The
Coffee Merchants
%
_____Backwater barricades_____
The anti-choice organizers had stoked up the loonies and
purposefully sicked them on us
B Y L E E
L Y N C H
have demonstrated in New York and San
Francisco for gay pride; I have marched in
Washington, DC for a woman’s right to have
an abortion; I have rallied in New Haven to
take back the night; I have helped seize a
radio station for feminism; I have circled
against racism; I have been among those who
have flooded plazas and parks with their
protesting bodies; I have chanted and been
maced, fled and bled for peace.
I
T
H
III
E
A M AZC ) N
T R A I L
Never, never have I been so verbally
abused, physically confronted and obviously
despised as I was when I stood recently with
Lover and a hundred plus others on the steps
of a Women’s Club Auditorium in rural
Southern Oregon. We were defending NOW
president Molly Yard’s right to speak about
keeping male legislators’ opinions off our
bodies.
Lover and I had imagined being two of a
very few pro-choice people who would show
up. We parked several blocks away because
for once all the parking spaces in town were
full. We read bumper stickers on the way:
Don'/ Believe the Liberal Media. Powered by
Prayer. Jesus Is My Co-pilot. We expected
the worst.
When we’d threaded our way through the
yowling picketers and signs depicting
butchered fetuses, we found that the hall was
packed full. Over one hundred would-be
listeners stood on the steps, turned away.
Woulathey slink off to cars whose bumper
stickers read. Arms are for Hugging and
Freedom of Choice and If You’re Not Talking
Recycling, You’re Talking Trash? We stayed
on the edge of the crowd waiting for it to melt
away under the heat of hostility. But they
didn't leave.
The Yard protestors’ signs read Stop
NOW! This injunction was all too apt. When
our hardy group of mostly non-gay women
and men on the steps began to shout, “Equal
Rights!," the so-called pro-lifers booed
viciously, very obviously more emphatically
than they had at anything having to do with
abortion. Their agenda was clear: keep the
women pregnant and in the kitchen.
This made sense as most of the
demonstrators were male, up to 80 percent by
one tally.
The so-called pro-lifers lined the main
street of town that hot Tuesday evening with
hate-twisted faces, threats and curses. Here
are a few of the words they shouted:
"Murderers!...Why do you want to kill
babies?..Stop sleeping around!... Get
married!... You’d love a child you had by
rape!...Go out with me; I won’t get you
pregnant!.. .Freaks!.. Lesbians!.. Stay away
from the lezzies, they'll give you AIDS!"
♦
The finest imported coffee
beans, teas, chocolates, and
beverage brewing accessories.
As if by design, we veteran marchers
formed what amounted to a protective half
circle around the high school kids, the young
pregnant women, the white middle-class
women and men, mothers and daughters who
looked as if they’d never been through
anything like this before.
When the immoral minority tried to take
our space away by crushing us together, we
stood our ground. When they harshly shoved
us, we dug in our heels. When they bellowed
hatred in our ears, we remained silent, backs
to them. Now and then, they engaged the kids
in our crowd in shouting matches and lurched
forward to silence them. With the help of the
police, we held back their terrorizing, fury-
charged bodies. My knees never stopped
shaking, and the police finally had to circle
our circle to protect us, but it felt damn good
to be back on the barricades refusing to put up
with bigoted bullying.
Though we were there only to attend a
lecture, the anti-choice organizers had stoked
up the loonies and purposefully sicked them
on us, as it were. The Saturday before Yard’s
appearance, a group called A Few Good Men
bought a full-page advertisement in the local
paper. It accused NOW of using “marketing
deception” to promote “ a totally bizarre
moral code and political agenda." The ad
took out of context and printed ten quotes.
Here’s one: “The simple fact is that every
woman must be willing to be identified as a
lesbian to be fully feminist.” (National NOW
Times)
Talk about marketing deception.
Ironically, many of the people on the steps
with us came in response to the ad which
goaded their sense of decency.
We pro-choicers repeatedly thanked the
police, who did their job well. They’d
obviously been trained with crowd-control
methods developed against us in the sixties.
Isn’t if ironic that, in .1990, it should be easier
to face 500 screaming fanatics, to say what I
believe, from within a police cordon.
After a while, demonstrators began to
leave. Perhaps they were the more rational in
the crowd, disgusted by the ignorant behavior
of their allies. As they left, they discarded the
Stop NOW! signs. People on the steps tore the
signs in two, displaying the bottom half:
NOW! All night, cars had been driving by,
horns blaring to support the protestors.
When our signs went up, the horns blared
for us! We cheered the proof of our strength
which had been hidden until this night.
As we lingered on the steps while the
audience, charged by Yard’s speech, emerged
from the hall, a friend stopped and said she’d
heard all the noise outside.
“We thought it was the anti-choice
people," she said. I imagined how she
must have felt, packed into a small, hot
building, sweating and anticipating walking
into who knew what after the program. “We
heard them yelling, Molly go home! But then
we heard another chant: You go home! ” She
grinned. “Our side was out there!”
Very out there in this fundamentalist
stronghold, which is no longer quite so
strongly held. Three weeks later, the voters
trounced a ballot measure, sponsored by A
Few Good Men, which would have required
parental consent to give birth control
information to minors.
Victory is sweet, even on these backwater
barricades.
▼
♦
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lt>37 N E Broadway • 284-9200
♦
THE HAWTHORNE COFFEE MERCHANT
35t>2 S E Hawthorne • 230-1222
♦
THE HILLSDALE COFFEE MERCHANT
Hillsdale Shopping Center • 244-4822
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H ot Lips Pizza
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