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It should come as no surprise that those who advocate violence as a means by which to dispose of inconvenient pregnancy, might also use it against inconvenient truth-tellers. A follow-up story declared CBR's refusal to tolerate this sort of thuggery. The Lantern, Thursday, October 29, 1998, published the following account:
The organizers of the Genocide Awareness Project plan to file charges against an alleged vandalism attempt last Thursday of its controversial posters comparing abortion to lynchings and the Holocaust.
'People who decide to be violent need to be held accountable,' said David William Lee, director of operations at the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, the group that organized the project.
University Police said about 30 people rushed through the yellow tape that surrounded the display.
[CBR note: The university initially and naively refused our request for steel crowd-control barricades and several police officers. This decision was eventually reversed when it became obvious that the absence of fencing and adequate police presence was encouraging predictable violence by angry pro-aborts. WE NEVER ENCOUNTER SIGNIFICANT VIOLENCE WHERE WE ARE GRANTED STEEL BARRICADES AND ENOUGH UNIFORMED POLICE TO DETER MISCONDUCT.]
Police have a photograph of a woman who allegedly tried to vandalize the display, OSU Police Chief Ron Michalec said.
The woman, identified only as Lisa, was grabbed by OSU officer Bruce Anderson as she ran away from the display.
Anderson noticed an individual who was pointing at her and yelling, 'She's got a knife,' police said.
A small Swiss Army knife was found folded in her pocket...
Anderson also restrained Patricia A. Sikora, 21, from Polk, Ohio, after seeing her hit the display with her fists.
* * *
'I pounded on the display,' Sikora said, 'it was my way of expressing my rage.'
We will press charges against both students but as an excerpt from the following E-mail (to CBR from Melody Shaw, a Dayton Right to Life volunteer) explains, we treat even petulant students with patience. "... [A]fter listening to you speak with the 'pro-choice clown' at OSU who was yelling in your face ... I ... saw how great and compassionate your heart is [see accompanying photo]."
PRO-ABORT COVER-UP
When the neo-fascists failed to destroy the evidence, they took up the cause of "pro-life moderates" and tried to cover the evidence up. The Ohio State Lantern, Monday, October 26, 1998, explained:
[Headline:] Dozens of protesters block abortion display. Added police presence felt at non-violent scene on south Oval.
The most organized protest against the anti-abortion Genocide Awareness Project on Ohio State's campus occurred Friday on the south Oval.
The project consists of posters juxtaposing graphic images of the Holocaust, racial violence and aborted fetuses. The protesters, who carried signs and numbered about 35, formed a line with their bodies in an attempt to block as much of the display from view as possible about 11:15 a.m.
[emphasis added - CBR note: The best test of GAP's effectiveness is that panicked pro-aborts also tried to cover the display with their coats at Penn State and tried to knock it down (by hand and by crashing a car into the exhibit) at the University of Kansas. When is the last time pro-aborts physically attacked a pro-life literature table in some student union? They ignore our presence when our medium (anemic brochures) encourages passers-by to ignore our message (abortion is an act of violence which kills a baby). They go mental when our medium (giant abortion pictures) makes it impossible to ignore that message. If the pro-aborts have figured out what saves babies, why don't we get it?]
Various members of the group led protest chants with a bullhorn until noon, when someone from the crowd announced that they would have to quit using the bullhorn because it was disrupting classes being held in nearby buildings. The group continued chanting until about 12:30 p.m., when a break was taken and the bulk of the protesters left.
[CBR note: As usual, it was pro-abort students and not pro-lifers who disrupted classes and turned violent.]
The number of police assigned to monitor the project increased after an incident Thursday in which a group of protesters charged the display. One of the protesters - a woman suspected of planning to slash the display with a knife - was arrested.
OSU police Capt. John Petry, who was in charge at the scene, would not comment on the numbers of police present or their tactics and contingency plans. But an informal count showed at least eight police officers present, up one from the day before.
* * *
Though the project is an anti-abortion display, it drew a wide variety of protesters, for a wide variety of reasons.
According to Michelle Montagno, a senior at OSU and a member of Feminist Majority [a.k.a. the "bra-scorchers"], the protesters present on Friday drew their numbers from Anti-Racist Action, Students for Choice, the Association of Women Students, Hillel, and others, as well as individuals.
A significant portion of the protesters were there to protest what they called a misuse of racist images in the project's posters.
'We know and they know that the people who are high up in the pro-life movement are not people of color.' said Zakiyyah Sabir, a protester, referring to the blacks who were part of the [GAP] project. 'They're white Christian males and they are pulling the puppet strings for these people.'
At least some of the blacks on the ... [CBR] side of the police barricade ... disagreed.
'I came here because I thought that this was one of the greatest opportunities to expose the truth, or to give women a real choice, to see what really happens in abortion. Nobody pays me to do this, nobody exploits me, nobody uses me in any form,' said Emma Sanders, founder of Black Americans for Life.
In addition to accusations of racism, protesters also alleged that the project secretly served as a mouth-piece of the 'religious right,' or at the very least, mixed religion in where it didn't belong.
'We've watched their funding, we've tracked who gets these people to speak,' said Jerry Bellow, a protester and member of Anti-Racist Action. 'These people are entirely a project that was brought together by coalition of hard-right, fundamentalist groups. Right to Life, Christian Coalition, Operation Rescue, all came together to bring [this] out. This is just another campaign of this large, interlocking network of religious fanatics bent on remaking America in the image of their very narrow ideology.'
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