PROTEST IN VIRGINIA FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS
OFFENDS GOVERNOR MCDONNELL
SO HE MUSCLES THE WOMEN AND THEIR SUPPORTERS
OFF TO THE RICHMOND JAIL
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- observations by John P. Flannery -
Just watch this video and make up your own mind -
if you want to get an idea of how our Virginia Governor handles objections to Virginia's backward legislative policies that disrespect and abuse a woman's constitutional right of privacy.
It is hard to imagine that Governor Bob McDonnell is the Governor of a Commonwealth once headed by Thomas Jefferson when he summons an array of State and City Police, heavily armed, to suppress a crowd of mostly women, obviously unarmed, who showed up to protest his policies against them in Richmond yesterday, March 3, 2012.
When the unarmed crowd assembled peacefully yesterday afternoon on the steps of the Capitol to protest, the SWAT team arrived in full battle regalia, at the Governor's orders, to war against their First Amendment exertions to assemble and speak.
It was as if he said - "don't these women know their place?" - and he set out to put them in their place because plainly they went where he forbade them to be.
Perhaps it's time to go back and read the Governor's doctoral thesis again - and re-visit what he said he'd abandoned, as youthful mutterings. Now we know he was lying to us so - that he'd changed - so he could become Governor - and do precisely what we said he would.
At first yesterday, the police obstructed the access of the demonstrators to the Capitol grounds, and then the citizens walked across the grounds, so recently made so pristine with our taxpaying funds, so they could do what normally happens all over Richmond Capitol grounds.
But these speeches were not by the legislators.
They were by the people who objected in as much force, and with arguments more plainly righteous, in opposition to what the General Assembly wrongly did to them days earlier.
Plainly, the Governor had enough, no more dissent for him, not another day in which their public expressions might turn even more public opinion against his constitutional misconduct.
The Governor and the General Assembly acted in such a heavy-handed and unfair fashion, doing so much wrong, that citizens from around the world and journalists and late night comedians ridicule us for what our General Assembly did.
What the protesters did not understand when they thought they could "get away" with expressing their critical opinions again was that, while you may have freedom OF speech, you almost certainly don't enjoy freedom AFTER speech - at least not down Virginia way.
After the crowd chanted, "This is what democracy looks like, This is what democracy looks like,..." O'Donnell's goons - and that's what we'd call the henchmen of any gangster - moved in to change the democratic tableaux, from what democracy was intended to look like, to destroy any notion that we here in Virginia may officially respect differing views.
There were the vacant "have-a-nice-day-we're-here-to-help-you-stares" -- through plastic shields - while they cleared well meaning Virginians from the public square who wrongly thought that hey could say what they thought in the so-called "land of the free and home of the brave."
They thought they could stand and speak in front of the Capitol. Think again!
McDonnell's muscular puppets isolated those who stood on the steps in protest, divided and separated the groups of protesters, and then moved in on the smallest group remaining on the steps to arrest them.
If you listen to the tape of this unconstitutional debacle, in defiance of assembly and free speech, you'll hear the crowd protesting, demanding that one officer who approached one of the women on the steps, take his unconsented and offending hand off her shoulder.
Could there be a more apt offense to demonstrate the protesters' point - that Virginia has decided to assault the privacy of women generally and individually.
The crowd objected to this officer presuming to address so intimately and intimidatingly - while he places his hand on her person.
There were additional cries from the crowd at the armed men, carrying automatic rifles, apparently sub-machine guns - when no one in the crowd had anything more offensive than a clear voice to suppress.
We praise the citizens of other nations who protest their wrongful governments and castigate these foreign leaders at any hint that they suppress their citizens' expressions in protest.
By that standard, shouldn't we be castigating Governor McDonnell for not being able to withstand the heat of public declamation at his policies?
Or did it hurt his frail male ego so much more that it was women, a group he would relegate to chattels, that had the nerve to object to his paternalistic administration of their private lives?
The other marchers cheered those who were caught in the web, not for being caught, but for having shown the strength of their convictions, for having been hauled off because they sat on the steps, the public steps, and objected to what our shameful legislators said and did only days before, led by their Governor.
In a nation of invertebrate politicians, is it possible that our democratic ideal, if it is to be preserved, will in the end be won or lost by what we citizens do to protect that ideal - as there were no legislators in evidence to fight for us?
But isn't it true that, in all the great battles for rights in this nation, we the people must lead our elected officials.
Are they the last and most timid of the people's allies in these struggles for a right and just society because they care more about keeping their job than doing it? I'm afraid so.
And this tragedy in Richmond is only the most recent example.
If you want to see the face of Virginia, a haunting spectre true to life, that we thought a thing of the past, that we'd left behind us long ago, in the 50's perhaps, or maybe the 60's, this picture (below) of impersonal dark forced SWAT goons really does say it all.
The New Dominion has grown old again and the rights of individual citizens wither before the muscle of men who do what they're told and have neither respect for women nor for the liberties and rights that Thomas Jefferson struggled to defend and protect.
So let us consider what we could say about a Republican ticket that would consider for even a brief moment having our Governor on the ticket.
Would that be a hidden indiscreet promise that we could expect to see more suppression of the same in our nation's capital after their inauguration - should we dare to disagree and then, even worse, seek to invoke our First Amendment right to assemble and to speak?
It will be interesting to observe if the Republican party finds our Governor still worthy of being Vice President after his casting efforts for the role.
We sincerely hope they find him overzealous and out of bounds - because that would favor our constitutional government.
On the other hand, if he is chosen, that would tell us a lot bad of what we can expect from the Republican Party of Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, and the many others in that party who have let us know that they care not so much for women's rights.
Of course, then we would have to make the error of licensing them to repeat these dark practices in the nation's capital - were we foolish enough to allow them to win the vote in November in the first place.
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