I GOT (BARELY) ASSAULTED BY A SCIFAG!

Just got back from the Minneapolis protest.

There was a guy wandering around with no face or head covering at all (in the -40 to -50 wind!), yelling at the top of his lungs and trying to get everybody to act crazy with him. I figured he was just a socially stunted jerk until he started talking shit about our lack of conviction and yelling about how if we REALLY cared we'd DO SOMETHING. You know, really stand up for our beliefs and not just use these stupid flyers and signs. You could hear him bellowing all this stuff from down the block.

I heard that the same guy went around for a while yelling catchphrases that didn't make any sense, like "UP WITH FUR!" (possibly furries?) At one point he tried to get inside the CoS building and the cops used a bullhorn to tell him to cut the crap and go back across the street.

He ended up on the corner where some of us were holding signs up for the cars that went by (lots of honking), and started giving us shit for being too cowardly to take it up a notch. Then he started singling me out. I didn't realize he might actually be bull-baiting me, so I snarked him right back while holding up my sign and getting the job done. A couple failed insults later, I turned around again to hold up my sign for a different area of the street, and the dude beaned me in the back of the head with a wad of flyers!

It didn't hurt since it was just paper, but I was completely caught off guard. I asked him why he did that, and he said it was because I didn't have enough conviction to be out here. I picked up the flyers before they could blow away so we wouldn't be accused of littering, and then immediately went and passed the word along the picket line that the loud guy was not one of us and had just hit me in the head with a wad of flyers.

I then told the police what happened, that he was making us look bad and hassling the demonstrators. They asked me if I wanted them to move him along. I said yes, and a few minutes later they did.

This is the guy (picture not taken by me!):



About an hour later, another guy with no head protection joined us for a while. He got in-frame on somebody's video camera and threw a shit-fit, yelling that the cameraman had better not point that thing at him again, and threatening to 'lay him out.'

Then the guy balled up the flyer he was holding and threw it at the cameraman, then picked the ball up (I think he picked it up himself, or maybe the other guy handed it back to him, I can't recall) and started trying to shove the paper into the cameraman's hand. The crep took off down the street just as I got my camera up to snap his picture. The cameraman said he didn't stop recording and got the threat on video, and I look forward to it ending up on the web.

Both of the jerks gave off the same bizarre vibe. I can't say for sure they were plants, but they each had the same unstable air about them as those 4th of July bullbaiters from XenuTV. Just more incompetent. Nobody took either creep's bait or lost a minute of protesting time to it, due to Minnesota Nice.

The protest was unbelievably cold but everyone was cheerful, respectful of the law and upbeat. There was chanspeak, but whenever a civilian came down the block it was all please, thank you and "Would you like to read more about why we're protesting today?" Most took the flyers. Fox and WCCO came to shoot footage and do interviews.

A really nice waitress at the Outback gave us cheesecake on the house when she heard what we'd been doing in the cold all day.

Good work Minneapolis!