A few days ago I blogged the story of the vicious gang assault by “peace” protesters on an Iraq war veteran, his wife and their 14-year-old son. The Gathering of Eagles N.Y. chapter has been following this story and have some disturbing updates along with video of the attack on the family.
They still haven’t released the names of the villains, but the G.O.E. has now identified the two men involved in the beating as being from the Sociology department of Edinboro University. Here’s their description of the contents of the video, which I encourage you to watch for yourselves:
A man in a wheelchair comes forward and begins taunting the veteran. The veteran steps away from the wheelchair and places his sign on the ground leaning against his leg as he holds his flag.
The veterans sign is actually placed where it is not visible from the street. There is another American flag being held by one of the professors, so the presence of his flag does not interfere with their protest either.
Now the woman in white, who has been continuously badgering the Veteran’s son, uses the guise of moving a blue tupperware bin in front of his sign to mask her intent to grab it.
Grab it she does and throws it into the street. When the veteran goes to retrieve it she stands on top of the sign and taunts him to strike her.She has now stolen his property and incited riot.
The veteran pulls his sign from beneath the woman’s boots while his wife comes over to interject her body between him and the woman.
The veteran walks back toward the sidewalk while a second woman, in a green shirt, comes charging up to the veterans wife and strikes her with the red sign she is carrying. The veteran’s wife moves her arm in a protective motion to fend off the sign and fend off this new woman.
The sign then strikes the woman in white.
At this point both women pile on the veteran’s wife punching and kicking. The wife, wearing an inflatable cast due to a leg injury, is caught off balance and falls to the ground. The veteran seeing what is happening spins around and grabs the woman in green to restrain her. In the meantime the woman in white continues to punch and kick the wife on the ground.
Several male protesters grab the veteran and push him to the ground. Punches are reported to have been thrown by these protesters although they are not recorded on this video. The video stops for a minute while the son pulls the woman in white off his mother. The video resumes in time to catch a last kick the woman in white makes to the head of the veteran’s wife. This is one of the blows that caused the concussion the wife suffered.
The camera pans around and the veteran can be seen on the ground, still restraining the woman in green, while the male protester in yellow is gripping both sides of the collar of his shirt from behind in the manner of a garrot around his neck. His hat and glasses are gone. The glasses were smashed in the street.
The woman in white then approaches the veteran as he releases the woman in green and appears to launch an attack against him while he is restrained. She then wheels around and assaults the son, who is still videotaping, in a graphic exhibition of the violence endemic to ‘peace’ thugs. This recorded assault on a juvenile should have produced an immediate arrest by the police officers reviewing the video, yet they did nothing.
The video ends with the parting remark of the woman in white “You got what you wanted you f_cks!â€
Shocking, unless you’ve met peace protesters. The cops arrive on the scene and do worse than nothing, they take the “peace” protesters’ side and allow the assault to continue:
The two policemen arrived on the scene after the open hostilities had ended. One of the officers arrived with an attitude and that attitude did not improve throughout the time he was there or later at the police station. He allowed the protesters to taunt the veteran in his presence unhindered and then threatened to arrest the veteran when he responded verbally to the taunts. When the woman in white was called across the street by the police, and she took the opportunity to spit on the veteran, he did not threaten to arrest her. When he reviewed the video from the veteran’s son’s camera he decided that no one was going to be arrested even when it was pointed out to him that the lady in white had blatantly attacked a juvenile. Later in the police station this officer again displayed outright hostility to the veteran and threatened to handcuff him for inquiring why the woman wasn’t arrested for the assault on his son.
The favorable treatment given to this woman begs the question. Who is she and what is her relationship to the police officers or any public person in the Borough of Edinboro?
Updated: 4/26/2008. The woman in white has been identified as a student at Edinboro University
The G.O.E. and those covering this story, including Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly who did a segment on the story last night, seem perplexed as to the preferential treatment rich White liberals get from police in a college town. Let me explain.
Edinboro is reliant on the spoiled, priggish children of what even shallow liberals call The Worst Generation for its livelihood. Edinboro authorities, in collusion with the local University, pamper these overgrown toddlers because it’s good for business. I lived in such towns while an undergrad and later while receiving my Master’s and they’re all the same.
The protest was irrelevant to the cops’ shameful treatment of the veteran. I’ve seen rich kids get away with buying drugs in front of cops, male college students get away with hitting women, colleges and police covering up rape and assaults and even have personal knowledge of a case of a famous east coast liberal arts college covering up child pornography.
The young, peaceful liberal is a myth dreamed up by people who romanticize the self-absorbed, drug-addicted nihilists that were spawned by parents who didn’t love their kids enough to care if they grew up to be decent people. The world is full of people who make comfortable livings off the excesses of people with easy access to cash and no sense of boundaries. Edinboro is an example of both those truths.
In short, the town of Edinboro is in the tank for the University and more importantly for the damaged, selfish cretin who attend the school and flood that town with money. The cops, the mayor and even the D.A. will go to bat for these criminals, even if it means breaking the law to do so. The D.A. has already shown the family what kind of justice Edinboro metes out:
Harassment charges are being filed against the Iraq Veteran and his wife and no charges are being filed against the thugs who assaulted them. How can the District Attorney justify this travesty of justice?
He’ll justify it by counting the money in his paycheck that comes from these students drinking, drugging and fighting in his town.
I contacted the Edinboro University public relations office for a statement when this story first broke and they have no comment. The D.A. also has not commented and was accused on last night’s O’Reilly Factor of ducking the press.
This story stinks. I expect that once more light is shed on this town’s disgusting treatment of this family the charges will be dropped and the town will bend over backwards to get out of the public eye as quickly as possible.
They wouldn’t want us to find out what other crimes they’ve been covering up.
I hate to inform you but EUP is not some ivy league school, it is the most run of the mill colleges out there. The richest of rich kids do not attend Edinboro, it is the cheapest state school in PA. I will agree that Edinboro is a liberal school, but considering a lot of the attendants are art, theater, & music majors – what else would you expect. There are also a lot of loud, drunk, & angst kids, but there are also a good amount of fraternities & sororities who start fights with just about anyone. What happened during the “peaceful protest” is shocking & horrible! That should not have happened, and I hope that some justice happens for the people who were attacked by the students, but please do not verbally attack a town you know absolutely nothing about & the people living there because every town you’ve lived in is not the same as other towns you’ve never even visited. Thank you.
The people of your good town stood around and watched a family get attacked. People watched a woman and child being beaten.
The cops did nothing to stop it even when the got there.
The D.A. is prosecuting the family.
Do I need to draw you a picture? Your town is rotten to the core. And the idea that these aren’t well off kids is nonsense. Even a non-ivy college costs $30,000 a year. Sorry to disabuse you of your working class pretensions but most poor kids go to community colleges.
You cannot attack an entire town based on one incident. I have put myself through Edinboro myself, I didn’t have help from “well off” parents. Yes what happened was terrible but you can’t blame an entire community for it. According to the video That I have seen, both parties are in the wrong. I think you had better step back and take a look at yourself first before you make assumptions about an entire town from a small group of people.
To call everyone from Edinboro those things is outright wrong. It’s ignorant and the stupidity overwhelmes my thoughts. I myself chose to come here due to it’s completely reasonable tuition. Why you may ask? My father lost his job. To say everyone here is well off and spoiled is childish and irresponsible. I can tell you right now that the majority of the students here are not that.
Now for the incident itself, I am completely ashamed of the fact that two members of the Edinboro faculty participated in this, and I would hope that the university takes action and terminates them, or at the very least suspends them without pay. The last thing this campus needs is an image problem with faculty beating a veteran home from Iraq and his family.
I have been a student of Edinboro for five years this month, and lived twenty minutes away from it almost my entire life. I am angered at the fact that you attack this whole town based upon the actions of only a fraction of those people. They should be ashamed of their actions and apologise immediately and take what punishments are brought on to them, but to lump all the citizens of this town together is just wrong.
Tell me how the 14 year old was in the wrong? Tell me how a wife trying to keep a woman from harassing her husband deserves a beating? Tell me how a husband trying to keep TWO women from killing his wife deserved to be strangled? Did you know the woman suffered a concussion after being punted in the head, an act that could have killed her? Does that matter to you at all?
You’re townsfolk watched a man; a woman and a child get jumped by four or five people. There were people there just watching. You don’t think the craven cowardice of those people who were driving past the brawl, the people in the stores watching, should be judged?
Of course you don’t. You think that counter protesting or filming protesters some how provokes violence. I wonder if the situation was reversed, and some of those brats were pounded at a Freedom Riders rally, would you claim all parties were at fault?
