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Friday, September 3 Elect my Bush for President Instead
I am horrified at the exploitation of September 11th at the hands of the Republican Convention now thankfully over. I have watched travesty after travesty in these last few days in New York City and I sit here, absolutely disgusted and horrified. Mr. President. You say you care so much for New York and what we’ve been through. Then why the hell did you let them hold the Republican National Convention here? How did you think the thousands of cops in riot gear, the national guard with their sharp shooters rifles, the helicopters, the planes, the SWAT team vans were going to feel to us New Yorkers who are still walking around with a latent case of post traumatic stress disorder?! For me, I felt like it was September 12th all over again and the anxiety level racing through my veins has been non stop since Monday. Then, of course, thanks to our incredibly unpopular mayor Bloomberg and our governor George Pataki who is convinced that kissing your ass is his chance to be a president one day, the protestors in this city have been treated like terrorists and criminals. I could not believe that a few nights ago I watched hundreds of peaceful protestors arrested. Some of them, I believe are still in jail?! The outrage was so great a judge ordered the city of New York to release them and because the NYPD did not. The city of New York is now being fined 1,000 per person, so we NYC tax payers get to pay the thousands of dollars because the NYPD was told to keep these trouble makers locked up until George W Bush is out of town. Is this America? Am I now in some kind of sick dictatorship? I was disgusted when our former Mayor Rudy Guiliani stood up and essentially asked America to honor the fallen heroes of “911” by voting for Bush. How dare you sir?! Use the memory of 3,000 dead to coerce an election?! That is disgusting. How dare you Mr. Bush use the memory of 3,000 dead in such an exploitive way. I was here in downtown NYC on September 11th 2001. I saw the towers burn. I saw the towers fall. I smelt the acrid horror. I went down to the towers and fed, clothed and tried to comfort the broken battered rescue workers who were looking for their brothers, their fathers, their sisters, their daughters, their best friends. What I remember about you Mr. Bush is that you were no were to be found in those first terrible days. You sat in the schoolroom when you got the news and just froze there wasting precious time as you blinked un-able to move, then you got in your plane and ran away. And, okay, maybe as president you are supposed to run and hide when danger hits, but don’t paint yourself as a brave hero today, because when all the dust had settled, days later, you stood at ground zero and posed for the cameras. Now you are in our great city again, exploiting our fallen heroes, bringing back all the horror of the most terrible morning for us all over again with security forces and alarms and sirens and guns. Our own police department has turned against us, by throwing us into jail having largely committed no crime and keeping us there, un-charged, in the worst conditions; Guantanamo Bay on the Hudson and it is. I went to Union Square Park last night for a candle lit vigil and I walked with my candle and la Cubana with her candle through thousands of peaceful protestors, I saw a woman who had lost her son in Iraq, and old lady sitting alone under a tree with a small one candle, thousands of people with signs proclaming their outrage, Yes, there were plenty of super left wing radicals who I felt no association with, but there were also plenty of simple, fed up Americans who were worried for the future of this country if we have another 4 years of what feels more and more like a dictatorship. I listened to George Bush speak last night. I listened to him exploit September 11th again and again. I listened to him excuse the lies about our war to Iraq yet again. I listened to him pretend that the economy is on the rise again and again despite all evidence to the contrary. I listened to the dog and pony show in Madison in Square Garden while thousands of Americans were outside crying and screaming and praying for an end to this regime.
But I do not like the way this president has lassoed our fear to take away our human rights. I came very close to being arrested a few nights ago for walking in a peaceful, legal protest and maybe right now I would still be in jail or be sick in the hospital as my asthma was made full scale by the terrible conditions. Maybe today I would be damaged emotionally or physically and afraid to stand up for my rights again and that, I suspect is just what George W Bush wants.
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