Monday, May 12, 2008

A Tale of Two Protests

Well, it's kind of stupid to be blogging today since I will probably be blogging tomorrow as well, but whatever, there's stuff I wanted to mention that I didn't get to over the weekend.

The March for Life was on Wednesday, so I went down to check it out, along with a competent squad of pro-choice spies. And a dog. It was kind of like Scooby Doo, actually. (Now I have this wonderful mental image of someone pulling a vampire mask off a guy, only to discover that - gasp! - it was Peter Ryan all along! "And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you nosey abortionists!"). The whole thing seemed much smaller than last year, and I didn't see any media - I assume the planning was a bit rushed because of the flood. Of course there were still busloads of people from all over the province. And Knights of Columbus, all dressed up in their ridiculous capes and fuzzy hats.

After their usual self-congratulatory speeches and so on, they "marched" to the CPC and stood around in the parking lot. They were supposed to be praying for teh babiezz, but a lot of them spent the silent prayer period glaring at us as we stood, grinning and waving, in the clinic parking lot. I think they were already feeling a little nasty because they weren't allowed to put roses around the Legislature. They still managed to find a way to waste money, though - by putting them in front of the LAW SCHOOL. WTF??

They put a bucket of roses on a chair facing the clinic, with a poem on it about babies or something (I didn't actually read it). When we went over to take a picture of it, which necessitated getting close to the fence, one of the men leaned over the fence right in front of us, and made a cross out of holy water on the clinic, while all the while giving us the stink eye. Sometimes I think these people really need to re-read their own mythology, because I really don't think Jesus went around giving his "enemies" the stink eye. They tend to try to use that one time he got mad at the money-lenders as justification for their general douchebaggery towards people who don't agree with them.

My favourite sign at the march had a picture of the Virgin Mary on it, and then all around it just said "pray pray pray pray pray pray" etc.

They ended up getting a little write up in the Gleaner, but it was mostly Peter Ryan spewing his bullshit about abortion being the reason the population is declining in New Brunswick. I am going to have to address this in a future blog, because it is just too ridiculous for me to leave alone.

On Saturday, we had our rally against Bill C-484 at City Hall. It was bloody cold, so I was pleasantly surprised that we had a pretty good turnout (the CBC said 60 people, but I would put it closer to 40). We had two very good speakers, and I was interviewed by both CBC and KHJ, so that was awesome. I was so glad we had the media there - coverage is the important thing, after all. Look, even people in little ol' Fredericton care about this bill, and think it's bullshit!

The best part about the whole thing was that our protest consisted of mainly people under thirty, which was a great counter-point to the largely male, geriatric population of the March for Life.

I watched 'Lake of Fire' this weekend so I will probably be blogging about that soon, too. But I'm going to stop now.

I hope everyone had a good weekend, and that the flood cleanup is going well!

2 comments:

Feminist Catalyst said...

Glad to see things went well at your protest, after all. FYI, the Ottawa protest was amazing and we got a lot of press coverage.

Thanks for continuously kicking ass and taking names!

JJ said...

Congrats on your protest, pedgehog. Keep up the good work, frontliner!