counter-protest | assault on the square

  In keeping with the horrendous pagan tradition known as Halloween, today I dressed up in a fine cashmere loden (cloak) and a nice, pointy felt hat, to keep me warm out on the square in downtown Hanover, Pennsylvania. My new sign for this heathen holiday: WHAT'S NEXT? PRAY TO END HALLOWEEN opposite KEEP DEMOCRACY MESSY.

  In addition to the usual jeers, middle fingers, and cautious votes of confidence, I was approached by a skinny, middle-aged man who claimed that freedom of religion means freedom to worship Jesus, not freedom to worship any other god (Satan). I told him he was wrong about that, and about his claims that the Quakers founded America (we were founded in 1776, by the 2^nd Constitutional Congress), whereupon he battered me (by tapping me on the arm with his cheap little fake-leather notebook). Immediately I sprung back out of his reach, lambasting him for violating my person and saying, “If you assault me again, sir, I will defend myself.” He laughed and scoffed and looked around to see if anyone else had witnessed his foul act, mocking my anger at having been touched without consent. He claimed to have at one time been a Marine, and said that he was about to beat the crap out of me.

  He called me a pussy (I agreed), and a faggot (I agreed), and I invited him to kindly go fuck himself somewhere else, but he stuck around to make fun of me and to try to block my sign with his body. “Why are you assaulting their freedom of speech?” he asked, to which I responded that I was doing nothing of the sort, rather that I was defending the rights of the women of America to decide for themselves what to do with their bodies, and with things growing inside their bodies. When he would not budge, I started singing my nonsense song about vaginas and wombs and keeping your business out of them, which sent him skittering across the road to safety.

  He talked to each of the anti-choice protester in turn (no doubt recounting his terrifying encounter), and when a police cruiser drove past (they drive past every few minutes now) he pointed at the officer and yelled at me to report his criminal conduct. I responded by smiling and nodding my head at him, so he gave me the finger, and fled into a nearby shoe store.

  With my new signs – WHAT'S NEXT? PRAY TO END FREE SPEECH and WHAT'S NEXT? PRAY TO END HALLOWEEN – I think I have been getting my message through to the disinterested drivers who pretend to ignore the sign-war on their square. The gist of my struggle is this: if we let the forces of moralistic and religious conservatism destroy one of our freedoms (that being liberty, or the ability to decide what to do with your own body), all other freedoms (speech, assembly, religion, &c) will be taken from us as well.

  Hence my other new sign, KEEP DEMOCRACY MESSY, to remind the People that counter-protest is vital to the healthy functioning of a true democracy in that, as an organic reaction to a well-organized and well-funded juggernaut of religious oppression (40 days for life), it provides a plurality of opinion.

  Stand up. Speak out. Challenge everything.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

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

counter-protest - libertas victor!

  The forces of counter-protest today won a major victory in the battle against the anti-choice crowd: the opponent abandoned the field! With a new sign in hand (ANTI-CHOICE IS ANTI-LIBERTY opposite NO ROSARIES IN MY OVARIES), I arrived on the Hanover square at noon sharp, in time to witness the PRAY TO END ABORTION crowd blatantly violating the borough noise statutes by hoisting colorful signs reading HONK 4 LIFE, thus creating a public nuisance. (I am not a snitch, nor a police informant, so I refrained from informing the borough peace-keepers that noise violations were occurring willfully and continuously.) Less than an hour later, by one pm, the last HONK 4 LIFER had rolled up her sign and sped away in her minivan.

  I was not shaken when they sent a priest to intimidate me; I was not shaken when they sent a local cop to issue his warning – but the pro-lifers seem to have been shaken by my persistence on the square, and by my brazen mockery of their beliefs.

  The field is ours! Our foe is in disarray, routed and scrambling for the hills. Maybe just for one more day, the inalienable, Constitutional right of women to dispose of their bodies (their only true property) as they see fit has been defended by a new Guard for the future Security of the People of America.

  Fetuses are not babies until they are born! If I wanted religion in my womb, I would have slept with Jesus! Keep your rosaries out of my ovaries!

Thanks to everyone who voiced an opinion to the action of these last few days, be it yelled from a car or scrawled on a website. Defend your rights every day – let no man bar your way.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

counter-protesting - day # 4

  This picture shows the sign I have been holding on the square in Hanover PA for the last few days (the opposite side reads, CHOICE = LIBERTY - DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION). Today, however, things got a bit nasty: a priest showed up, grabbed the pro-lifers' only PRAY TO END ABORTION sign, crossed the street, and stood directly behind me for a good forty-five minutes. We had a brief conversation about the freedom of speech (he was incredulous when I told him that most modern nations allow their people to speak freely), but he retreated all the same, with a farewell, "See you later," when his attempts at intimidation didn't cause me to immediately vacate my spot.

  Many were the people who voiced their support for my efforts at counter-protesting, among them a shopkeeper from a nearby store (who praised me for keeping my distance from the pro-lifers and not posting up directly behind or next to them), truck drivers, people in passing cars, and the very nice couple who, out of solidarity, bought me a coffee and a water. Many also were the people who voiced their opposition to my signs, either through thumbs down or by yelling angry threats from passing cars.

  The culmination of my day, however, was when the local police showed up to inform me that they had received multiple complaints about the fact that I was displaying in public the word vagina. "This is borderline disorderly conduct," the officer said; "you have the right to speak freely, but we're getting complaints about the word vagina on your sign." I asked him if I could complain about the fact that the pro-lifers have pictures of dead and bloody fetuses on their signs, which I find disturbing and offensive, and he told me to file a complaint at the station. He took my name, address, and date of birth, and thanked me for being civil about the complaints. When I raised my coffee to him as I was packing up and he was pulling out of the parking area where I had been standing, he nearly shouted out with glee.

