Report From The Front Lines Of St. Louis Health Care War
We've all been feeling so proud of our nation after hearing yesterday's news about the insane, bloody war -- like real-life, actual War, with guns and troops and Prussians and shit -- scheduled for St. Louis today, between the unions and the people who should be in unions but aren't and therefore hate unions. So, what was the BODY COUNT? Brave operative "Nick B." brings us the whole, sad story: "My two friends and I were the ONLY people counter-protesting at the wingnut SEIU protest in St. Louis today, and I thought I might share what went down. The SEIU office is just a few blocks away, so we made some signs with posterboard and headed down, assuming that there would be others like us. But when we got there it was just a crowd of 150 or so with 'Don't Tread On Me' signs (which fooled us at first, since they're the same colors as SEIU has), with people on both sides of the street." Click the clicky to see whether "Nick" survived, or e-mailed us his report from Hell.
On the way, we encountered a guy promoting the protest in an Uncle Sam outfit on stilts, who was telling a passer-by how the SEIU just beats [up] black republicans without provocation. I made sure to inform them that having seen the video, that's not what happened, and that they were making things up to attack unions. I left when the only recourse Sam had was to yell "You're Wrong!"
The best part was when we put up our signs, and to watch people's faces as they realized that we weren't with them. Somebody was speaking at the time, so there wasn't any interaction, but a lot of pictures were taken. Then after he spoke people gravitated toward us (including the police, we thankfully never feared for our safety) and started engaging with us. The major problem was that for the one person that wanted to actually talk, there would be 10 yelling over everything. We managed to keep our cool and just make them feel silly when they started yelling, and so I think since we were such a minority they didn't feel threatened enough to keep that up. Toward the end people were mostly nice, although some people kept yelling that we should get jobs and pay for our own healthcare. I tried to explain that I had a job, had healthcare, and felt very lucky for it, but they weren't buying it. We stopped in a cafe at the end of the block and had lunch. We waved at the wingnuts walking by. Some waved back uncomfortably, some stared icily, one guy invited me to engage in discourse with his hand.
So much to our chagrin we'll probably end up with our pictures on free republic labeled as supporters of race beatings.
Ha ha, America sucks at protests, probably because there are no hamburgers involved. Thank you brave "Nick B." union thug!