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Report
From Tyranny Response Team |
| Hi
all, here's my trip report of the Tyranny Response Team protest at the
United Nations, April 14. There were maybe 500+ people at the rally, with several leased busses full arriving throughout the day. The crowd was quite mixed, from children to old people, men and women, all sorts of people represented, almost all having traveled to New York City for the rally. People came from as far away as Washington State! I wore my Pink Pistols T-shirt and all day long a steady stream of people came up to compliment it, shake my hand, and thank me for coming. The Tyranny Response Team and Second Amendment Sisters had quite a presence, with booths and flags and banners. The Rally began with Amy Heath singing the national anthem, which she did quite well. And then Robert Teesdale of the Tyranny Response Team gave a speech. Now, Robert is young and strongly built; he has blond hair with a short haircut and a very deep, very strong voice with clipped phrasing. His speech was about America as a predator - how the rest of the world viewed America as a predator, and they should, because we're an armed and free people, dangerous because we're free, willing to fight to preserve our liberty. I'm sure that an anti-gun onlooker would have painted him a "dangerous right-wing militia type". But when he saw me wearing the Pink Pistols t-shirt, Robert (who I'd never met) gave a big grin, shook my hand, and thanked me for coming, and when he turned his head you could see the small devices in his ears that mitigate his hearing impairment. And that event really sums up the rally, because as the day went on, I thought to myself that this must be the most dedicated, committed, civic-minded, and misrepresented group of people in the country. I could not believe how many diverse types of people I met and heard. Louis Wein, a Jewish New Yorker and decorated veteran who may run for NY Governor, spoke about how freedom had suffered under our watch, how when he grew up kids brought rifles to school on the subway, how the schools taught to recognize demonization of a group of people based on the actions of a small minority of that group to be the sign of a belief system based on bigotry, and to expose and oppose that bigotry. Rodi Bestider, a recent immigrant from Romania who was roundly cheered by the crowd, told of the evils of living under tyranny there, and how she's saddened to see her adopted country of America going down the same road. This was particularly moving to me because I've actually been to Romania; I was in the first group of Americans through after the revolution and I remember well what I saw. Larry Pratt of the Gun Owners of America spoke about his days studying international law, and about what the UN was really up to and why it was so dangerous. Organizer Tom Chandler of TRT-NY and SCOPE, who turns out to be black, spoke a ringing speech on how civil rights are intended to apply equally to all people, and how those who use our civil rights are being demonized. Ralph Rubinek of Gun Owners of America, an orthodox Jew, spoke movingly about his parent's history as Jews under Nazi persecution, his mother in the camps and his father fighting back with a black-market gun (read his speech at http://www.trt-ny.org/Ralphspeach.html. It went on, and every speaker was different. We had Maria Heil from the Second Amendment Sisters talking about how the anti-gunners work directly to oppress women's liberty and right to self defense. James Bruner of the New York Family Protection Council spoke about the UN's anti-family agenda to dictate policies like abortion and sex education through treaties and "international law" instead of through national law. He wasn't very pro-gay, and after he spoke, Tom Chandler asked me if I was offended by his remarks. I told Tom that I didn't agree with some things he said, but what really concerned me was not that people disagree with me. This is still a free country and we're still entitled to free thought and to state our political beliefs. James Bruner might not agree with me, but he doesn't hate me and he's certainly not about to go beat me up in an alley somewhere. I feel sufficiently confident in my positions that we can have a discussion on where we agree and disagree. But what really terrifies me is the death of public discourse, where we can just dismiss or demonize someone like him just because he doesn't believe what I believe. When we lose that right to free discourse, sooner or later all minorities will suffer. At several points during the rally, the band Poker Face, who were really good, played songs about rights and freedom. Bernhard (or, as people in New York call him, Bernie) Goetz, who is running for Mayor of NY against Gulianni, spoke briefly about his assault. I have to say that meeting Bernie Goetz was probably the most surprising and fulfilling part of my day. When I was a young teenager, he was really an inspiration to me, a symbol of an ordinary person who stood up against criminal abuse. And there he was, just standing there. He's very shy and doesn't speak much, but still calm and self-assured. He described his assault with this wry observation: "As you know, I was involved in an incident where I defended myself. No bystanders got shot... got all the bad guys". The crowd cheered :) He noted that an anti-gun reporter was recently interviewing him and asked him if he'd learned anything from what happened to him. He said "Yes - don't bring a screwdriver to a gun fight." Scott Jeffrey from the New York Libertarian party spoke about ending the War on Drugs and the War on Guns, and ending government interference in our private lives. What was interesting was that even though Scott and James Bruner held opposite positions on some things like legalized prostitution, they both agreed that the UN was part of the problem. It really went to show what an amazingly diverse cross section of America had come out to the rally and how many people from so many different walks of life felt we needed to fight to defend our system of Constitutional law. I met everyone from veterans to housewives, men and women, rural and urban, southern and northern and eastern and western, Pagans and Jews and conservative Christians and Muslims. All of them were good respectable neighbors, very welcoming, and were deeply versed in history and really concerned that our system of government was being dismantled. And all of them agreed that we need to get the heck out of the UN! We all wore yellow stars with 'gun owner' on them, given out by the TRT. After the rally, I walked around for a bit with some very friendly conservative Christians, who didn't agree with me on everything but had gay relatives and were very proud to have me join them. As I rode the train home, I thought how unsettling the rally was. Just a few years ago, I met a Texas woman, Anna, at the 5th International Conference on Bisexuality and she talked about how nervous she felt to be in a strange city without her gun. I could relate, since I had also had a handgun permit, then unused and expired. As we became friends I thought "Hey, maybe I should renew my permit." And that led me down the rabbit hole, down a path where I'd be exposed firsthand to the creeping face of tyranny and brought to the realization that our system of government was being destroyed. Now I realize that on that day, as in the movie The Matrix, I took the red pill, and once you've woken up you can't go back to sleep. Every day I'm barraged by junk mail and media drivel telling me to care about a thousand distractions, but none of them matter. The real battle is enormous, it's a battle for the very ideals our country fought its revolution for, and it's not getting talked about anywhere. It's being fought by a tiny handful of ordinary people, people who look and act nothing like their stereotypes, who realized that we have a severe problem going on and need to fight against it, no matter how inconvenient or costly the fight is. I only wish we could wake more people up! For pictures of the rally, see http://www.trt-ny.org/trtun.html and http://community.webshots.com/album/17442076pmJYTixbOS Note: The people in the camouflage are active military, by the way, who wore their uniforms with the insignia covered as is proper military conduct. |
| I want to
thank David R. for providing this report for us. Proud to be able to
count him as one of our members.
mavericklady |