The cops watched a woman spit on someone and did nothing. I lived in NYC, CT, NJ and now SC and in all those states spitting on someone is legally assault. The cops took sides and refused to administer justice and allowed those White rich kids to do what they want.
I’d bet you if I spit on someone in your town I’d get arrested. But then again I’m not White, I’m not a liberal and I don’t flood the money with beer, drug and condom money.
But I’ll take your word for it. You’re so much smarter than me and full of pithy wisdom I want to flesh this out with you. You watched the video to so riddle me this “Ashley”:
1) Why did the kid filming deserve, in your opinion, to get hit. You’re saying they’re all wrong so what did the 14 year old do to deserve being punched in the face?
2) If you were getting attacked on the street in broad daylight, and everyone just watched, do they not bear responsibility for their inaction? Don’t good people have a responsibility to protect mothers and children?
3) I’m taking a look at me now. Ruggedly handsome if I do say so myself. What’s that have to do with a town full of people allowing a family to be beaten in front of them? Are you suggesting I am no better than people who beat up children? Seems racist to me for you to imply that a person who is half-Black is in some way unqualified to criticize violent criminality.
Balls in your court.
Alan:
You’ve been in college five years but you’re crying poor? Really?
How do you support yourself and your poor out of work father? And the poor man, he’s been out of work five years? Damn Bush and his failed economy!
It must be awful living in your dirt shack on the “wrong side of the tracks” walking to school in beat up jeans and you’re prized hand me down leather jacket. Stoic as the rich kids drive past yelling “Greaser!” and the cops eye you menacingly. But you promised your father, and Pony Boy and Dallas (poor Dally) that you’d make something of yourself.
Grow up. And your entire town should be ashamed of the fact that dozens of people saw a family being attacked by a group of miscreants and none of them tried to help. None. There was not a man on the street that day willing to step in and help a woman in a cast who was on the ground being stomped on while two people choked her husband.
If you don’t see how that’s an indictment of your town than you’ve got a lot of living to do. I mean by the gods the cops are charging a family that was attacked and letting the attackers go free. It’s like a bad movie. Like the script for Deliverance II.
They beat up a family in the streets and what offends you is that two of them are faculty? Really? The people who watched and did nothing don’t offend you at all?
Do you really think that Edinboro’s townspeople just “standing around and watching” this happen is any different from how people all over the world would act in the same situation? It’s pretty much established that the average human being, no matter where he/she is born and raised, would rather shy away than to attempt to stop an in-progress fight. I’m certainly not saying that it was right, but we have to be realistic. Also, I doubt even a very small percentage of the townspeople were standing by or driving by right as the incident occurred — it was only about a minute in length! You are making some very exaggerated assumptions, and giving Edinboro a bad name for the acts of a mere few.
Uh, no. The government managed to help pay for his schooling since his job went overseas to China. Got a bachelor’s in 3 years by working his ass off. Don’t ever talk ill of my father again. I like how you automatically assumed that he never found a job since. You’re such an ignoramus it’s unbelievable. I said I enrolled here because of it. And i’m currently in graduate school. Did you get your bachelors degree in temper tantrums?
I already said i’m ashamed of the actions that members of our university took. But your remarks are those of a frustrated twelve year old. It is you sir that needs to grow up.
And they didn’t “go free”. They were charged too. Do some research next time instead of jumping the gun.
Kelly:
I’ve intervened in bad situations before and so have many people I’ve known. Of course many want to shy way but you’re attempting to describe callousness/cowardice as a natural human condition and it isn’t. Where is it “pretty well established” that people don’t get involved? In fact it is the norm for people to get involved and that’s something we have lost in our culture.
Look at the outrage the Kitty Genovese murder caused 40 years ago and you’ll see that then the idea that no one was willing to help a woman being murdered was considered scandalous.
And a minute is a long time Kelly. A very long time. Go outside with your friends one day and have them fight for a minute and count it down for yourself, you’ll see it’s plenty of time to intervene.
Ah, then obviously it is just an example of our current culture.
Rob, first off… I am from a single-parent home and my mom has helped put me and my brother through college, with loans after loans stacking up on each of us. I chose to go to Edinboro for its good program in Criminal Justice and its lowest tution among State schools. I will admit, I do not know if spitting on someone is against the law in Pennsylvania, but reason I do not know is because it is just trivial that the cop would do anything when this whole fiasco had happened. He had more important things to worry about then “spit.” Since you seemed to call the Police Officer out on that.
