Local TV Coverage of the BattleCry Rally and Counter-Protest:
KRON TV: http://www.kron.com/Global/category.asp?C=84890&nav=menu130_2
KCBS TV: http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_069200559.html
KTVU TV: http://www.ktvu.com/video/11216731/index.html & http://www.ktvu.com/news/11216001/detail.html
Report from a World Can’t Wait organizer on BattleCry’s appearance in San Francisco 3/9/07:
When BattleCry came to town
last spring, the counter-presence mobilized by World Can’t Wait and other
progressive groups made a lot of news, and media-driven controversy. BattleCry comes to San Francisco on a very ugly mission. SF is known to be one of the most socially
tolerant, politically liberal cities in the world – and BattleCry is no
innocent teenage prayer group. Its
founder Ron Luce runs with the most powerful and highly connected Christian
fascists from Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell to Chuck Colson. On the surface BattleCry sports a glitzy
façade – rock concerts, ebullient teens saved from drugs and depression by
religious conversion. But what BattleCry
actually helps spread across today’s political landscape is a most narrow and
hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism.
Their stadium shows and literature promote bigotry and violence against
gay people, patriarchy, and an aggressive support of war and blind obedience to
authority.
Statement from Sunsara BattleCry is not a Having been inside their Through language laced Those leading the While the U.S. pursues an illegal and murderous war in Iraq that has claimed an estimated 650,000 While the scourge of the At a time when bigotry and At a time when science is In their insistence that The patriarchy, ignorance, Young people today — This is the only way to A morality that fosters A morality that respects A morality that cherishes A morality determined to A morality that values Ignoring the huge shifts, Rising up to stop all Thank you for being here No Theocracy! No Unjust Wars! The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!!
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Last week BattleCry brought
back its two-day rock concert show, once again advertising that they would pack
over 20,000 teens (bussed in from all over the western states) into San Francisco’s baseball
stadium. And again this year, World
Can’t Wait, Bay Area Coalition on Reproductive Rights (BACORR), and Not In Our
Name (Bay Area) jointly called for a press conference and a counter-rally to
stand up against BattleCry’s hateful and dangerous agenda.
BattleCry again launched its
revival with a press stunt on the steps of SF’s City Hall (chosen last year
because same sex marriages had been performed there, so their prayers could
“heal” this “sin.”). And so a few hours
before their arrival, we held a full press conference. An impressive and diverse array of voices
from the Bay Area community was heard.
As the cameras rolled and the speakers came to the podium, people lined
the steps holding up ten huge posters displaying WCW’s Fact Sheet [insert
link].
Emceed by World Can’t Wait,
and led off by World Can’t Wait young activist Giovanni Jackson reading Sunsara
Taylor’s statement, the press conference presented strong support messages from
SF Mayor Gavin Newsom and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin. Another message came from Supervisor Tom
Ammiano who had us read out the Supervisors” 2006 City Resolution Condemning
BattleCry (emphasizing that “This resolution still stands!”)
All the speakers represented
powerfully:
Pat Gray, a retired SF
teacher and past member of the Executive Board of the San Francisco teachers” unionLarry Brinkin, Senior
Manager at the Human Rights Commission of the City and County of San Francisco
Howard Wallace, the Vice
President of the San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO (representing 100,000
members)Two Sisters of Perpetual
IndulgenceEan, a young Christian
member of WCWJean Davis – Bay Area
Coalition on Rreproductive RightsRev. Max Lynn from St. John’s Presbyterian
(Berkeley)Dr. Marlene Winell, a
psychologist with a Berkeley
private practice specializing in treatment of psychological damage from
fundamentalist religious indoctrinationDon Havis and Mark Thomas,
American Atheists (SF and National)Chuck Cannon, a member of
the Freedom From Religion Foundation whose case challenging Bush’s faith based
initiatives is now before the US Supreme CourtGeorge Johnson from Veterans
for Peace, Chapter 69 and chaplain of the Bob Basker American Legion Post
315.
The press conference ended
with a biting performance of “God Squad,” an original song skewering the
hypocrisy of the Christian Right by activist singer-songwriter Jesse Dyen.
As our press conference ended
and BattleCry busses began delivering about 500 teens to the steps, the giant
Facts About BattleCry signs were held up, and a huge green banner was unfurled
stretching down the steet: “YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving each day closer to a
theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will
rule.” A 14-foot-tall prison cell
with a BattleCry-style sign labeling it “Ron Luce’s Future” began rolling
slowly back and forth with a prisoner in an orange jumpsuit peering out from
its bars, holding a sign: “I’m Gay – I got 25 years.” The cell was hauled by bobble-head masked
figures of Bush, Robertson, and Falwell.
We know that the BattleCry
youth have no idea what they”re actually being manipulated by. So as the busses unloaded, and the BattleCry
chaperones passed out the medieval red banners and signs and herded them into
order awaiting the arrival of Ron Luce, young people from World Can’t Wait took
turns on the bullhorn. They called
across the police lines, reaching out to the BattleCry teens, challenging them
with the truth: Do you really want to live in a future where a woman who has an
abortion is a criminal? Where gay people
are criminals? Do you believe your
leaders when they tell you George Bush was chosen to be president by God? Do you know that Ron Luce supports an
illegitimate war that has already killed 665,000 innocent civilians?
