counter-protesting | complainers beware

  The snow had been falling since dawn, and when I arrived on the square today, I was ill prepared for the sopping cold (much like the young girl who had been forced by her mother to stand outside in the driving rain). Unlike Friday, a day on which two separate grandmothers gave me the finger, today as I was standing out in the slanting snow, my fingers freezing, my sleeves dampening quickly, today we made some progress.

  At least two separate drivers flipped off the anti-choice crowd (without even attempting to show me their support), and at least four rolled down their windows to tell me how much they appreciated my efforts. Nonstop they came, the thumbs up, the shouts and the honks supporting my damp pacings. The signs I carried today: ANTI-CHOICE = ANTI-LIBERTY | NO ROSARIES IN MY OVARIES | I HEART PLANNED PARENTHOOD | NOT YOUR BODY? NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. One old man rolled down his window to call me an asshole after I had switched to the No Rosaries sign, which also garnered constant attention from the two anti-choice protesters hardy enough to stand out in the freezing slush.

  As soon as I started singing a nonsense song about ovaries and vaginas and keeping your business out of them, the lone remaining pro-lifer all but ran to his car, and fled. When I reached my own car, I had to shake an inch and a half of snow off of my cowboy hat, and my poncho (upon which are portrayed dueling cocks) was soaked nearly through.

  The estate was a mess, branches sagging over the road under the heavy snow, some having fallen already to block the narrow country lane that runs past the house. I dragged them out of the way, trimmed the low-hanging branches, and high-tailed it back to the neighbor's house, where they had the heat cranked up high enough to dry my soaking clothes. Not long after I arrived, the family's teenage son (with whom I play mad video games) left the house unexpectedly. He returned after a short interval, shook the snow off his clothes, and recounted excitedly what had just happened.

  Apparently, the organizer of the anti-choice demonstration (who lives a few doors down from him) had approached him to ask if I was in fact the individual out on the square counter-protesting. He said she complained about the offensive nature of my signs, about a sign that supposedly read, KEEP YOUR PRAYER HANDS OUT OF MY VAGINA (thanks for the great new slogan!), and that she grilled him about everything from my motives to my motivation. He claims to have stonewalled her thoroughly; similar the claims of his father, who was also approached by this woman, and who claims to have denied knowing anything about anybody.

  I have one piece of advice for the anti-choice crowd: next time, before you call the cops because you are offended by the public mention of a medical term (vagina), consider that your attempts at intimidation might cause the person on whom you snitched to resort to more colorful and creative terminology, words that you might decide offend you more. If the pro-lifers had just let me hold my vagina sign, I would have probably left it at that; since they ratted me out, I have made a new sign every day, with new and daring slogans that challenge the people of this small town to question why this struggle is playing out on their sad little square.

  I have the local ACLU chapter on speed-dial, primed and ready to go. The smell of escalation is in the air, and it reeks of excitement. I will fight to the last to secure the Blessings of Liberty for the people of America, and to keep speech free. Hence my new sign for Sunday:

WHAT'S NEXT? PRAY TO END FREE SPEECH

  Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

counter-protesting, day #6

  Pretty routine day today in downtown Hanover, Pennsylvania. After having played at Codorus State Park fourteen holes of speed disk golf (when you're not throwing, you're running), I showed up with some new signs I had made last night: MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS | IT'S NOT A BABY 'TILL IT'S BORN | WHEN THEY GO HOME, I'LL GO HOME | KEEP YOUR MORALS OUT OF MY BOWELS | ABORTION – SOMETIMES, IT JUST MAKES SENSE. With these as well as my other signs in hand, I was able to express quite a bit in a few minutes, without saying a word.
  Immediately upon my arrival, two of the four pro-lifers on hand, both women, rushed to their minivans, where they proceeded to conduct lengthy telephone conversations while staring at me continuously until I looked their way, whereupon they pretended not to have been looking at all. The only contact I had with the police was when an officer putting plain paper bags over the parking-meters noticed me trying to switch messages. He said, “You've got a lot of signs.” “Yeah... I've got a couple,” my reply. One passing driver hung his head out the window to shout, “If your mother had gotten an abortion, we wouldn't be in this situation.” Thanks for that, sir – I will pass on your sentiment to my dead mother.
  What was the main thing I learned today? That “mind your own business” (MYOB) goes over very well with the people of this region, and with those who pass through here. (This town being at the nexus of a handful of major connecting roads that point to all directions of the compass, thousands of cars come through the square every day, all of them exposed to my horrific and potentially insulting signs.) Old and young they waved, male and female, most with huge grins on their faces as they gave me thumbs-up and sped happily into the distance, confident that someone was out there fighting for Liberty.
  MYOB, moreover, also ties in with my greater message: a woman's body is her business, and trying to make abortion illegal violates the business of her body, which is her property, which is protected under not only the fifth, but also the fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
  When I returned from making more signs (over a nice lunch of smoked oysters, jasmine rice, and broccoli pieces all cooked up together in a rice-cooker), a neighbor of one of the families in town that I hang out with was on the square, her young daughter in tow, the child poorly dressed given the foul weather (the look of shock on her face almost sending me running until I clamped down on the Fear). Soon, it started to rain harder, and I was left on the square, alone, holding up a sign that said: THIS SIGN COST: $0.57
  I had almost rolled up my sign – the pedestrian light was taking forever to change – when a fat, young, two-pack-a-day grandmother leaned out of her daughter's car, and said, “Why don't you take your own advice, and mind your own business?”

  Well played, Gam-Gam; well played.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp