Following up on
the other day's post concerning the Planned Parenthood boycott that's going on in Austin, I'm posting some new contact information of individuals involved in the boycott.
Chris Danze is the person who started the whole thing. When I first read the articles I found about the boycott, I thought that Danze just happened to be a contractor who'd heard about the construction, and then decided to rally the troops to shut it down. Essentially, it was his role as contractor that jumped out at me. I simply assumed that this became an issue for him only when the construction on the clinic started, e.g. perhaps he'd been contacted to do some work and decided that it was against his moral principles, leading him to organize the boycott.
I don't know for a fact whether he'd been a candidate to work on the site, but it seems I was wrong about one thing. Danze has been lurking around abortion facilities in Austin for quite a while. It seems more likely now that he saw the construction effort as an opportunity to use his unique set of contacts to do something he's long been working towards, namely shutting down abortion services in Austin.
Consider
this article, which appeared at operationsaveamerica.org in early June. The article relates the story of a Peter Kropf, who had formerly been the owner of an OB/GYN clinic in Austin and had (for reasons that aren't described) left the business. In the middle of the article I found this little tidbit:
Kopf, the former owner of the Austin OB/GYN clinic, told pro-lifers he'd never been happier since he left the business. Austin activist Chris Danze, a leader of the witnesses faithfully proclaiming truth every Friday and Saturday at the clinic, and dentist Dr. Don Hartsfield have both been telling him of the Christian faith and he's listening.
So Danze isn't some "Johnny Come Lately" to the anti-choice movement. Rather, it seems he was obsessed enough to have been the
leaderof a bunch of wingnuts who were showing up every Friday and Saturday to do god's work. Call me cynical, but this puts him in a slightly less sympathetic light, in my opinion. Danze is also featured in
this post from last December, detailing a continuing series of protests that were occurring at Austin's Reproductive Services (Repro) clinic. It's a long post, but search for the word "Danze" and you get a photo of him (2nd from the left, I believe), as well as his wife and two of his sons. They're apparently on some kind of family outing.
Was there more? Oh, yes, yes. A website called "Family News In Focus"
featured an article dated September 26 that covered the boycott. Most of the article contains material I covered in the initial posting, but towards the end of the story was the following passage:
"Danze, meanwhile, isn't stopping with one abortion clinic. He has plans to round up like-minded suppliers to deny pest control and even bottled water to the entire abortion industry in Austin."
If you aren't convinced by now that Danze is a major league religious nut asshole who needs to be taken down a peg, then you probably never will be. So, at the risk of being redundant, here once again is his contact information, which I intend to keep posting as long as this travesty continues:
Home Tel.: (512) 306-1326
Maldonado & Danze Inc
Business Tel.: (512) 837-9677
email: mdinctim@austin.rr.com
There's a new addition to our dishonor role today. While searching for information on Chris Danze, I came across an article that includes a quote from a certain
Craig Teykl. Mr Teykl was quoted in
an article about the boycott.
Controversy surrounds a new construction project in South Austin...but the Austin area pro-life concrete contractors and suppliers are refusing to work on the project.
The group doesn't object to some of the services that will be provided there, but they do oppose abortion.
"Our stance is a construction community as a Christian community, that no matter what good that they provide, the killing of one innocent boy or girl does not justify all the goods that they think they will be providing at these facilities," says pro-life contractor Craig Teykl.
OK, so
Craig Teykl allows himself to be identified in a media report as a "pro life contractor". He appears to be a willing and enthusiastic member of the group involved in the boycott, and for that reason you, Craig Teykl, have earned a spot on the dishonor role. Teykl manages the
Austin branch of a company called "Aggregate Haulers LP". Call his office and let him know you don't appreciate his efforts to infringe on women's rights, and that you'll do what you can to see that his company gets no work from anyone you know. Here's the phone number of his office:
Craig Teykl
Business: (512) 389-1400 (Austin)
If you feel like it, put in a good word for Craig at his head office in San Antonio. The president of Aggregate Haulers LP is someone named Randy Wyatt. While I know nothing about Mr. Wyatt's views on abortion or matters of choice, I think he deserves to know that one of his key employees is quite publicly involving the company that he owns in such a touchy matter. Ask Mr Wyatt how he feels about the publicity he stands to get from this affair, and whether he thinks his business might suffer if some potential customers get the idea that Aggregate Haulers LP is anti-choice, and take their business elsewhere.
Randy Wyatt, President, Aggregate Haulers LP
Office: 210-492-5501
Fax: 210-492-0031
email: rwyatt@ahlp.com
More about David Bereit. I found the following at
a site called Pealeaf.com. It seems that Mr. Bereit is in the habit of using false names to get information about Planned Parenthood activities. Here's the story:
With our local Planned Parenthood going full speed toward building a new clinic here in Austin, they've attracted the attention of the Pro Lifers, who seem to be concentrated in Bryan, TX, rallying around their head propagandist, David Bereit.
Apparently last week Mr. Bereit sent an email to our local chapter requesting more information about The Choice Project (the campaign raising funds for the new clinic). My friend who works at PP admin offices received the message, which was from a B.E. Reit. Sensing something odd, my friend Googled and they soon discovered that "B.E. Reit" is actually David Bereit, an outspoken Anti-Choice activist.
Let me share with you some of the tactics employed by these "activists." If you or someone in your car visit the PP clinic (abortions are just one of the services offered there), the Anti-Choice police will note your license plate number and send a letter to you stating that someone visited PP for an abortion (whether it is true or not). The "activists" also harass clinic employees to the tune of, "Hello, Jane Doe, we know you work at the abortion clinic. Now, we're sure you enjoy your nice life, enjoy going to First United on Sundays with your son and daughter, who attend John Doe Elementary School. We're sure you wouldn't want anything to happen..."
