It is a good write-up, especially since it cites DU as a source!

Either the cop interviewed or the cub reporter that interviewed him messed up the incident a bit. The older gentlemen who was arrested was not the individfual who finally divorced me of my sign and proceeded to destroy it. This older gentleman (perhaps 'gentlmean' is too kind but I am being civil here) tried taking my sign on two occassions, the first time he grabbed me to try and pry the sign away. It was the still-at-large self-described Marine who finally wretched the sign away from me (coming up from behind) and quickly proceeded to destroy it.

All the while the Bushie onlookers cheered (there may have been some that were silent but none who stood up for my rights). Only once did a supporter with some honor come to prevent the older man from continuing to assail me. And not until well after the incident (that I am aware of) did at least one Bushie supporter come forward and offer a truthful account to the police.

Channel 10 News from San Diego has some shots (both still and video) I am unsure of how much they have but it was enough for the cops after only having my statement to leave the newsvan upon viewing it and immediately arrest the older gentlemen. In the article, the older gentleman claims that it was a case of mistaken identity and for a moment upon reading it I was like "oh crap, what if I fingered the wrong guy," but then I remembered... I didn't identify him. The cops identified him themselves upon viewing the video.

DUers with an inclination towards anarchy can say what you want, but I am pretty partial towards the institutions of our society and the rule of law today. The police were great and the media of course saved my ass (imagine me trying to get a statement from another witness!).

Also, beginning last night the calls of support started coming in on our machine. There are a lot of good people in this town, they were just all at work. I am going to call a lawyer friend today (one of the perks of being a Democrat!) who is actually specializes in victim litigation, etc. and ask him what I need to do and what I should do. Whatever I do, I do not want to look like a golddigger at ALL! If I decide to take some sort of action I don't want to earn a penny from it. Maybe an amount of money can go into a public service campaign promoting awareness of our basic freedoms, etc. locally. But this short of crap cannot stand. The lesson should not be "if you exercise your freedoms and people disagree with you you will get assaulted" but rather "if you assault someone in order to deny them the right of political free speech YOU will get the slapdown because our system DEPENDS on people having political free speech."

Okay, here is the article:



The rest of the article rocks.
Here is the paragraph that DU is mentioned but it goes on to take quotes from my original post.



Original account of incident: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

DU, listen to my tale and give me a hug. I need one. I will post media links when available. On update: First media mention:

Bush arrival prompts heated exchange between protester, Bush fans No mention of the arrest.

I was physically assaulted, this assault was cheered on by what cannot be described as anything other than a mob. My sign was ripped from me and destroyed and then mob denies truth to cops. Thank god for the television crew that caught a lot of it on tape.

For a few days now, word has been out that Bush is coming to town but since there was no schedule initial attempt to organize anything by local Democrats fizzled. No schedule so people just gathered across the street from the Yuma Marine Air Corps Station. It is the fairgrounds parking lot. I entered the parking lot around nine-ish, the rumor was that he would be there about ten-ish. I thought I would meet up with the usual handful of us local activists but come to think of they all have day jobs (and I work in the afternoon and nights) so I even though I saw one San Diego-area immigrant activist there, I was the only other one I saw. I wore a white t-shirt and a black armband that I had made myself out of a black dress sock but it looked really good. My sign on foamboard said "SAVE AMERICA: IMPEACH BUSH" on one side and "2,455 U.S. DEAD BECAUSE YOU MISLED" on the other. From the get-go I was verbally assaulted. What the hell is up with "Get a job!"? or "Go back to Mexico!" Then I was confronted with the common misconception in those circles of freepers that there are multiple levels of American citizenship, you have more rights to free expression and political speech if you have served in the military.

