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NEWS & LETTERS, August-September 2006Protest as Bush visits GracelandMemphis, Tenn.-Last month, over 100 demonstrators gathered at Graceland, where President Bush was entertaining Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan, evidently a big fan of the long-dead Elvis. The Mid-South Peace and Justice Center had gotten a permit approved by the Secret Service and the Memphis Police Department (MPD) to gather directly across from Presley's old home. The demonstration was co-sponsored by Democracy for Memphis and News and Letters Committees. When we arrived, the Secret Service redirected us 300 feet away to a spot obscured from the President's view by a row of Memphis buses and fire trucks-parked there for that very purpose. The only break in the buses was so the press could make it look like one could see the President and voice dissent. In reality, even his supporters were kept from view. I spent 45 minutes trying to contact the agent in charge, and repeatedly jumped the rope line so we could gather in our permitted spot. Each time I was stopped by Graceland security and told I would be arrested. When I finally talked to the Secret Service, we were told we could stand on the sidewalk but it was 1,500 yards from the front of Graceland. Had we been allowed our allocated space, we would have been in the shot of every news camera there. When I tried to talk to the national media, I was denied contact. I tried to jump the line and was stopped; they refused to deliver our press packet to them; and I was told we could only see the press after they had left! We set up down the street on the President's car route in the 95-degree sun for several hours and displayed our signs and Faces of the Fallen, photos of the faces of soldiers killed in Iraq. Ex-soldier Allison Devante held a sign that spoke most personally for her: "Stop rape of military women in Iraq." When the President finally sped by, those in his heavily armed motorcade pointed M16s at us. Denied our permitted space, we were put together with Bush supporters. It could have gotten ugly, except we outnumbered them, and soon moved to our own spot. Several demonstrators from the Memphis Center for Independent Living came on their wheelchairs via public transportation. As one woman rolled in with her sign, pro-Bushites called her a "godless lesbian." We found out after the fact that Bush and Koizumi also visited the National Civil Rights Museum. How disgusting that Bush stood on the spot where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was murdered, as if he was some supporter of civil rights, as if he wasn't directly responsible for the illegal detention and torture of people at Guantanamo or the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Had we known he was going to be there, we would have been too. Despite the machinations of the three different police entities, our demonstration was really great and got great national and international media. As far away as Sweden, they were talking about the number of protesters here. To be able to show the rising level of dissent in a place as small as Memphis reveals that the tide is turning strongly against Bush and his war. -Jacob Flowers Director, Mid-South Peace and Justice Center |
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