Now, these are factual accounts of things that have happened, told to me by my friend who works at PP. I'm recounting them here, because these people, purporting to be doing God's work, employ the most terroristic methods of deception. I cannot believe it is God's work they're doing, and it strikes me as not only hypocritical, but pathological and criminal. It's sickening and infuriating.
Things are heating up locally. The Groundbreaking for the new clinic is on September 23rd, and the protesters are sure to be there. I just did an emergency web site tweak to remove all donor and staff names from the project's web site (so they won't be harassed by the Anti-Choicers).
So
David Bereit gives false identities over the phone in order to gain access to information about the organization that is raising funds for the new clinic. Very interesting. I'm sure that all he wanted to do was send all the donors a "Thank You" note. Here is
some more information concerning the activities of "Coalition for Life", the group that Bereit heads:
Seven days a week, ten hours a day, picketers line the sidewalk, trying to change hearts and minds. On Wednesdays, when abortions are performed, they hold placards ("Please pray! 1654 babies have been killed at Planned Parenthood in Bryan"), beseeching each woman who arrives to turn back. "Mom, we want to talk to you!" they cry, or "Please don't kill your baby!"...
What anyone passing by the squat, beige building on Twenty-ninth Street cannot see is the human drama that plays out each day inside the clinic. This is not just a place where questions of faith, conscience, and biology collide. It is also a place where a task as simple as opening the mail is done with caution. Here, the fear of violence has lingered for so long that its presence has become almost ordinary, as much a part of the fabric of life as the bulletproof vests that are casually slung over the backs of staffers' chairs. What rattles employees more than the protesters who stand at the gates is the enemy they cannot see--the people in their community who have, for four years, waged a campaign of intimidation. "Wanted" posters bearing a photograph of the clinic's doctor have been tacked to telephone poles all over town. Postcards with pictures of dismembered fetuses have been sent to clinic employees' neighbors, warning them of the "baby killer" in their midst. Nurses have been followed, volunteers harassed. Even clients have not been spared. The parents of several A&M students have learned of their daughters' abortions from postcards that arrived in the mail....
ANYONE WHO ROUNDS THE BEND ON Twenty-ninth Street and pulls into the clinic's driveway arrives at a building that looks like a military outpost in enemy territory. "No firearms allowed" warns one sign on the front door. "Trespassers will be prosecuted" reads another. An eight-foot black security fence rings the clinic and the parking lot. Nine surveillance cameras watch the perimeter of the building, which has been fortified with a fire-retardant roof and windows made of bullet-resistant glass. If the perimeter is breached, the exterior doors can be locked with the push of a button. ...
DYANN SANTOS FIRST SAW THE "Wanted" posters as she drove to work one morning in the summer of 1999. They were hard to miss. Every time she stopped at a red light or took a right turn on her route from College Station to Bryan, a poster bearing a photo of the clinic's doctor fluttered at eye level from a street sign or a telephone pole. "Someone knew my way to work," she said. "Someone had planned this out for me to see."
Soon her neighbors began receiving postcards. "Under current Texas law, abortion providers, like convicted sex offenders, are required by state law to register with the State," they read, listing her home address. Farther down, the tone became more informal: "Please feel free to call Dyann at [her home number] or possibly catch her in the Wal-Mart parking lot. She drives a small 1999 silver Honda with Texas Tag [her license plate number]." Dozens more postcards arrived without return addresses. One listed the "body count" Santos was responsible for and the warning "God has his own way of keeping score!" And so she took precautions. She transferred her teenage son to a private school. She took different routes home. She changed her phone number, twice. She stopped taking walks at night.
Not all the harassment has been anonymous. Debbie McCall, the clinic's community service director, was manning a Planned Parenthood booth at an A&M health fair two years ago when a man she had never seen before ran up and threw a note at her, then disappeared into the crowd. Across the piece of paper was written one word: "Murderer." At another health fair that year, a man whom McCall had observed picketing the clinic before approached her. "I'm keeping an eye on you," he said with a grin. "You should be careful driving home down that lonely highway." McCall commutes from the town of Crockett, 72 miles away, along a two-lane road that threads through farmland. "I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck," she recalled. Still, she had little recourse. As with the anonymous mail and the "Wanted" posters, no one had broken the law. No threats of "imminent bodily injury," as the law requires, had been made. "They go right up to the edge of the law," observed Melissa Reyna, a nurse who worked at the clinic for three years. "They keep pushing that line a little further. The concern when I worked there was that someday, someone--that one loose cannon out there--would step over the line."
Planned Parenthood believes that the coalition has either participated in the anonymous mail campaign or knows who is carrying it out. "The coalition's members stand outside the clinic and write down license plate numbers," said Dr. Elizabeth Berigan, a local internist and a member of the Planned Parenthood board. "The postcards have slowed down, but when clients used to get them, it was always a few days after they visited the clinic, at the address their cars were registered to. This isn't rocket science. If the coalition isn't sending the postcards, they're not keeping very good control over their notes."
Here once again is contact information for Mr Bereit, or Mr. Reit, or whatever he is calling himself these days:
David Bereit, Executive Director
COALITION FOR LIFE
3601 East 29th Street, Suite 8
Bryan, Texas 77802
Phone: 979-846-2825
Fax: 979-846-0389
E-mail: david@CoalitionForLife.com
Home Tel.: (979) 690-3009
The
Ambassador's Speakers Bureau represents David Bereit when he moonlights as a motivational speaker. Here's their contact info:
Toll-Free Phone: (877) 425-4700, ext. 235
Fax: (615) 661-4344
E-mail: gloria.leyda@AmbassadorAgency.com