Testing the First Amendment with the Bush Legacy Bus

Email inbox reports that Miami police did a motorcycle box around the Bush Legacy Tour yesterday, and here’s the video from Channel 4.



Funny, the guy in the beard looks familiar.

Here’s some text from the email, sent by Julie Blust of the Bush Legacy Tour, sponsored by Americans United for Change, which was formed in 2005 to oppose privatization of Social Security.

You need to hear about the Bush Legacy Tour's stop near Miami yesterday.
The local AFL-CIO set us up with space a few doors down from their office, which happened to be in front of McCain/Palin headquarters.

Before we arrived, though, the Miami police were out in force. But so were dozens of supporters. The police wouldn't let the bus stop. They surrounded us on motorcycles and prevented us from turning in to the parking lot.

Instead, we did a few laps around the strip mall, with the crowd of supporters going wild each time we did. Fortunately there were news crews already there and they captured the whole thing.

We eventually tried to park in the AFL-CIO parking lot nearby, but it was a tight turn, so we needed to swing wide and turn from the middle lane to do it. The amazing guys from the local came out and helped safely block traffic so we could finally get off the road and allow the large crowd on to see the exhibits.

Well, the police didn't like that and tried to ticket our driver!

A lot of truckers drove by during the course of all this and many of them honked to show their support, but some of them got ticketed.

If there's been one consistent theme as this bus has crossed the country, it's that everywhere we go, we draw attention to the Bush legacy. Protesters, supporters, reporters, and everyone in between -- when the Bush Legacy Bus pulls into your town, you can't help but look.

One more videographer surfaces: The Honk and Wave

This is the work of Jeff Reiter, done at one of our regular events.


Honk and Wave for Obama from Jeff Reiter on Vimeo.

Miami protests getting some coverage

There is a sea of right-wing media around here, but sometimes we manage to get a few syllables of protest into the local news. This weekend was one such example, and the MainStream Media were not immune to our charms.

The local CBS outlet, Channel 4, covered two anti-war protests Saturday with considerable Democratic input, one on South Beach, the other a march to the office of Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart. Here’s a link to the video, which wrapped in protests in Washington and the president’s radio address.

A lively rally to kick off a drive to impeach President Bush got a few lines in the Miami Herald in the local news briefs, but that wasn’t bad considering that NBC Channel 6 sent a crew but didn’t broadcast a report. That event was sponsored by the South Florida Impeachment Coalition with local speakers and featuring a stemwinder by David Swanson, a cofounder of AfterDowningStreet.org.

“Who will do for Bush what Monica did for Clinton?” Swanson asked the full-house crowd in the Unitarian Universalist Church, and nine people volunteered to help.

Swanson ticked off all the reasons people give for saying impeachment is impossible and argued persuasively that the reasons were bogus.

Not enough time, for instance: It took three months to approach impeachment of Richard Nixon, two months for Bill Clinton, he said. Plenty of time. Transcript of his speech and more photos available at the Downing Street link above.

Activist Diane Lawrence vowed to lead protests at Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’ office, up to refusing to leave. “If that’s what we need to get attention, that’s what we will do,” she said.

Swanson was introduced by Nicole Sandler of WINZ 940 AM. She has taken over the early-morning time slot where she formerly worked with Jim DeFede, who has left WINZ. Sandler said her news director has given her the go-ahead to feature impeachment, so expect that topic with your granola and progressive tea.

What's behind those calls for emails to Congress

The Sunday papers had some explanatory background to what’s going on with Congress and the public and the Iraq war.

The Sunday NY Times put it on the front page. Here's the link.

The Miami Herald put a version of the same article well inside, so maybe you saw that and were surprised to see them quoting from the sort of emails you get if you hear from MoveOn regularly.

MoveOn, it turns out, is allied with a bunch of other groups in a coalition called Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (remember the surge?). To learn more about the coalition, check out www.noiraqescalation.org.

The coalition meets often and has conference calls, and then the calls and emails go out to … Hey, that’s us! We get encouragement to call and email our congressmen, and to demonstrate.

So I’m sitting here at 11:30 a.m. on Monday and wondering whether they’ve had their meetings yet today and have decided what to suggest to us. And when will that email from MoveOn roll in to my inbox.

UPDATE: That email came at 12:24 p.m., MoveOn touting its VideoVets project with a TV ad made by Oliver Stone.

Veto protests

Part of crowd of 40 who protested the veto Wednesday at foot of Lincoln Road in South Beach. A group of about equal size demonstrated at the same time on U.S. 1 in Miami. Sign-wavers included people from MoveOn, Democracy for America, plain Democrats and people who walked up and joined in.