"Last weekend Milwaukee found anti-choice extremists crawling throughout the city in celebration of "Paul Hill Days," a weekend of events dedicated to the murderer of an abortion doctor and his 70 year old escort. While their efforts focused primarily on the AMS clinic on Farwell, they held events in downtown Milwaukee as well.

They were not given resistance-free access to the city, however. A number of individuals, including members of Milwaukee ARA, arrived at the clinic before the extremists, donned green vests and prepared to escort people going to the clinic safely through the extremists. This went well throughout the weekend. The anti-choicers made an effort to verbally harass any woman going to the clinic, as well as try to physically put themselves in the woman's path, or at least be right on her back as she walked through. Escorts did their best to guide those going to the clinic around the extremists, as well as put themselves physically between them and the women as a sort of barrier. The extremists also displayed the usual array of shocking signs, many more likely images of miscarriages than abortions. Minor verbal back-and-forth exchanges between escorts and the extremists were common throughout the weekend, all ending without incident. The highly visible police presence no doubt had some part in the level of aggressive behavior throughout the weekend, although at one point an anti-choicer engaged in a heated argument with a police officer. Stories from older escorts made it clear that the anti-choice protesters can be far more violent and harassing. All in all, the escorts did a fine job and made the day easier for those going to the clinic.

The activities of the anti-choicers following their time at the clinic were also met with a counter-presence, although with results not as encouraging as the escort activities. On Friday, the anti-choicers took their signs downtown to Wisconsin Ave and held a minor "celebration" for Paul Hill with balloons and a festive banner. There was also some "street preaching" by one of their number. Two pro-choice individuals held signs countering the anti-choice message across the street and engaged in an argument with one anti-choicer who also turned out to be a white supremacist and "former homosexual." They hung around for 45 minutes before leaving, as the gruesome signs of the anti-choicers were doing more to make them look like idiots and turn people off than a few hand-made countering signs ever could- a number of passers-by made disparaging remarks.

On Saturday, the anti-choice extremists left the clinic for a park down the street and held a "re-enactment" of Paul Hill's attack, which consisted of one man firing an imaginary shotgun while another read from a script, with a few quotes from Paul Hill's trial thrown in. After that they sung a song, released some balloons and then had a parade downtown. The counter-presence here was fairly weak- only mild heckling and booing from pro-choicers. The parade was allowed to proceed without interruption, as was the pizza party that followed.

On the most important level, helping those in to the clinic get their safely, the weekend was a success. The escorts did an excellent job and the number of new individuals involved was inspiring to those who had been doing it for years. Many of them pledged to continue showing up, as the clinic is in constant need of escorts, especially on weekends. In terms of actually confronting and disrupting the actions of the anti-choice extremists, however, the weekend was an almost total failure. The number of those willing to actively confront them was small- fewer than ten. These small numbers were disheartening and discouraged several of those present from wanting to do anything. The rest, feeling even more vulnerable and ineffective with fewer people, couldn't mount much of an opposition single-handedly. This speaks to the importance of organizing prior to events. Most was done through word of mouth and there was little effort to tap in to other organizations or even effectively get out the message that the extremists were coming. It also shows we need to be building stronger ties outside of our narrower causes- of the 20-30 pro-choice escorts, surely some of them would be interested in causing the extremists greater disruption?

Simply escorting clinic patrons through the gauntlet of hate-mongers, while extremely important, is not enough. All bigots gain ground by being allowed the ability to spread their message unchallenged- this is shown by previous engagements of antifa and racists throughout the world. The lessons learned from that struggle must be applied to struggles against other bigots as well. The anti-choice movements radical activist fringe, while on decline since the 1990's, is still a threat and free access to abortion is under extreme threat. It is already nearly destroyed in some areas. This means we need to organize and use the same militant, disrupting and confrontational tactics that have made most racist groups politically obsolete against anti-choice and religious bigots as well. One vehicle for this is certainly Milwaukee ARA- while being fundamentally an anti-racist organization, it also exists to defend the right to choose and oppose all that stands in the way of a classless, free society. Let's stop letting these bigots control the streets and put their message out unopposed and get organized."

http://milwaukee.indymedia.org/en/2007/08/207818.shtml