Bizarre Police Behavior at a Canadian Protest

UPDATE: Quebec police admit the three men in the video were indeed “undercover” officers; although the claim they were not there to instigate any violence. Wonder what that rock was for, then.
Police attend a very large Canadian protest against George Bush dressed as “protesters” to attempt to rile up the crowd so they can make mass arrests – dressed in black, with bandanas over their faces and carrying rocks. The actual protesters are labor union leaders (the guy talking to them is Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada) who all look like your grandpa though, and they object to these young men attempting to “infiltrate” their line (they stick out like a sore thumb), asking them to take off their masks and put down their rocks. Soon they catch on that the troublemakers are police and confront them, so the police quickly run into the uniformed police line and get “arrested.” But these guys weren’t among the four people arrested at the event, who were accounted for later. Security theater gets weirder all the time.

More about the protest – it’s surrounding the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America” a partnership between the United States, Canada and Mexico, and many people in Canada believe that it’s designed to allow big business in America to abuse Canadian and Mexican natural and human resources at the expense of both of those countries.

Continue ReadingBizarre Police Behavior at a Canadian Protest

Video from the Rally


Video of the Rally and Protest outside House Speaker Pat Bauer’s office.
Updated with a better copy of the video…
The young man you see in the foreground here on the left is the fellow that Mark St. John grabbed by the arm and dragged out of the protest to argue about why the Democrats went into caucus during the rally.

Continue ReadingVideo from the Rally

We Kissed Inside The Statehouse

Photo Set: 2005 Rally Against SJR-7

We had a wonderful, successful rally at the Indiana Statehouse yesterday! Hundreds of people showed up with extraordinary signs to protest the SJR7 legislation. We were getting people’s contact information, and of the people who agreed to sign up, we got 757 contact addresses. That was about 3/4ths of the crowd, so we had about 1,000 people attending.

What I was really impressed with was not just the fact that I saw tons of people I knew (some of whom I’d never imagine going to a political rally) but I saw tons of people I’ve never seen before in my life. That’s really amazing, because when you’ve been out in the gay community as long as I have, you tend to think it’s really small and that everyone knows everyone else. It takes something like this to make me realize that we have a HUGE gay community in Indiana.

There were excellent speakers, and according to some of the people who lobby regularly, we made a great impression on some of the legislators. Nobody expected the size of crowd we had. At the end of the rally we went inside to lobby, and ran into Eric Miller’s Advance America bigots as they were leaving. Most of Miller’s crowd were home-schooled kids and christian school kids who get extra credit for being bussed into Miller’s rally.

So we chanted at them and basically screwed up the end of their rally. Stephanie and I were by the doors, and a group of bigots who were leaving started to bunch up to trap us inside, chanting and trying to intimidate us. So we kissed in front of them and freaked them out. It was GREAT! They RAN outside to get away from us. A reporter from the IU School Paper snapped our photo while we were kissing, and then interviewed us, so we’re likely to end up in the IU paper. It was really exciting.

UPDATE: Stephanie and I were quoted in the IU paper but they didn’t include our picture.

Indiana Daily News

Other’s Pictures from the Rally

Scott Barrett’s Photos
Marti Abernathy’s Photos
Scott Barnes’ Photos
Wilson’s Photos

Media Coverage of the Rally

Check out this picture of an anti-gay bigot attempting to punch one of the people from our rally:

South Bend Tribune
Another Story of threatened violence from the bigots from a person at our rally: “The Advance America people were filing out —a small group of 5 or 6 young men approached me holding our big IE sign and one said, ‘Don’t you wish we had some torches?!’ The others laughed and they continued on down to the sidewalk.”

NUVO Story: “God hates gays”
Indy Star
WISH-TV
WTHR
The IndyChannel (RTV6)
WXIN – Channel 59 (Indianapolis)
WIBC/Network Indiana
Associated Press
Courier-Journal (Louisville)
Indianapolis Star (Dan Carpenter column) “Inside the anti-gay crusade”
Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne)
Courier & Press (Evansville)
Northwest Indiana Times
365Gay.Com

Continue ReadingWe Kissed Inside The Statehouse