10-01-07, 12:39 pm

Funding War Is Killing Troops

I love books, love to read. Book fairs like the one on the National Mall today are great places to go. I always attend the Los Angeles Times festival on UCLA campus. It is in April. Most of the time, a book fair is a safe place to be, a place to have intelligent discourse, share ideas or express different opinions.

That did not happen today. My friends and I decided to walk along the gravel path beside the mall area on the way to the TROOPS OUT NOW rally point for the march today. We did not go into the book fair area but stayed on the public path. We carried our banner which said:


FUNDING THE WAR IS KILLING THE TROOPS

Right before we cleared the book fair area some guy came striding aggressively toward us. Carol was in the middle, she is about 5'1' tall. The guy was all adorned in SUPPORT WAR buttons and such. He pushed up against Carol and started spewing the most vile stuff. We tried to maneuvered around him but he kept this very menacing pushing up against us. Bruce said we have a right to be here. The guy then moved over to Bruce and pushed hard chest to chest against him. He said he wanted to kill us. He said he could kill us. He kept blocking our way and we could not get around him.

I don't know how but somehow we got away from him. We saw a K-9 officer almost immediately after this encounter. I told him what had just occurred. He could see that we were upset by this guy.

The following is paraphrasing the officer, 'Well, when you come down here with a sign like that you are disturbing the peace! This is a permitted event and you don't belong here.' (We explained that we were on the public walk area, not in the event.) He then said we were inciting, that we needed to go over there with 'our own' kind of people (I said that a book fair should be a place where one could walk without being assaulted and threatened.) He again stated that we should get on over with our own people.

So even though this guy threatened to kill us, the officer accused us of disturbing the peace! We were quite shaken by the threat. I think that is why we failed to get the officer's badge number. Later in the afternoon retracing our steps along the public path, we saw a K-9 car that might have had 'molly' on it. If any of you know such an officer please do contact us in the comments section.

Later in the day, we saw Col Ann Wright. She told us that she saw the incident from where she was inside a tent but did not realize the seriousness of the encounter. We then realized that this guy had been to Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, in 2005. He threatened Cindy Sheehan there and has stalked her since then, most recently in Vermont. I believe he is a vet. He is obviously unstable. He says he has written two books.

It would be foolish to judge all officers from this incident. It is not foolish to have an awareness that some police officers will not protect you or be fair to you.

Watch your backs, everyone.

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