The following is a letter sent by a friend of mine to the Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) College newspaper. It recounts the night four college democrats, myself included, were attacked by a swarm of drunken republicans. I believe this is how we should be returning fire when things like this occur. Enjoy..
Last Friday night, I sold cookies uptown to raise
money for John Kerry's campaign. Three others from
the College Democrats joined me to sell and talk with
people about the upcoming election. Throughout the
night we engaged in a number of great conversations
with passing students about critical issues facing our
country. Our interactions were good-natured and
productive until a few hours into the evening when a
group of about twenty Bush supporting guys began
yelling "Four more years" and pumping their fists into the air
in front of our setup so that no one could buy
anything or talk with us. When one person from our
group asked the guys to leave, they refused.
Fearing for our safety, we decided to leave. One
member of our group grabbed our basket of cookies and
tried to get away but before he could, a Bush
supporter knocked it out of his hands into the street.
Another Bush supporter pulled our sign out of my hand
and kicked it too into the street. One of us ran to
get the police and shortly after, the Bush supporters
dispersed. In the end, everything we'd baked was
pretty much ruined and our sign was damaged. Further,
our group was shaken and discouraged by the attack.
We ask that all those responsible be real men and own
up to their behavior by making a formal apology to the
College Democrats. Anything less will confirm the
commonly held notion that some Bush supporters reflect
the recklessly violent behavior of their candidate.
...I'd like to add that the Miami University College Democrats have averaged 110 people per meeting this year. We've been canvassing, identifying and registering Ohio voters, doing lit drops, and plan to be busy with GOTV activities 3-4 days of each week until the election.
What we need is cash to rent vans to drive to Cincinnati to help get out the urban vote. Most of our members don't have cars with them and as a result, our efforts have been contained to the heavily Republican bastion of Butler County. One way the Kos community can help is by visiting the following website:
http://www.users.muohio.edu/baronelm
and participating in our fundraiser, "Bracelets for change". One of the more diva like members of our fundraising group designed these bracelets and they've been on fire ever since. We've sold over three hundred in the last two weeks. The bracelets are $1 each, but if you're ordering from us, we ask that you buy ten at a time so that we can keep our profit margin high, with postage and all. This is a chance for you to help get the vote out in Ohio and get something cool in return. On the website, you will see that Max Cleland is now wearing one of our bracelets after the college dems hosted him at Miami last week. Thanks in advance for your help!