Policing Speech (in Ft. Worth)

[unhappycamper]

Texans for Peace bought about 100 crosses up from Crawford to honor the casualties from the war in Iraq.


Policing Speech
By DAN MCGRAW
September 05, 2007


Vincent was one of the few people who seemed to have a dog in both the fights that went on in downtown Fort Worth last Saturday. Inside the city convention center, Texas Republicans were conducting a presidential “straw poll,” and Vincent was carrying a Ron Paul campaign sign, drumming up support for the Texas congressman who is a long-shot candidate for the White House but is gaining some support from Republicans who feel disenfranchised by the current party leadership.

Outside the convention center, Vincent was discussing the Iraq war with both those who held signs condemning the conflict and those condemning the condemners. The Texans for Peace group decided that a great way to gain publicity for their cause was to hold an anti-war protest outside the convention center in General Worth Square.

While the Texas GOP was praising the war effort with patriotic songs and speeches, those outside were parading around bobblehead figures dressed as George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice, in prison uniforms and handcuffs. It’s not necessarily strange to have the extremes of the political spectrum voicing their views side-by-side — except in Fort Worth, a city that likes to keep any extremes quiet and unseen.

Vincent asked that his last name not be used because he is still on active duty in the U.S Army, at Fort Hood. He served in Baghdad in 2005 and 2006, and is scheduled to be discharged in October. He supports Ron Paul because of the congressman’s anti-war stance.

“The officers don’t want to hear anything about how just about everyone serving in Iraq thinks this war is stupid and should have never been launched in the first place,” Vincent said, standing among the protesters. “But my fellow enlisted soldiers are getting tired of me talking about Ron Paul. It’s almost as if they think that it doesn’t matter who is president. But in this election is does, because we don’t need anyone dying anymore for a war that has no real cause.”

~snip~

The only group that apparently missed the free-speech message that day was the Fort Worth police. The peace group got the picture. “We won’t be coming back here for any permitted protest, that’s for sure,” said Geiger.


Rest of article at: http://www.fwweekly.com/content.asp?article=6270