|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
Funeral Procession Mourns Victims Here and Abroad |
Current rating: 0 |
by Ida Tarbell
Email: info (nospam) urbana.indymedia.org (unverified!)
Phone: 344-8820 |
29 Oct 2001
|
|
Last Saturday, a funeral procession, mourning the victims both here and abroad, was interrupted with objections to its "political content." |
Last Saturday morning, as the sun shone on one of the last farmer's market's of the season, 18 people assembled in the black costumes of widows, some with veils over their face, carrying signs such as "we mourn the victims of 9 - 11" and "we mourn the deaths in Afghanistan." This "funeral procession" comes 6 weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and 3 weeks after the U.S. began military action against Afghanistan.
Carrying a makeshift coffin, the 18 proceeded to walk silently through Urbana's Farmer's Market. They were immediately stopped by director of the Farmers' Market saying that "political messages" were not allowed at the Market and that if the procession continued, she would call the police. As members of the funeral procession were told to go stand on the sidewalk, they watched another costumed procession weave at up and down the isles of the market - it was a parade of costumed children.
The funeral procession eventually circled the Farmer's Market, walking along the sidewalk perimeter, and made its way through downtown Urbana and up by the Library.
One costumed figure explained "Although we knew that excluding our procession because of the content of our messages was a clear violation of our civil liberties, a funeral procession, and saddness we brought to the procession, was not the context for a confrontation with the police."
Another participant was more upset by the morning's events: "My government can obliterate lives half way across the globe, and few people blink. When try to merely mourn these deaths in some public way, I have the police called on me." Ironically, this participant was carrying a sign
that read "We mourn the death of civil liberties." |
