Hate signage left over from Tuesday's counter-protest at the capitol...
I tore-ass down to the big pro-immigration march Tuesday, where I made like a Scud missle for the United for a Sovereign America counter-protest, consisting of 50-to-100 dillweeds led by local Kia-dealer and Hispanic-panic-purveyor Rusty Childress. Childress and his screwy crew were parked on a patch of grass right outside the capitol, across from where the massive 15,000-person strong protest had assembled in Wesley Bolin Plaza. It was a production day at the Phoenix New Times office, so I arrived kinda late, but Childress' prejudiced peeps were still out there agitatin', so I figured I'd agitate the agitators as best I could, in my tres friendly Southern-boy way, of course.
A lot of them recognized me and my wing man, New Times clubs editor Benjamin Leatherman from our outings to their various events, including ones where I'd accompanied Mexican flag-burner and pagan bull dyke Laine Lawless (aka, Roberta Dill). Indeed, almost as soon as I'd arrived at the tent where the immigrant bashers were handing out apple pie and vanilla (natch) ice cream to those who signed their petitions, none other than squint-eyed Gabby Hayes-lookalike Buffalo Rick Galeener scrambled up to me, pointed at my chest and screamed at the top of his hoarse voice, "Liar! Liar! This man is a liaaaaaaaar!"
When I asked Rick, a pathetic old coot whose waking hours are spent going from one anti-immigrant demo to another, what the eff he was talking about, he indicated he was referring to the Laine Lawless cover story I did a few months back titled "Burn, Baby, Burn!" where he's mentioned briefly as being at a demonstration Lawless organized in Glendale. When I asked him what I specifically lied about, he said he couldn't tell me because he didn't have the article in front of him. For the rest of the time I was there, he'd grumble and shout at me from a distance, just like that old prospector in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
I approached Rusty Childress, who declined to talk to me even though I did my best to bait him. I asked if Hermann Goering-wannabe and white power proponent J.T. Ready -- who's a bud of Childress' -- had shown up, and he shook his head no. As he noshed from a plate of apple pie a la mode, I slyly stated that I'd heard he and his pals at Childress Auto Mall had destroyed a New Times newspaper rack (as is reported in this week's Bird column). I detected a hint of a smile and a gleam in his eye, as he said, "I'm not going to be interviewed by you." He then told me to have some pie if I wanted, and skedaddled. For the rest of the time I was there, whenever I tried to approach the peddler of Korean cars, he scurried away. Childress is older than in the pics I posted recently from his Web site of his hedonist outings, minus the cheesy Village People mustache he had back then. You wouldn't look twice at the guy now. He's stultifyingly average.
Someone gave me a plate of pie, and I soon dumped it without taking a bite. (Hey, maybe they hacked a looogie in it.) Most of the folks there wouldn't talk to me. (Hmmm, I don't know why.) Before I ditched the grub, one of the younger doods, a close-cropped guy I recall from a Lawless event, said, "I figured you'd be eating the pie." Uh, a reference to my globular circumference, I suppose. Later, I saw his photo posted by this activist with the Web handle "godless" on Arizona Indymedia, under "Neo-Nazis welcomed by anti-immigrant protesters in Phoenix." In this AZ Indymedia post, the author draws conclusions that I'm not prepared to make at this time. (Not saying he's right or wrong.) However, I'd opine that one individual pictured therein bears a striking resemblance to a local musician and member of an AZ neo-Nazi National Vanguard unit.
One old guy who wouldn't give me his name commented, when challenged about portly white nationalist J.T. Ready being at Childress' regular Thursday-night anti-immigrant confabs, that "sometimes a man with a good mind goes over the edge." (Good mind?) Anna Gaines, the group's token anti-illegal-Hispanic Hispanic, denied J.T. was a member of their organization, though Ready had been present and had spoken at their meetings in the past. Moreover, Ready's tight with Childress, or was so. Childress gave $370 to Ready's failed 2006 campaign for a Mesa City Council seat, and helped him get a job at the Scottsdale nightclub e4, in which Childress is an investor, according to e4 manager Aron Mezo, also a contributor to the supremacist's campaign.
Gaines, an intelligent, well-spoken lady, asserted that she was "American first, Hispanic second." She explained that she came to this country with "strong moral values," but doesn't seem to believe that new immigrants share these. She complained that a lot of those coming here are criminals, and that the illegal immigration via Arizona's Sonoran border constitutes an "invasion," which is completely absurd. I guess you could use "invasion" as a metaphor, but these nuts are using the term literally to ramp up their reactionary rhetoric. She also argued that the 20 million illegal immigrants present in the U.S. will "self-deport" as soon as we begin enforcing existing laws -- I guess, rounding everybody up, like they used to do escaped slaves prior to the Civil War.
While I was talking to Ms. Gaines, Buffalo Rick kept shouting non-sequiturs from a ways away, and Gaines defended the Vietnam vet by saying, "He's pretty frustrated, he suffered a lot. He's got that leg missing ---" (Rick usually gets around with the help of a couple of canes.)
"Yeah," I interrupted. "But the Mexicans didn't shoot it off."
As the wing-nuts were decamping, breaking down their tables and putting their wack-ass signage back in their pickups, this one 50-something dorkus made a point of bumping into me as I was attempting to bid Buffalo Rick a fond farewell. So I walked down to the guy, and asked him if he'd like to try bumping into me again. He called me a fat-ass in a voice reminiscent of Mr. Anderson on Beavis and Butt-head. I called him an asshole. He warned I better watch out 'cause he's a "mean sonofabitch." I told him to bring it on, and he might've, 'cept one of his dunderheaded tribe stood between us. When I asked another guy, jokingly, why they didn't execute citizens' arrests against all of the "illegals" protesting that day, this same peacemaker started to sing "La-la--la-la-la...." in order to drown me out. You know, like you probably did to someone you didn't like in third grade.
Anyway, that's my report from the front. Gaines at one point told me that anybody could speak at one of the Childress' anti-Mex shindigs, even moi. I called up Childress today and told him if I was extended the invite, I would most certainly attend. He seemed surprised by the offer and told me he would put it to his members. We'll see what happens. If they ask me to come by, I'll post it. That way folks'll know when I was last seen alive.