Secondly, I’m sure the town you live in is so much better compared to Edinboro. HA! This so called “rotten to the core” town hosted a benefit concert for a Make-a-Wish foundation. This town is sooooo rotten, damn them all for doing good. Oh and this benefit was organized BY STUDENTS!! Curses to those students! (I hope you were able to denote my sarcasm there)
Third, I know 3 of the people who posted on here, and they all bring up good points. 1) Unless you have lived here or at least even visited this “rotten to the core” town, you have the right to speak your peace but you should not have the right to bash a whole town for not doing anything which brings me to 2. 2) I’m just so sure that you would’ve been the outstanding citizen and pulled over and gotten out of your car to get involved and tried to stop it. 3) Yes, what has happened was very wrong and I’m not really saying anything about the subject at core. I’m more aggrevated that you feel the need to bash my friends who have commented, and the OVERALL GOOD of this student population that attends Edinboro, and the town itself.
Oh and I hope that you make fun of my family for helping in the assistance of me attending college. It will just show how low a of a human being you really are. I hope you reply back to this, just so I can laugh at you.
Alan:
Congratulate your father on completing Hamburger College in three years, although it was my understanding that it was a three-week program. My mistake.
But more importantly Alan I don’t go to your dad’s new job and tell him how to make the fries. This is Red Alerts country and judging inbred degenerates (like the ones who attempt to minimize the police and D.A. perfidy with lies and nonsense) is what we do.
But to answer your question I got my undergraduate degree in Comparative Religion then I went to Wesleyan to receive my M.L.A. I did minor in Angry Tirades but I felt the Temper Tantrum program had become too political.
I like the Olbermann-esque “and you sir” thrown in there I’m guessing you’re major is either Metaphysics or Logic and Rhetoric. Am I right?
Whatever it is they go easy on you on the research skills, since the people who assaulted the family were “let go” as in not arrested at the scene. No one was. The vet’s went to the police station later to ask why the criminals were not arrested and were threatened with restraint. That however doesn’t embarrass you.
The woman who spit on the man in front of the cop should have been arrested o the spot, but wasn’t. Why is that Alan? And the family acted in self defense during the attack so why are they being charged at all?
Charges being filed against the attackers was a development that happened TODAY and not when I posted the story. However being that it’s a holiday I though maybe I could take some time to myself (and I’m actually out the door in about 15 minutes so I’ll wrap this up) but I guess that’s just not good enough for the hardest working man in Edinboro.
It seems to me that you’re ashamed of too little because the town of Edinboro is treating this veteran shabbily indeed. And that sir is an opinion one need not “jump the gun” to arrive at.
I bid you good night sir! And Happy Walpurgis.
most of the kids that attend edinboro get financial aid and loans in order to pay for schooling. attending edinboro is basically free for me right now because my family has fallen on some hard times recently. if rich kids want to go to school, they would go to somewhere like mercyhurst or gannon. edinboro only costs 12,000 a year to attend, and with about 7k in financial aid a year, that more than covers it for me.
and as for people “stepping in” to help the people being attacked…would you step in? for one, it’s not your place, so stay the hell out.
there have been studies that show one person seeing another person being attacked and 9 times out of 10 they do nothing. its just the way america is. it’s not only edinboro, it’s everywhere dude. nyc, chicago, san diego… watch the news.
Of course it’s a terrible situation. And Rob, you act as though poor kids don’t take out tons of loans to make it through college. You should know better.
But Edinboro, not a town full of deep dark secrets (though we all wish it was) is not full of any of the following:
“The young, peaceful liberal is a myth dreamed up by people who romanticize the self-absorbed, drug-addicted nihilists that were spawned by parents who didn’t love their kids enough to care if they grew up to be decent people. The world is full of people who make comfortable livings off the excesses of people with easy access to cash and no sense of boundaries. Edinboro is an example of both those truths.”
Of course, like any gathering of people on earth EVER, there’s a few bad apples. And there’s a reason that the group of protesters was not very large, nor was it entirely made of Edinboro students. This is clearly a case of stereotyping and generalizations. If one man in New York City is found out to be a “self-absorbed, drug-addicted nihilist”, we simply cannot determine all New Yorkers are this way.
