Posted on 02/16/2003 3:24:33 PM PST by B-Chan
Check out my liberal pal Joe Vecchio's Pax Liberalis blog today -- there's an (unintentionally) hilarious report of the NYC "We Luv Saddam" Rally from cartoonist/communist Ray Berry. Here's a sample:
Dear friends,See what I mean? "Mean-ass pigs"! "Dark heat"! Visions of dancing on the President's ashes! It's like something out of the Sixties. Or, more accurately, it's like something out of a bad network-TV mini-series about the Sixties. One thing you gotta give the custard-headed Left: they can take an ordinary street rally and paint it as a GRAND, WAGNERIAN STRUGGLE against the forces of TOP-HATTED FASCISM no matter how silly and stupid the motivation for the event actually was. It makes 'em feel all noble an 'important an' stuff, like Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July, y'know, dude?
First Off: The Dark Force Bastards at NYPD, Mayor Bloomberg, and George W. Bush Can All Go Straight To Hell.In the most experienced city in the USA for successful marches, rallies, and parades, yesterday was an unimaginable coordinated planned disaster projected by the government on and AT THE PEOPLE! I was very surprised at the viciousness of it all. Due to an uncooperative government at every level trying to wreck our Peace Rally the people persisted, overcame the obstacles, and we rallied. We damn well rallied.
The rally should have been in Central Park. But the Dark Forces did not want that to happen.
The rally was held on First Avenue and 49th Street, a very small area of the city and in the middle of the damn street. First Avenue was blocked off up to 71st Street for the crowds, still a very small area of the city and it could not handle the people by design. Zillions of cops were deployed as far inland to Third Avenue. Barricades were put up on every cross street from 42nd Street to 71st Street, and I mean unpassable barricades. Each cross street was manned with NYPD, up to twenty cops with bally sticks and guns at each barricade. The cross town buses were stopped short of Third Avenue and just dumped the people in the street. But the really big problem was the cops would not let the people go east towards the center of the rally on First Avenue.
MOVE ALONG. GO UPTOWN. YOU CAN CROSS TO FIRST AVENUE UPTOWN. MOVE ON. DON'T STOP HERE. KEEP MOVING NOW! I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING.
In effect you could not get to the rally in a thirty block region due to the MEAN ASS COPS on the street, on horseback, and in police cars with loud speakers. I twenty-seven years living in NYC I have never ever seen NYPD so ruthless and mean to the people at any public event. Angry confused people would ask the PIGS where they could cross town to get to the main rally and they would not even answer you, and if they did they told you lies like, "You can cross over to First Avenue up three blocks!" -Coordinated lies up and down the street by the Fascist acting cops. There were no guides, no information, no signs, and the cops really did an ugly number on the people with unparalleled rudeness.
To give you a better grasp of my story of the rally I am going to share a personal health issue today with you folks for the first time in this public work. I have never spoken about it before on purpose, because the work I do is not necessarily about me, but about politics and thoughts of culture in general. I never wanted my personal health issue to color my work in a positive or negative manner. But today, I cannot relay my honest view of the pressures I witnessed at the rally without adding this personal information into the mix.
Due to a pending serious hip operation, sadly, I am quite crippled and rather disabled at this point in time. I have immense trouble walking a city block even with a cane on a normal day. My large wooden crutches posed a greater danger of falling down in such crowds that I would find at the rally so I left them home. I took the cane for support and threw all caution to the wind! Nothing would stop me from going to the peace rally. Nothing. When I got off the bus and discovered I could not get to the rally on First Avenue I struggled up and downtown over 30 blocks in immense pain begging the cops to let me through the side streets to no avail. Eventually I found a crowd of about five thousand peaceful protesters who just overwhelmed the mean ass PIGS at 66th Street and they removed the barricades and let us en mass get over to First Avenue. There were so many people on 66th Street it took me over an hour to go one small city block! Kind happy people were in your face and on your back, but the warmth, good cheer, chants, and friendly smiles was just awesome! When I stumbled strangers were so kind to catch me from falling. Me heart beamed from the love and pride of so many thousands of good natured people around me. I felt very blessed. I am blessed. :) There were many hundreds of other smiling handicapped and disabled people at the rally on crutches to sitting in wheelchairs. It was an amazing wondrous site to see.
Tens of thousands of people were trapped on Lexington, Third, and Second Avenues and never got to the main rally the entire day. By luck alone, when I finally got to First Avenue the rally was an absolutely amazing thing to behold. It was wonderfully overwhelming for the senses. As far as the eye could see in both directions were the most wonderful peaceful smiling people I have ever seen in my entire life rammed together on the street. I joined the procession with my Bush-Toons.com sign on my chest and slowly walked downtown with me cane. Over the next five hours I only traversed five city blocks. Wall to wall people stopped in the streets listening to fuzzy microphones from the main stage every two blocks. We couldn't hear a thing and I was still fifteen blocks from the stage which I never saw or got near. But it didn't matter. None of that mattered. Just being there was a thrilling experience. Just standing in the street with a river of humanity flowing around you from every corner of the earth. I heard every language on the planet flow by me spoken by little, big, old, young, white, brown, black, yellow, skinned people. STOP BUSH. One, two, three four- STOP BUSH'S WAR! Bush Sucks. Bush is EVIL! Regime change begins at home. Impeach Bush NOW!
