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Some pics and comments from today’s anti-war, anti-recruiter protest, the pro-troop response and the police who kept things calm. Three TV stations and a campaigning politician showed up.

All of the pics have more commentary with them so you can pull them up to get more of the story.

I’m going to talk about each group separately. You can scroll down to see each.

Anti-war Protestors

The protestors who organized this even ended up with fewer people than the counter-protestors had on their side of the line. In fact, the police out-numbered the anti-war protestors most of the day. There were about 50 at the peak of the protest, and about 30 or 40 at about 2:30 when I looked at my watch. Then it was down to about 25 when they decided to leave.

The police escorted them to their cars. I’m guessing that the escort was for the cars protection, not the protestors. None of the pro-troop attendees made any move to follow them. In fact, they just stood and cheered when they left.

Toward the end of the protest, which was actually about 3 hours before the scheduled end, the protestors stood up and seemed to be attempting menacing gestures toward the police and the opposing protestors. All of us grabbed our camera (including the TV crews) and got ready for whatever might happen.

The police responded to those menacing gestures (I think that’s what they were) by putting another line of about 6 riot police between the groups (facing the anti-war protestors, of course). That seemed to cause the menacing gestures to subsided with the exception of about four protestors . They just who walked back and forth, one at a time, between their group and the police. One was carrying a black flag. I’m not sure if that was supposed to be menacing or if he was just advertising for an insecticide. It was all very comical to watch. Most of us on the sidelines got a good chuckle out of it.

Some anti-war chants:

• “That’s bull****, get off it, the war is for profit”
• “Troops Home Now”
• “What are they recruiting for? Burn, rape, torture, war”
• “If you support the war you are my enemy”
• Several unintelligible chants
• Something to the tune of Hava Nagila

Here are some pics with some of their signs. Since I’m decidedly pro-troop (I have that option, I’m a blogger). I’m not going to go into too much detail about their signs. You can read most of them in the pics. If you can’t make them out and really want to know just ask in the comments. I’ll check the originals and see if I can make it out.

Pro-troop Protestors:

There was a mixed group of pro-troop protestors. A majority were a group of veteran-bikers. I chatted with a few but didn’t ask a lot of questions. It was good to see them. Regardless of their garb they’ve served our country and deserve our respect.

If you’ve been following my posts you may be wondering why I didn’t promote any pro-troop response to the announced anti-war protest. The reason is that the protest was on private property. I have too much respect for the rights of private citizens to interfere with their rights to use their own property. Mall management announced early on that they don’t allow protests. I respect that even if the anti-war protestors (or the pro-troop protestors) don’t. If it had been public property I would have done all I could to promote the counter-protest.

Some came early (according to reports) and many stayed late. I stopped by after getting my pics developed (yes, I know, it’s the digital age… but I like my 35mm because either the picture quality of the digitals is too low or the price-point is too high for new technology… I let others buy early and wait for the value to improve). There were still about 35 pro-troop protestors including three goth teenagers.

I chatted with a few of the die-hards before I headed out. One told me a story of how three anti-war protestors came back and started shouting at the pro-troop crowd. When it got heated one of the bikers stepped in and diffused the situation. I’ve noticed a big difference between pro-troop and anti-war protestors. Pro-troop protests are largely self-policing. Not so for the anti-war protestors. They require actual police on overtime pay.

Some pro-troop chants:

• “10 out of 10 terrorists agree with you”
• “We support the troops. Shame on you”

Performance Art: Mop-head wanted me to get pics of all of his signs.

Police

The police were very well equipped, well organized, seemingly well trained, confident, cordial and unintimidated. My hat is off to them. They did well.

Media

Three TV stations showed up: KOMO 4 (ABC), KING 5 (NBC) and KIRO 7 (CBS). I caught all three broadcasts. It seemed as though they tried to slant the segments toward the anti-war protestors but the facts kept getting in the way. One of the big things I noticed was that when I was there I could barely make out what the protestors were saying, especially on the bullhorn. But on TV it was clear as a bell. Must be the magic of television.

My apologies for the quality of some of the pics. I relied on the one-hour developer to scan the negatives. I’m not happy with the quality of some. I rescanned the ones that were really unusable (by my standards).

So, in conclusion, I’d like to thank the police and pro-troop protestors for the orderly way in which they conducted themselves.

To the anti-war protestors I’d like to say that you insulted our troops and their families, cost the mall merchants business (troops and their families were advised to stay away), cost the police department a lot of money for overtime pay (not only today but also in organizing and training) and you really didn’t accomplish anything. Everyone knew your message already.

[edited an anti-war chant based on a blog entry from someone who could actually understand what they were chanting]

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 8:22 pm and is filed under Military, Tacoma Contradictions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.