On Sunday, July 18th, a bunch of Tea Party thugs disrupted a peaceful rally in a public park in Roseburg, Oregon.
They followed participants home and harassed them there, too. They committed acts which appear to me to be assault and trespass.
They proudly posted video of their thuggery on YouTube within the hour.
On Sunday, July 17th, a non-partisan group assembled at River Forks Park to participate in a “American Dream House Meeting”, part of a nation-wide series of meetings organized by MoveOn.org.
As soon as we began the meeting, a group of Tea Party activists, lead by Rich Raynor, the local head of Americans for Prosperity, closed in on us with the obvious intent of disrupting our meeting and causing trouble. We chose the non-confrontational path of leaving the park and taking the meeting to our private home.
Outrageously, they got in their cars and followed us, even attempting to come down a private road and onto our private property. We can only guess that their purpose in following us was harassment and intimidation. We called 9-1-1 and had to physically block their ingress.
The irony here is that we were a peaceful, non-partisan group coming together to share ideas about “re-building the American Dream”. Our focus was on taking our country back from the corporate control that is presently rampant in our country. The Tea Party movement says they want to “take our country back”, but they don’t say from whom or what. What we’re focusing on is taking our country back from the corporate control of our government, most recently since the Citizens United v FEC Supreme Court decision.
We support the Move to Amend (MovetoAmend.org) effort to pass a Constitutional Amendment declaring that corporations are not persons and that money is not speech. As it now stands, the more money you have, the more your speech is heard; hence, corporations can control every election and every law created by our Congress.
“Peaceful assembly” is guaranteed by the First Amendment. Intimidation and harassment further neither dialogue nor solutions to our country’s problems.
(Reproduced, with permission from the authors)
The actions by these thugs were intimidating to the participants. There were sexist epithets and other foul language and intimidation at the park, and there were apparent assaultive and trespassing behaviors at the private home. Legal action may be pending.
The thugs posted the park video, which I could not get to embed, but you can watch in on You Tube, at the link, or google You Tube Move On Moves On Roseburg Oregon.
These are deluded and hateful people, sponsored by the corporations who are intent upon capturing our democracy. One of them, Rich Raynor, is an Americans For Prosperity shill, and is running for County Commissioner.
From his website:
Rich has served for 3 years on the Board of Directors for the local crisis pregnancy center, 2 years on the Executive Committee for the local Republican Party, and for the past 2 years has been the Douglas Country Chairman for Americans for Prosperity.
His website invites you to call him. I know I will. I hope he gets some calls from the Douglas County Sheriff, too.
Our newspaper is due out with an article on this later today. I'll update when it comes out.
How about you? Did you attend any rally or other event recently? Was it disrupted?
1:37 PM PT: Update #1: Rec list! Thank you all. I really wish I did not have to publicize this nasty, nasty stuff about my home. Dirty laundry. But I want these people exposed. I hope some of you call the Sheriff (541) 440-4450 to let him know your concerns, and maybe call Rich and let him know that a Realtor might want to refrain from telling people to "go back to California"....
4:24 PM PT: Update #2: Catesby has provided a link to our local paper's article:
http://www.nrtoday.com/...
I will quote from it in a comment, as some of the statements by Tea Partiers are outrageously funny...
Thanks hugely to aoeu, who embedded the video.
Thanks to BlueOregon, who are going to follow up on this!