Feel free to condemn the actions of few, but do not assume the same for an entire university.
I agree with Pam. I do not know one person at this university with “easy access to cash.” And you cannot blame the 8,000 people at the university and everyone in the community for what a few people did.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever had the pleasure of walking through downtown Edinboro, but it’s not exactly crowded. If you think the cops are in favor of the students or faculty… I could write you a book on everything they’ve done to me and people I know. The police do not like the students; they like making money off of fining us. So we can’t control what they do.
I think it’s horrible that they didn’t charge the people who assaulted the family. I don’t care who it is or what you’re doing, if you break the law you should be punished. But how often does that happen?
I agree with Pam. I do not know one person at this university with “easy access to cash.” And you cannot blame the 8,000 people at the university and everyone in the community for what a few people did.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever had the pleasure of walking through downtown Edinboro, but it’s not exactly crowded. If you think the cops are in favor of the students or faculty… I could write you a book on everything they’ve done to me and people I know. The police do not like the students; they like making money off of fining us. So we can’t control what they do.
I think it’s horrible that they didn’t charge the people who assaulted the family. I don’t care who it is or what you’re doing, if you break the law you should be punished. But how often does that happen?
hahaha
wow
I love how because of this incident judgment has been passed on Edinboro University students.
How open minded of you. Guess I should just continue being spoiled with the 5 dollars I have to my name 🙂
First off, DO NOT under any circumstances assume i am a racist. That is moronic and rude.
1) Why did the kid filming deserve, in your opinion, to get hit. You’re saying they’re all wrong so what did the 14 year old do to deserve being punched in the face? Maybe you shouldn’t involve kids in a protest….Maybe a 14 year old should be in school at 2 pm on a Wednesday.
2) If you were getting attacked on the street in broad daylight, and everyone just watched, do they not bear responsibility for their inaction? Don’t good people have a responsibility to protect mothers and children?
If i were walking down the street and i got attacked, yes, i would want someone to step in. Now if i were taunting my attacker in anyway, i would hope they let me the person hit me.
3) I’m taking a look at me now. Ruggedly handsome if I do say so myself. What’s that have to do with a town full of people allowing a family to be beaten in front of them? Are you suggesting I am no better than people who beat up children? Seems racist to me for you to imply that a person who is half-Black is in some way unqualified to criticize violent criminality.
I am implying that you are human and what you may have done in these circumstances is just hearsay. I know nothing about you and refuse to pretend that i do. Unfortunately, you have not done the same for me.
Now let me just point out that this family has been known to start fights with peace protesters. Is that fact excusable? Maybe they should have been charged for having a history of violence…Maybe the violence should be left in Iraq.
Rob — this is hysterical! You’ve attracted the teenybopper brigade!
I love how these kids are more concerned with proving that they’re poor than with seeking justice for an Iraqi War vet and his family. Way to pick a worthy cause, people.
Here’s a tip kids: if you have the leisure time to troll the Internet leaving comments on random blogs, you’re probably not going to appear too hard up for cash. You’re not working double shifts to put food on the table; you’re not out collecting aluminum cans and scrap metal to sell; you’re not even studying your butts off 24/7 so you can graduate at the top of your class and pull yourselves up by your bootstraps. Instead, you’re littering the Internet with unimportant nonsense at all hours of the day and night. And I ask you all, to what end?
Like I said, Rob. Hysterical.
Jenn: I have maintained a 4.0 GPA, as a matter of fact. So I do work hard at studying for my classes. I wrote my piece during a break from working on a paper (same as I am now).
We are simply defending ourselves against the outlandish claims that Rob has made about us and our community. I’m sure that someone claiming the same or something equivalent about your lovely little town would anger you as well.
No one here is not unconcerned about how the situation has gone/is going. You are picking and choosing from the bulk of what we have had to say.
Good job, Kelly. I’m glad you’re maintaining a top notch GPA and you should be proud of yourself for that. What you and your peers should not be proud of is that you’ve wasted a small chunk of your life here on this blog.
My point is that whether you agree or disagree with what Rob Taylor has to say about Edinboro, there are far more important things to do with your time than commenting on his blog to defend something completely unimportant. You could be out there ensuring that our war veterans are treated with the respect they deserve.
