Reply #35: Here's a couple of first person accounts from protestors

[RamboLiberal]

JON VANDENBURGH: Sure, Amy, and thanks for having me today. Basically, the protest happened. We found out a couple of days in advance that there would be a fundraiser at the Duquesne Club in Pittsburgh that Jeb Bush would be attending. We decided we would gather a crowd of union members, not just steelworkers, but people from the Transit Workers Union and SEIU and other unions, in the lobby of the Steelworkers Building, which is a few blocks from the Duquesne Club, and march over to the site of the fundraiser. And then, along the way, we sort of fortuitously came across Jeb Bush on a street corner. Somebody said, "Hey, there he is!" And he was just across the street from us, and so we started chanting and yelling at him from across the street. And it seemed that there was going to be this where we were on one side of the street and he was on the other.

And then he blew us a kiss, and that seemed to sort of trigger an anger in our crowd of demonstrators, that then sort of sparked us to head out into traffic and cross the street and start making our way towards him. So he pretty quickly, I think, changed his mind about whether or not he wanted to engage with the crowd, and I wouldn't call it a trot necessarily, but he certainly was uncomfortably moving down the sidewalk with his aides sort of flanking him in the rear, and we were right on his heels. And a couple of members of our group, in fact, were maybe getting in front of him and getting in his face.

And he ducked into a subway station, like you described in the introduction. And we had him pinned up against the wall, really, chanting with signs, a crowd -- I think of about 30 or 40 of us actually went down into this subway station in Pittsburgh and had him pinned against the wall with his staff in a corner, chanting at him. You know, there was certainly no violence on our part, but we were very close and very loud and letting him know in no uncertain terms how we felt about him being in Pittsburgh.

And then, the police showed up and had a key that unlocked a supply closet. And a couple of members of our group got tasered, and they were just about ready to unveil the pepper spray and German shepherds, when we decided, I think, collectively that we would get out of there.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/09/1359202