I'm a girlie communist! - Sheehan in Charlotte

This evening the well known rock star and lightning rod of the peace movement Cindy Sheehan was in Charlotte. She was stopping in town while walking from Atlanta, GA to Washington, DC to demand the impeachment of the president.
While I believe there are more than enough reasons to impeach (way more than there ever were for the impeachment of Clinton), I wasn't really planning on joining the protest until I read in the Charlotte observer this morning that there was also a counter protest planned.
Since I'm always up for a good shouting match and argument I decided to take my hybrid to Bryant Park and join the festivities.
When I first arrived I thought I had run into a gathering of the Hell's Angels (you know, the biker type that drives around South Carolina without a helmet wearing a t-shirt that says on the back "if you can read this the bitch fell off") but it turns out these were the counter protesters.
Since I was carrying my big sign that read "Worst president EVER" , they quickly figured out I wasn't with them.

After making my way through a wall of TV News vans I arrived at My gang.
From a hippie type playing the flute to a woman dressed like a giant peach that said "impeach" on it, these were my peeps. Pretty soon after I had arrived some speeches started, but i was more interested in the counter protesters. They were just 10 feet away from us, so I could take in all the lovely remarks they were shouting. From "traitor" to "communist" and "girlie men" to "your son would be ashamed of you", all the classic comments blew over Me. Ironically the guy that yelled out "girlie men" had bigger breasts than My wife (and she's a C cup), so I'll let you decide who the real girlie man is.
I decided to be the grown up here and just ignore these high class people.
But when they started shouting "USA, USA" I started shouting USA with them. This seemed to confuse the narrow minded so then they just started yelling "booooooooring". I swear all these folks were older than 40 and this wasn't some kind of frat party.
What worried me more was them shouting "allah akbar" and "are you going to have a burka fashion show?". The reason it bothers me is that it exposes what this is really about to them, a war between religions.
You can see some of the pictures I took of this gang in their best Sunday outfit here and here.
The counter protesters then started gloating because they thought Cindy wouldn't show up.
What they didn't know was that Sheehan was just 300 ft away, giving interviews to the press while the counter protesters were busy shouting at us.
Apparently Sheehan feared for her safety and decided not to come closer and give a speech at her own rally. Instead we were all invited at Tally's, an organic grocery store in Charlotte, to meet with Cindy personally there.
My day had been pretty exhausting so I decided to just go home. I might have gone to that grocery store if Bono himself had shown up though.
My "guestimate" is that about 150 protesters were at the rally and about 50 counter protesters.
You can see some pictures of the crowd here, here and here.
I'm looking forward to my next meeting with my biker crew. Until then my "worst president ever" sign is back in my closet.

Update 07/18: The Charlotte Observer has a story about Sheehans visit and a nice slide show with a lot more pictures on their website.

Cross posted from www.lefton49.com