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| April 4, 2007 Red Alert by Soren Wuerth, insurgent49
Peace supporters almost thrown out of Don Young party
“Congressmen
who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and
undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or
hanged.”
— Don Young’s infamous misquote of Abraham Lincoln
We were standing behind Don Young’s podium, next to the flags, a “Peace Now” banner aloft, when the reactionaries moved in. The owner of The Landing Hotel (soft wrinkles, stylishly dressed) approached. “You can take your sign down to the street,” she said. “This is a private hotel.” I pulled the sheet taut. “Sorry, but this is a public function. The congressman sent out invitations.” She told us she was going to call the police. “Go ahead,” I said. A man with silver, wavy hair a la Newt Gingrich and wearing a tan sport jacket, interjected: “Don’t do it. That’s exactly what they want you to do.” A headline, “Ketchikan Residents Arrested At Young Party For Holding Peace Banner,” would have been a nice balance to the endless stream of Iraq bombing stories, the ones most Americans have come to ignore. The man in the tan jacket with a button, “I am a Young man,” on the lapel began to scold me, “look here, son ...” “I’m not your son,” I shot back. “He just wants to argue,” he said to the hotel owner. Power tends to trip down. I had arrived with my video camera during the “meet and greet” portion of the soirée. Valerie Brooks, a local elementary teacher, had Don cornered. He turned aside when a local “Young Man” moved in front of my camera. “What are you doing, man? Why’re you getting in everybody’s face?” “I live in a democratic country, right?” I said as he walked off. Young told Valerie the way to improve the world is to spend only state money on education. I said that I agreed. Every one of the fifty states has discretionary funding for their local issues. However, there is federal money being spent to the tune of a half a trillion dollars on this war in Iraq and it needs to end now. My students who need counseling and nurses, their parents who need substance abuse assistance, do not get funding, do not get adequate education. That money needs to go to people who need it, not to the war. Eighty troops were killed this last week, which is not a reduction in the number of deaths in Iraq. There were 600 Iraqis killed in the last week. This morning a news report stated dozens were dead and over 100 injured when a bomb was set off outside an elementary school … teachers and students wounded. So the quote I wanted to read him is “stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong,” and that’s an Abe Lincoln quote. The representative appreciates Abe Lincoln. So I found a few that are actually accurate. A few middle school students interviewed the congressman about his feelings on gay rights. “How do you think it went?” someone asked. “Bad,” the student said. “He doesn’t support gay rights and that’s wrong because gay people never do anything wrong, they’re entitled to their own perspectives, they’re humans like everyone else.” Young later proudly told the crowd that, unlike the middle school students who interviewed him, he got straight Ds in school in every subject. “There’s more bodyguards and people like that here than people who came for the free food,” someone said of the roughly fifty people in the room. The police never arrived, we continued to hold up the banner and Young took the microphone. He moved away from us to the center of the room. “There’s only one person that makes the decisions and that’s myself,” he said, “if you don’t agree with me, you have the prerogative not to vote for me.” Valerie looked at me from the other end of the banner. “The decider,” she whispered. Young blathered on in his typical bellicose, and sometimes bombastic, manner. We learned that while Don still doesn’t believe in global warming, the annual temperature is actually going down, new northern shipping routes will begin to open up. At the other end of the banner, Valerie waved her free hand at the congressman. When she finally asked her question, about the supplemental spending on the war, Young said, without looking at us once, said “the so-called liberal democrats ... put earmarks in for (raising his voice, spitting) peanuts, spinach, and rice fields! “If we were to withdraw, we’d have a genocide far worse than the Khmer Rouge ... you have a cauldron of terrible unrest. I have the privilege to believe that because you have not!” “... You’re not going change my mind and you’re not going to change the destiny of this country.” Yeah, right. We held the banner up for almost an hour, switching arms now and then, until Don finished his speech and until he left with his escorts. Truth, after all, doesn’t tire. Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist, and is the winner of the Alaska Press Club's 2006 'Best Columnist' award. He resides in an undisclosed location in rural Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com. 'Red Alert' appears on insurgent49.com every Wednesday. |
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