From the Alternet news wire:
Pentagon “Freedom March” Will Be Fenced In, Require Preregistration… Entire Park Police Force Ready, Threats Of Arrest…
Posted on September 9, 2005 at 7:34 AM.Organizers of the Pentagon’s 9/11 memorial Freedom Walk on Sunday are taking extraordinary measures to control participation in the march and concert, with the route fenced off and lined with police and the event closed to anyone who does not register online by 4:30 p.m. today.
The march, sponsored by the Department of Defense, will wend its way from the Pentagon to the Mall along a route that has not been specified but will be lined with four-foot-high snow fencing to keep it closed and “sterile,” said Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of defense.
Yes, so that’s what that wooden fence along the George Washington Parkway and the Mall is all about. Those things go up and come down constantly and without apparent reason, though I think half the time they are designed simply to annoy and inconvenience people.
But such a tightly controlled pro-government demonstration. Why would anyone be afraid of any spontenaity, especially on such a sacred day like September 11? Are our government masters so afraid of us that they will corral us and watch us closely to ensure our outpourings of countrylove, partylove and potuslove are only done under “sterile” conditions? It’s so … Soviet, or Ba’athist, or National Socialist. A sterile, pointless freedom as a government hand-out, and not a fact arising out of our being Children of God.
I know what we’re becoming under the Bush GOP — a “People’s Democracy,” you know, like East Germany or North Vietnam. Wear that party badge! Speak that party line! Love that party leader! No talking in that party bread line!
11:32 am on September 9, 2005