  I can imagine only one source for the complaints: the pro-lifers who had tried to bring out the big guns, and, having failed to shake my resolve, turned snitch. To stay out of trouble with the law, I will change my sign to read, "KEEP YOUR PRAYERS OUT OF MY WOMB," but womb is not nearly as memorable as vagina. Every action has an equal and appropriate reaction. I refuse to turn snitch and complain about signs bearing bloody and mangled fetuses, but I will not abandon my battle to secure for the women of this land the Blessings of Liberty. 

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on abortion (counter-protesting)

  I am just come from counter-protesting the abortion protesters who have been infesting the central square in the small, rural town where I live. For weeks now, I have driven past them day after day, middle-aged men, grandmothers, and nuns standing out in the cold, standing up for that in which they believe. They carry professionally-made signs that say, PRAY TO END ABORTION, or, LIFE IS PRECIOUS. Some of the signs bear pictures of aborted fetuses, some pictures of cute and cuddly little babies.

  The first sign I made, at two Saturday morning with a head full of booze and a heart full of indignation, said, CHOICE = LIBERTY – KEEP ABORTION LEGAL. Having spent the day playing disk golf at Codorus State Park, I remembered the sign I had shoved into the trunk of my car the night before, and made it out to the square just before dusk, Saturday evening. Within a few minutes, two separate drives had either booed me or given me thumbs down, while one of the protesters, a young, sporty-looking woman, had waved to me at least five times. Fortunately, my disk golfing partner was there to back me up, and to take pictures for posting to the socialverse.

  Once again fresh from disk golfing, today I debuted my new sign, this one with two sides, and two messages. The first: CHOICE = LIBERTY – DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION. The second: KEEP YOUR PRAYERS OUT OF MY VAGINA. I made sure to hit the square around lunch time, this time without backup, to catch the midday traffic. Immediately, there were honks and jeers, thumbs up and down, brief conversations with drivers stopped at the light where I stood, and many, many people looking away in shame or embarrassment. More than one driver agreed that it was “only a matter of time” before someone did what I was doing. The sporty young woman waved once or twice, but her companions, two women in their seventies, never ceased shooting daggers at me, their looks dripping with malicious contempt, their polished little signs no match for the giant piece of spray-painted cardboard upon which I had clumsily scrawled my counter-slogans.

  I caught a half dozen drivers taking pictures, and a trio of proto-hipsters approached me at one point, to have their picture taken next to the vagina slogan, but the highlight of my hour on the square was the local rapid-transit bus that circled the block so that one of the passengers could take a picture of the vagina slogan, the bus's driver laughing and signaling to me with her hands to flip over my message-board.

  I believe strongly in my messages. According to just about every doctor on the planet, a fetus is just not a baby until it emerges from the mother's body. Until such time that it emerges, the fetus is the property of the mother – she has the inalienable right to do with it what she pleases. In the fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, each person is granted the right to life, liberty, and property, rights that pertain to the body specifically, that property without which life is impossible.

  If one thinks that the fetus during the first trimester is human life (when it is only a cluster of cells), then abortion activists surely oppose (on moral grounds) surgery of any kind. During liposuction, living human tissue is removed from the body. Similarly, a cancerous tumor is living human tissue – when it is removed from the body, it dies. Who is protesting publicly to end the removal of cancerous growths? No one. When my pancreas is issued a passport, or when my trachea obtains the right to vote, I might agree with the protesters, but these internal tissue clusters are part of me, not separate entities: they are mine to dispose of as I please.

  No country of which I know issues a certificate of conception, whereas most countries issue some sort of certificate of birth. I think this shows us what modern, enlightened society understands: that anything growing within your body belongs to you. Our Constitutional rights must be guarded continuously from attacks by persons and groups that wish to take them from us. So stand up, speak out, and keep your prayers out of my vagina

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on dominionism & al-Qaeda

  In certain respects, the movement known as dominionism resembles the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. Both are extremist religious movements made up of fanatical zealots with whom can be neither argued nor bargained. Both have the goal of dismantling the rightfully elected governmental structure that currently presides over these United States of America. Both seek to destroy the Constitution, whereas al-Qaeda acts to annihilate it, and the members of the dominionist movement plan merely to enslave it to a totalitarian theocracy allegedly spoken about in the Christian bible.

  I have read most of the Koran, Allah be praised, and the majority of the Christian bible, Amen, and from neither text was I able to glean a clear mandate to impose upon the foundations of modern, enlightened society the restrictive policies of long lost civilizations. (Such mandates can be pulled from any text, let alone religious ones, so long as pastors, imams, and priests are willing to ignore teachings of love and compassion and focus on righteous fearfulness and calculated xenophobia, as happened during the Iranian Revolution.)

  As we fight al-Qaeda around the world, the blood of our brothers and sisters pouring out on distant sands and in foreign lands, let us remember that religious fanatics are at work here in the motherland, in plain view of the American people, zealots who wish to see one of their own elected to the Presidency, all the while praying with every thing they've got to dismantle our Constitutional republic and to erect in its place a system of theocratic dictatorship. Our brave, proud troopers are battling religious extremists abroad: it is up to each American living here at home to defend the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, from any and all who may wish them harm.

  Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

p.s. Ghadhafi is deposed! Praise be to the Libyan people for their hard-fought, righteous victory.