Everyone was mesmerized by the signs, costumes, outfits, and posters flowing by. People would scream when an especially creative group came by pointing and laughing with them as loud as humanly possible. The nasty NYPD lined the streets like a brigade of Nazi Storm-troopers, and herded us into the most unsafe place I have ever seen for people to gather. If there had been an incident, a bomb, a gunshot, etc, thousands of people would have been trampled because there was no where to run in the barricaded street that was wall to wall people. I think the DARK forces actually planned this potential suicidal rally on purpose. I was not alone in my thinking or my fears in the middle of a blocked off space.
I went to the rally alone. I couldn't get friends in my local neighborhood to go with me. ... I figured if this despicable ignorant mean-ass Bush Bastard is going to get me killed in Manhattan I damn well would not go to the ovens quietly. I would not go quietly in lock-step with the timid nation suffering from governmental imposed fear. I would protest, scream, meet people and feel the incredible solidarity with tens of thousand of my fellow New Yorkers who also screamed: "Buck Fush. Buck Fush."
...
Late in the afternoon a rumor came uptown like a wave that the PIGS were attacking the people on horseback further downtown. It was very disturbing. People with cell phones were screaming to the crowds around them. "THE PIGS ARE ATTACKING THE PEOPLE ON HORSES!" This worried me. I am unable to run. But I still didn't care. I stood there and demanded to be seen and heard regardless. Other people screamed they believed the PIGS were just trying to break up the rally so we all screamed even louder and did not leave.
About five o'clock the NYPD PIGS decided that we people near the uptown end of the rally needed to go home, and like ah- NOW! The heat came down on us in massive circles and they started herding people up the side streets in a very nasty fast way. By then I knew not to mess with the cops. I had already gotten into a dangerous fight earlier in the morning with the cops while standing in a large group of people. I shocked myself when I exploded and screamed at a really mean cadre of cops who would not let me cross town beyond the barricades- neither would they tell me where I could cross town. On impulse I blurted out in a loud voice, "F*ck you buddy. We pay your f**king salary you bastards. We deserve an answer at least!"
I jumped back from the barricade as one really fat PIG grabbed his club with one hand and put his hand on his gun with the other and charged towards me, the crippled guy, and then hundreds of other people started screaming and cursing at the cops too! I slipped away in the crowd knowing the cops were not playing any games today, and were acting much more like the Nazi Gestapo than I had ever seen them in my life. Luckily, I slowly escaped and moved on.
So late afternoon I was herded away from the rally even before it was over as the HEAT took over the street. As I headed west to try to get home I saw tens of thousands of people who never even got to the main rally on First Avenue. They still covered the avenues to the west of First Avenue. I was furious for them. I was furious for all of us. This entire rally was designed by the DARK HEAT to disperse the people, put them in dangerous positions to get seriously hurt if there were real problems, and to make the turnout of the rally seem much smaller than it actually was! I wonder why? The Gestapo Bush Cartel certainly would not like photographs of a half a million New Yorkers, the human family of our WTC ground zero fallen brethren screaming for the entire world to see that BUSH is a monster dictator and we will not support the evil twerp's war of empire?
...
I must say in closing, what a wonderful day in the greatest city on earth. For the re'st of my life I will not forget the incredible magic and energy created tens of thousands of people in this glorious city brought together by their own free will to scream with others of like minds- STOP BUSH. NO WAR FOR OIL. NO BLOOD FOR OIL. NOT IN OUR NAME. IMPEACH BUSH. IMPEACH BUSH!
What a day. It's midnight and I am still so keyed up I can't sleep and frankly in immense pain but dammit- it was all worth it a thousand times over. A myriad of images and memories keep flooding my thoughts as I go blank in thought and just feel the collected beautiful energy from the crowds of people from every corner of the family of man still radiating within me. The warm hopeful energy that we can indeed change our world. It may not happen today. It may not happen tomorrow. The Bush Bastard Idiot may still start his war without the backing of the majority of the American people. Bush may even cause an unbelievable disaster in the short term in our name as he thinks he can win the Republican political battle for empire without us. But Bush will never win the war against freedom loving American people at large. I know this now. Me nor you are alone. Millions of people around the world are sick and tired of the evil militant leaders of our so-called democracies [sic] threatening us and taking our fragile world to the brink of total chaos in their games of power. We will not stop banding together until every one of these little dick-tators are out of office and we the people take back our governments and turn them in to real democracies though the vote in the near future. The people have spoken and we will continue. We will not be silenced.
I will predict that-
When the low minded half-wit evil Bush Boy crashes and burns there will be millions of New Yorkers ready to walk on his ashes- with a smile.
That's what I saw today folks. That's what I honestly felt today folks. Be safe.
Solidarity!
Ray Berry Manhattan
But what do they hope to accomplish by all this? Do these folks really think President Bush and his administration are going to let Saddam continue to hold a gun to the head of the world just because of some stupid puppet parade? News flash, Ray: the President's job is not to give the people what they want. The President's job is to protect the interests of the United States. That's the difference between a demagogue (like certain poll-watching ex-presidents I could name) and a real leader -- a leader politely listens to the Voice of the People (which, by the way, these protestors ain't), then makes a decision. In this case, the decision is to remove Saddam Hussein as a threat to the interests of our country and to the peace of the world.
And, as a good leader should, our President is going to do just that -- no matter how many solidarity-spouting crutch-ambulated cartoonists don't like it.
My prediction: when Iraq is liberated, and our boys are parading down Main Street in Baghdad to the cheers of the city's grateful residents, most of these marching morons will claim, "I was for this all along."
(I know what I'm going to say: "More champagne, anyone?")
On to P'yongyang!
Slowly I turned.....
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