During Palin Speech
CPAC 2012 was my first CPAC event and I found that reporting on the events live to simply be too much for us this time. With CPAC 2012 behind us I now have the time to upload and covert a ton of video and photos to report on. With the close of CPAC 2012 came an incident where Occupy DC protesters lived up to there threats to physically assault CPAC attendees. During the closing key note speech being given by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, several Occupy DC protesters began shouting “we are the 99%” to which they were met with a thunderous “USA, USA, USA, USA,” being chanted by the entire CPAC audience including Sarah Palin. In the process of removing the protesters, I witness one young white man with curly hair and glasses physically resisting Police and having to be removed by force. As Police passed in front of me just past the media riser with the resisting protester his associates lunged into the back row of the audience knocking three CPAC attendees out of their chairs with such force that one woman was knocked completely to the floor with the chair tosses on top of her.
As I went over to assist the attendees who were knocked out of their seats the one woman was in need of physical assistance in getting off the floor and back into her chair. This woman only recently had knee surgery and the force with which she was pushed by the Occupy DC protesters caused her visible pain and discomfort as well as difficulty in being able to stand up. While I understand the desire of bloggers and media to get the video footage of the protesters being removed from the Marriott Ballroom, I believe that the Occupy DC group uses that desire of the media to get away with their criminal assaulting actions. I will give respect to one of the bloggers who when told of the incident as she was returning to the ballroom she did go over to the woman and apologize. The disturbance begins at the 28:00:00 mark.
Friday when the Occupy DC group entered the Marshall ballroom during Mitt Romney’s speech, two attendees had remarked CPAC was demonstrating pure hypocrisy by denying occupy DC protesters their “free speech rights.” Their argument was that they protesters were doing nothing other than standing in front of the screen silently with their message on their shirts and the tape on their mouths. I interviewed these two individuals and asked them what they thought CPAC should have done? I also explained that the organizers of occupy DC had already tweeted, emailed and face-booked their intent to access CPAC and disrupt the event by pulling fire alarms as well as physically assaulting CPAC participants.
Please be patient as I work to convert the file format of the video to allow for uploading.
