviction. Nothing is going to bent you.

A Real Vietnam Veteran

[actus]

"The coffins symbolized the soldiers who died in Iraq. For some reason, they were not carrying coffins to symbolize all the people who died on 9/11 in NTC"

They had an event on 9/11 earlier. I think most of New York city doesn't confuse iraq and 9/11.

[Nathan]

Thanks for being our voice at the RNC. Can't wait to see higher quality versions of the video you took, looks like great stuff.

[Blind Pig]

Did 1000coffins have an event to commemorate 9/11? If so, send me a link. I'd love to see it.

[actus]

Pig:

Here are the protesters remembering the 9/11 victims.

http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/105798

[William A. Hooker]

What indicates that this is the same group protesting now?

The link just says "New Yorkers gathered at ground zero to ring bells on Saturday in memory of those who died on sept.11 2001, as well as those who have died as the result of U.S. military action since. Here are some images."

That doesn't seem to ahve anything to do with the set of protestors currently using coffins as props.

[The KGB]

You gotta love these guys..they got guts :)

[Matthew N]

Go Protest Warriors.
You have a lot of folks out here proud of you.

Keep it up!

[actus]

"That doesn't seem to ahve anything to do with the set of protestors currently using coffins as props."

when half a million protesters walk past, and there is some video of a handfull acting bad, this is to be generalized. when some protesters act good, that is not.

As a group, the "left" have made events critiquinq the iraq war and there have been events commemorating the 9/11 dead.

[Blind Pig]

And how many events have the leftists had commemorating the hundreds of thousands of victims of Saddam Hussein and his Bathist Regime?

Of course, that would mean that every man, woman, and child in march would have to have carried a symbolic coffin. And there would have been plenty left over.

[Brian]

Did any of the leftists try to stop their co-leftists from attacking members of the protest warriors? I don't think we should generalize the actions of the few who tore up PW signs to the entire population of marchers but I'd be interested in knowing whether those actions were silently sanctioned by the other protesters.

BTW, great job. Your courage is amazing.

[actus]

"And how many events have the leftists had commemorating the hundreds of thousands of victims of Saddam Hussein and his Bathist Regime?"

Probably not that many. People tend to care for their own and the things they can change. So New yorkers and the victims of US policy comes first. I think thats just human nature.

Some leftists did try to smack saddam in the 80's, cutting off US funding for his terror regime. But it didn't make it past the white house. I think they should have been stronger, and fault them for giving up, but I think thats just how DC operates. sigh.

[CoolBlue]

Brian asked: Did any of the leftists try to stop their co-leftists from attacking members of the protest warriors?

In the event of which I was apart, there were some people behind us that were denouncing the violence being perpetrated.

1) They were a vocal minority
2) They did nothing to actually attempt to stop the violence (perhaps they were pacifists which just goes to show how useful pacifism is when you would like to right a wrong)
3) They were a vocal minority (oh, I mentioned that)

Also, the fact that five other groups infiltrated at five locations separate (in relative terms) from ours met with exactly the same response, would lead any statistician to conclude that the sentiment was widespead among the sample population (i.e. left-wing moonbats)

[Kevin Carson]

Although I probably fall into your category of "left-wing moonbat," I'm sick of the twenty-something Circle-A type of "anarchist" who uses the label "anti-racist" and "anti-fascist" as an excuse to suppress speech they disagree with. Of course, guess who gets to define "fascist" and "racist"?

I'm an individualist anarchist, in the tradition of Benjamin Tucker. Individualist anarchism is a form of free market socialism that considers a totally free market, without government enforced special privileges to landlords and capitalists, to be the best way for labor to get its full product.

In the past, as a result of defending free market ideas in anarchist forums, I've received anonymous email threats from self-proclaimed "anti-fascists" who called me things like a "racist, goose-stepping, Rand-worshipping Nazi."

I consider myself a leftist (and, frankly, despise Bush), but I have a strong affinity for Lew Rockwell/Pat Buchanan conservatives, and others on the Right who are into genuinely libertarian and decentralist stuff like homeschooling and gun rights. I think one of the most promising developments this country ever saw was in the late '60s, when Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess attempted a revolutionary alliance between the libertarian Old Right and the New Left, against the corporate state. As far as I'm concerned, anyone on the right or left who believes in ordinary people having control of their own lives should consider themselves against the corporate center that dominates both parties.

[Maggie]

GO PROTEST WARRIORS!!!!

Proud of you, guys. Leftists are nothing but a bunch of unwashed hypocrites, full of misplaced self-righteousness.

I hate the buggers!

[maxcaviar]

PW rules!!! Keep fighting the good fight.

[Chris Erb]

If this were the DNC and a bunch of lefties went inot a right wing protest, the exact same thing would happen. Don't say I'm wrong becaus you know it's exactly what would happen.

[algernon]

I'm impressed your group even exists. I'm not surprised you annoyed the hell out of some of these people, especially some of the so-called anarchists - - talk about uniformity on parade. At least they don't march in sychronised motion, I guess that'd be too damn obvious.

[algernon]

I'm impressed your group even exists. I'm not surprised you annoyed the hell out of some of these people, especially some of the so-called anarchists - - talk about uniformity on parade. At least they don't march in sychronised motion, I guess that'd be too damn obvious.

[Play2K4]

You know, it really amazes me how much propoganda is used to support ones side of events. I've reviewed your when_anarchists_attack.mpa and it clearly shows that at 1.29min into it, your group provoked the fight by hitting an anarchist (big guy, black shirt) with the sign. Which the anarchist promptly tore up and the fight ensued.

Its your fault, you started it, and you deserved it. And then to claim that Liberals, Leftists, Socialists, Anarchists, or whatever your types want to label us now, that we don't believe in Freedom of Speach?

Seems to me that we were exercising our Rights just fine, until your group showed up and promptly assaulted us.....

[Play2K4]

You know, it really amazes me how much propoganda is used to support ones side of events. I've reviewed your when_anarchists_attack.mpa and it clearly shows that at 1.29min into it, your group provoked the fight by hitting an anarchist (big guy, black shirt) with the sign. Which the anarchist promptly tore up and the fight ensued.

Its your fault, you started it, and you deserved it. And then to claim that Liberals, Leftists, Socialists, Anarchists, or whatever your types want to label us now, that we don't believe in Freedom of Speach?

Seems to me that we were exercising our Rights just fine, until your group showed up and promptly assaulted us.....

[rschultz82]

A cardboard sign accidently falls onto some lefties head (most likely caused by another lefty off camera knocking the sign down) and one of the PW's gets beaten. I am a PW and I have been to these rallies. Lefty Communists cannot stand a right wing view and do get violent. PW's have not raised a hand against someone that hasn't provoked them first, if at all. We speak in a calm matter, and no matter whether we are speaking to a 80 year old woman or to a young brainwashed liberal, the liberal always either raises their voice and yells or raises their hand to hit us. Freedom of speech is not a "Liberal Only" right.

[Play2K4]

rshultz82,

Were you at this event? Watch the video, the sign clearly (deliberately) hit that protester.....I hope the police review this clip and appropriate charges get filed.

Exercising our rights to freedom of speech and protest makes us Communists?

In my opinion, that makes us good Americans!

To descent is the greatest form of freedom.

You sir have provoked this attack. And as long as you attempt to deny me my "Right to Free Speech" then you will continue to get "raised fists"

Right is right, right?