And yes, I’m choosing to not respond to every point you guys have made because I’m not really interested in everything you have to say. I’m just satisfying my curiosity regarding why people would concern themselves with what a blogger has to say about Edinboro students when they could be doing something important like fighting anti-Semitism or helping victims of domestic violence.
Oy Vey! I ‘ll handle some claims in reverse order but obviously I’ll need to write another post about the Innsmouth like town of Edinboro.
Kelly: What is outlandish about my claims? As a person with a 4.0 you should know at least what outlandish actually means. Students beat up a FAMILY in public, people watched and did nothing. The Police did nothing. The University won’t release statements. The D.A. won’t answer the national media. But a bunch of kids start clucking on MySpace about how they don’t want to be thought of as well off (even though they have the leisure time to comment on blogs from a computer that is surely not a hand me downs) by Red Alerts.
Violence: Not a problem. Police corruption: Meh. A District Attorney’s office that is being secretive about the case: No worries
Rob Taylor calling your town out on shabbily treating a family of patriots. Now that’s outlandish.
And Kelly, I think the grading is on a curve at you school This sentence is not the work of a student with a 4.0:
“No one here is not unconcerned about how the situation has gone/is
going.”
Really Kelly? Why not try putting those through a word-editing program?
Ashley:
You’re claim of the moral equivalence of people of African decent with people who either watch families being beaten up on the street of people who assault children is racism. You’re saying that the low expectations of morality you apply to the White college students, people who are privileged in our society, with that of all Black (or maybe Bi-racial) people.
Perhaps you’ve forgotten the Black man honored by president Bush a couple of years ago who dove in front of an oncoming subway train to rescue a man who fainted. Or the young Muslim who jumped in a fight in Brooklyn where several White college students were attacking Jews on a subway. Or the story of Perry Saturn, whose Pro-Wrestling career was ended when he was shot in the neck saving a woman from two rapists.
He was successful by the way. I’m not saying that any of the people needed to be as heroic as that, just calling the police and telling the combatants that you’ve done so can defuse a stiuation. You’re going out of your way to pretend you really think all people are by nature cowards, and that’s a nihilistic view of humanity.
I’ve called the cops on people plenty, and intervened when necessary. You don’t have to believe me, but surely you can do a little research and see that most people in this country are not as callous as you to suggest.
By the way, that’s not what “hearsay” means. My statements about my behavior are first hand accounts, you may want to believe they’re false, but they aren’t hearsay. Another success for Edinboro’s fabulous educational system.
What is hearsay is the comment that the family is known to start fights. Where’s your sourcing? Let’s see your evidence of that? Are you saying waving a flag, disagreeing with positions and counter protesting is starting a fight? If that were the case are you starting a fight with me?
And are you really saying that the family has a history of violence, yet can provide no evidence of them attacking people? This is the attitude I castigated in my post.
Your points are invalid, and frankly racist. I am morally superior to both the attackers and the White elites who enable them, and being offended by a comparison to them isn’t moronic or rude, it’s normal.
Janae:
If you only have $5 to your name why are you commenting on blogs at 11:30 in the morning instead of going out and looking for a job?
Pam:
Your few bad apples include students and faculty, the police on the scene, the D.A. and the people who watched the assault. It seems like more than a few, seems to me like a whole orchard!
Romanticize poverty all you like, but I took out loans too and the truly impoverished cannot live on undergraduate loans. It isn’t possible.
Like many White liberals you and your cohorts seem offended by the idea that you’re doing O.K. financially. This is a pretension. If all these commenters have the free time to comment here, how poor are they?
And are you really supposing these kids, who attacked a family, aren’t spoiled? You watched the video (I assume) and the girls attacked the family first. They went out of their way to provoke violence and when the couldn’t they attacked. Why?
Because they were raised to not be able to handle criticism, to not be able to truck dissent. They’re fascists in the sense they themselves toss out the word, and you’re minimizing and defending their behavior.
classes?
Are the classes all day Janae, or could you pick up a couple of shifts somewhere? Like I did.
Are you saying your classes are so easy you have time to peruse my blog? Are you literally in class working on an ASUS EEE, reading my blog while your teacher drones on?
Or are you just rolling out of bed after partying all night and getting ready for a 2:00 class? Either way you could easily make time to get a job. Or you could start an online business like Red Alerts!
I’ll show you how for as little as $9.99 a month!