So Air Force One lands. I am minding my business alongside 32nd ST holding my sign when their anger at me begins to crescendo. They move around me. An older gentlemen behind be tries to grab my sign. I keep hold of it. He then wraps his arm around me, trying to hold me while he tries to remove my sign. He is older so my first thought is not try and hurt him. I watch my elbows, making sure they don't swing back, etc. He grabs my sign away and begins crumbling it up. The crowd cheers him. He still has a hold of me. Another man with a cooler head pulls him off of me. I get my sign back. battered, torn at the edges... myself a bit shaken. hold up my sign again. A second group approaches me. shouting at me. The older man returns tries to grab the sign again. It is becoming a frenzied mob. A self-identified young off-duty Marine comes up behind me and yanks my sign away and rips it to shreds. I go to a San Diego news van to ask them if they had pictures. The cops arrive. And so I go back to the area, surrounded by Bushies and the cop asks the crowd "did anyone see anything? They were all like "we didn't see nothing. did you see anything? no I didn't see nothing" Then my support comes. A San Diego news crew says they got footage and still shots. Some other of the few protesters that were in the back (probably who called the cops but perhaps a number of people did when they saw it was starting to get out of control)came forward. They arrested the old man upon evidence supplied to them by the San Diego camera crew. Local media was soon there. Bushies drove by shouting at me "Shame on you!" "Go back to Mexico! (WTF? For one thing I am non-hispanic caucasian and the very ominous "Watch your back! You got yours coming!" After a little bit, many Bush supporters were starting to trickle forward and telling the cops the truth but not before many, many of them flat out lied to the cops. The motorcade never passed out. It slipped out another gate. I am so upset. My fucking rights were denied. I was physically threatened, physically assaulted. My personal property was yanked from me and destroyed and if that is not enough, now I have to worry about the safety of my loved ones (unidentified because I am actually AFRAID).

WTF people.... I have to go to work in less then an hour. I am sunburnt and tired. I am still in shock. Is this not America? Is Bush's numbers not at like 29%? I went into the lion's den I guess and they felt threatened.

Someone best clue this United States Senator that the responsibility for national border issues is the NATIONAL government... i.e. the federal government. and one of the great issues in this debate is that the federal government is shirking this duty and relying too heavily on state resources. I wonder if the Bush Plan involves bringing in out of state NG or just using NG from the border states. Either way... Frist is Fricking ignorant here and should be called on it. Immigration is a federal issue.... he says the only thing the feds can do is to HELP the states with this issue... ironically by depleting the states' gaurds even further? Stupid stupid man.

I am a non-hispanic white at a workplace that is about 2/3 hispanic on a small U.S. city (100,000) 20 miles north of the border (Yuma, AZ), i am a licensed insurance agent at a call center that does both 3/4 english and 1/4 spanish outbound calls.... the reps make the sell and then send it over to us agents to verify... a little over half the agents are hispanic. the whites overwhelmingly are so xenophobic it's sickening. ALWAYS bitching about the illegals as the cause of all of our problems... and speaking of them as if their not even human... and of course bitching about people speaking spanish, etc. and just really xenophobic all around, etc. well i am joining my hispanic brothers and sisters in not going to work on May 1st and the first is always the busiest day of the month, we get new leads... a few other non-hispanic agents will also be joining the work stoppage on May 1st and the thing is, is that a majority of our calls come from a callcenters they have in Canada and so they will see how FUBARED our workplace is without immigrants, without hispanics, without those who are in solidarity with hispanics and immigrants. I would not be surprised if they end up shutting the place down... the production managers and many supervisors ARE Mexicans (with green cards or at least as far as I know) and the general manager himself is a Mexican national that crosses the border every day.

I am mad as hell at the xenophobes.... this arrogance that they are ENTITLED to all these rights and priviledges just because of the blessed geographic circumstances surrounding their birth and how they speak so condescendingly of those of less-privileged birth doing EXACTLY the same thing that they, when pressed, ADMIT they'd do if they were born into similar circumstances... they'll admit this when I ask them in a moment of lucidity and then turn around the VERY NEXT MINUTE and speak again of them as criminal aliens that do not deserve emergency medical treatment, etc.

This is why I am not going to work on May 1st! It is show the xenophobic bastards which side I'm going throw my lot if they want to make this an US VS. THEM thing.

One of the great - if not the greatest - continued travesties of the U.S. Public Education system is that of localized funding. This creates a sort of economic caste system, in which the the amount spent on your education is dependent upon the property tax base of your school district. In Omaha, they are re-segregating the school districts so that minorities can have control over their own schools so as to manage the funding disparity fo minority students. The idea that perhaps they should equalize the funding isn't even on the table.