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News :: Peace |
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Successful Vigil Against War In Iraq In Terre Haute, IN Sat. Sept. 7 |
Current rating: 6 |
by Cathy McGuire via ML
(No verified email address) |
07 Sep 2002
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It's good to hear that the hometown of Eugene Debs (and I) still has the organizing spirit alive in it. It's disappointing to hear that the local library is not more cooperative in giving the public access to a wide range of opinion about war and peace. ML |
Thirty demonstrators stood on the sidewalk at a busy corner near the public library in Terre Haute, IN participating in a MoveOn.org protest against starting war on Iraq. For Terre Haute this is a large number of demonstrators. The news media in Terre Haute which usually doesn't give any publicity to a future action was surprisingly eager to run news about the vigil on the front page of the newspaper the morning before the vigil and on the tv station on the evening news.
This very unexpected publicity helped bring out a large number of people (44) who came to the demonstration solely to sign a petition we had said we would have available. People driving by responded positively in the majority of cases. All four of our local media covered the event.
The public library director, however, was hostile to our being near the library even though we were far away from the entrance and not in the parking lot. The library sent someone out to tell us to remove a card table from the grassy area and if we didn't they would call the police. We complied immediately without argument, but when they discovered the two back legs of a chair was still on the grass a half hour later, they sent the man to come back a second time to order us to put the chair completely on the sidewalk. A car show, however, later in the afternoon opposite from us was permitted to use the grass where their event was.
The library also refuses to post information for anything that is political, in spite of the fact that the library bulletin board is a major source of community information. There are few public bulletin boards in town which makes organizing for a first time occasion difficult if none of the news media choose not to run an announcement about the event. |
See also:
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=202142&group=webcast
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