Rob,
I don’t know what you are talking about. I have watched this video several times, and at every juncture the Swartout family chose to make the confrontation physical. Jason Swartout made the first physical altercation when he grabbed Andria Stelmack after she took the sign. Then Carrie Swartout started to shove herself between her husband and Andria. As the shoving escalated, Carrie was the first to start swinging and throwing punches.
As a passerby, were I to intervene, I would subdue the agressor. That being said, couldn’t I be held liable for becoming involved in an altercation where I might have to defend myself from your supposed victim?
Just asking?
Actually there are Good Samaritan laws in most states, and I’m not advocating violence. Just maybe helping the woman who suffered a concussion.
The fact that you could get into trouble for stopping a family being jumped shouldn’t stop people from doing the right thing. It should make you more politically active to get common sense laws on the books.
But as to your claim that the family attacked first. That’s a lie. I just watched it again after your comment and it was clear that the husband went was picking up HIS sign one of the “peace protesters” had thrown on the ground, which she then stood on. He carefully avoided touching her and she got more agitated. Swartout’s wife put herself in between them to protect her husband from what looked like a situation about to escalate (something we married people do) and that’s when the lefties started throwing punches.
The vet only became involved after his wife, who suffered a concussion from the beating and had a cast on at the time, was attacked. Then he was jumped. You’ve perhaps inadvertently (though we know that’s not the case, don’t we) taken a page from the R.C.P. or World Worker Party playbook by spreading around distortions of the story in the hope that people will simply read your comment and not watch the video for themselves.
I’m more and more disgusted with the people defending these cretin each day and I’m beginning to think it wasn’t hyperbole when I said Edinboro was a Innsmouth like town populated by drug addled neo-hippies and the hillbillies who love them. Are you serious?
Tell me why the 14 year old filming deserved to be assaulted? Tell me why a woman with a cast (on her leg I believe) would start a fight? Tell me why you think it’s easier to believe a Veteran would start a fight with four or five people even though his children were there and could be hurt, but impossible for you to admit war protesters are violent. William Ayers be damned!
If you can watch two men hold a man down while their female friends kick a woman in the head in front of their crying children and do nothing you’re a horrible person. That you and the other commenters won’t admit that you are cowardly, and are hiding behind hypotheticals and lies about the family make you worse. I’d respect you if you said “I’m not getting beat up by some high chick for some family” because you’d be being honest at least.
A cowardly degenerate, but honest.
Rob,
I don’t really care what your opinion is of me. More to the point, I don’t know what other groups you are trying to lump me in with. Please be assured that my opinions are my own, and as an objective viewer, I can’t see how anyone could intercede on behalf of one group or the other.
What I can say is that this Vet and his family were everybit as promoting of a fight as the girls who you say are the instigators.
I will make one correction though. The Vet when reteiving his sign was not trying to avoid contact, but rather he grabbed the arm of the girl who had taken it.
As for the woman having a concussion from this altercation, I will have to take your word for that, but this is surely actionable in civil court.
Anyone who watches this video can judge for themselves, but I would still claim that any passerby should be wary if trying to intercede, for you never know where the next punch may be coming from, and who is freind or foe.
Do you really think that if I grabbed something of yours and stood on it and while you picked it up you “grabbed my arm” it would mean you were equally provoking a fight?
No I don’t. Willingness to lay your hands on a person is an escalation of violence (in legal terms this would constitute assault); whereas taking of anothers possessions only deprives them of objects. (Legally speaking this would be theft). One could lead to personal injury. The other, not so much.
My point was to contradict your assertion that, “He carefully avoided touching her and she got more agitated.” We both know this is not true.
I didn’t see him “grabbing” her at all. What I saw was a rather typical set up for a fight, one that happens all the time. Some guys sent their old lady’s over to start a fight and distract the guy so they can jump him.
Readers can decide for themselves who’s right.
I am a student at Edinboro and see a lot of the cover ups the cops take place in. I feel that the University, Landlords, Utilities (water, gas, electric, and cable) , Cops, Mayor, Judge– all have connections with one another in order is get as much money as they can from the college students. It makes me sick that they feel like they have to screw up kids lives so that they can be the highest payed police department in Pennsylvania. My landlords daughter is a junky and broke into apartments, the police did nothing about it because they knew exactly who it was. Hopefully someday, someone will want to make a name for themselves and expose this town of the politics of the locals and the currupt things they do on a daily basis. — Author (feel free to contact me. I have a lawyer that can help)