When Ron Luce himself took
the steps, the scene did get a lot noisier, on both sides. Luce is a charlatan. His slick media rap is that he’s high on
Christian love, helping kids escape the horrors of the immoral world that trap
them in despair: drugs, suicide, alcoholism, depression. (Luce also tucks into this package other evils
such as homosexuality, secular music, and critical thinking.) He wraps this message around a core political
mission. BattleCry is training young
people to think and act in service of a
very right-wing package of ignorance, self-satisified bigotry, and
American chauvinism (a most deadly brew, as history has shown before). And so, during his demagogic showman’s sermon,
protestors chanted directly at him: “A narrow and hateful brand of Christian
fundamentalism!” and : “650,000 dead!
What About the War?” This last
chant especially had a powerful, visible effect on many of the BattleCry youth
– how many of them may have relatives in the military already? How many of them have conflicted feelings
about the war, no matter what their pastors tell them about God being on the
side of the U.S.?
We have more to report –
from on-the-ground conversations we had with these youth, and from seeing what
went on in that stadium all Friday night and the following day.
And there was a whole battle
in itself that has been going on in the mass media coverage. The major news outlets have bent over
backwards to ignore and cover-up the real story at the heart of the BattleCry
visit. To see their reports, this is
just more born-again evangelism, just a little blip in the diverse world of
religious freedom and “tolerance” for all even if BattleCry may be a little
nutty or even anti-homosexuality (one reporter had the gall to excuse that as
“not the same as being anti-gay people”).
The SF Chronicle has run three articles already and the worst fault it
can find with Luce is that he rails against commercialism but BattleCry hoodies
cost $40. TV stories fix their cameras
on outré costumes (the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a flamboyant satirical
performance art group, delivered a heart-rending report on a teenage suicide
victim of Christian fundamentalism). Yet
the cameras ignore the presence of courageous civic leaders and clergy. So it’s been a real fight to try to get the
substance of our message out, and as of the Sunday morning local talk shows, it
seems that fight is continuing”. But we”ll have to post more about that
later”..
Below is the call to opposed BattleCry from the San Francisco chapter of World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime:
If allow BattleCry’s message
of violence and bigotry to broadcast un-protested from the heart of San Francisco – what are
we saying to justice-loving people everywhere or to the victims of intolerance?
“When Fascism comes to America it will
be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”– Sinclair Lewis
THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT IS PREACHING
AN ANTI-CHOICE ANTI-GAY RADICAL CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM ON THE STEPS OF SF’s
CITY HALL & IN SF’s BALLPARK. “BattleCry for a Generation” is back to hold
a 2nd annual mega-revival rally at ATT/SBC Park March 9 through March 10 –
kicking off with a City Hall protest.
Join the World Can’t Wait –
Drive Out The Bush Regime!, Bay Area Coalition for Reproductive Rights (BACORR),
Not In Our Name (Bay Area) and other progressive organizations to show the
world that BattleCry’s intolerance is resisted in San Francisco. Everyone is welcome
– of all creeds, faiths, and communities – who wants to stand up and say;
“Religion is one thing, but
Theocracy is another the Christian Right is Wrong!”
Friday, March 9,
San
Francisco City Hall on the steps facing Civic Center
Plaza12:00 – 2:00 PM Permitted
protest, rally and press conference3:00 – 5:00 PM
Counter-protest: We Will Not Tolerate Intolerance!
BattleCry is no innocent
teenage prayer group. BattleCry’s extreme politics are violent and reactionary.
BattleCry founder and frontman Ron Luce works directly with Pat Robertson (who blamed
911 on feminists, homosexuals, pagans, abortionists, etc.), Franklin Graham,
and Jerry Falwell. The Texas-based BattleCry is a multi-million dollar
operation that preaches unthinking obedience to government and calls for this
country to be run as a theocracy. That American theocracy would be governed by
a literalist interpretation of the Christian Bible replacing the secular rule
of law in every sphere of life. And Luce promotes the vision that a
fundamentalist Christian America should rule the world.
Why it’s wrong to not
denounce BattleCry: If we in the Bay Area don’t confront the Christian Right
with energetic protest allowing BattleCry’s message of violence and bigotry to
broadcast unprotested from the heart of San Francisco – what are we saying to
justice-loving people in Alabama, Idaho, Texas or to the victims of intolerance
past, present and future anywhere else in the country or the world?
That which you will not
resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn – or be forced – to accept… Acting
in this way, we join with and give support and heart to people all over the globe
who so urgently need and want this
regime to be stopped.-from “The Call” to Drive
Out The Bush Regime
The BattleCry information Kit:
For more information or to
request press interviews with event spokespeople, call the World Can’t Wait
(415) 864-5153 or email: sf@worldcantwait.org