Furious protest stops Tancredo's UNC speech
Posted on Tuesday, April 14 @ 23:51:49 EDT
Topic: Crimes Scenes illegal immigration laws
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 CHAPEL HILL - UNC-CH police released pepper
spray and threatened to use a Taser on student protesters Tuesday
evening when a crowd disrupted a speech by former Colorado congressman
Tom Tancredo opposing in-state tuition benefits to unauthorized
immigrants.
Hundreds of protesters converged on Bingham Hall, shouting
profanities and accusations of racism while Tancredo and the student
who introduced him tried to speak. Minutes into the speech, a protester
pounded a window of the classroom until the glass shattered, prompting
Tancredo to flee and campus police to shut down the event.
Tancredo was brought to campus by a UNC chapter of Youth for
Western Civilization, a national organization of students who oppose
mass immigration, multiculturalism and affirmative action.
illegal immigration, violence, Tom Tancredo, UNC Chapel Hill, protesters, smashed windows, ALIPAC
April 15, 2009
By Jesse James DeConto, Staff Writer Comment on this story
Raleigh News and Observer
Before the event, campus security removed two
women who delayed Tancredo's speech by stretching a 12-foot banner
across the front of the classroom. It read, “No dialogue with hate.”
Police escorted the women into the hallway, amid more than 30
protesters who clashed with the officers trying to keep them out of the
overcrowded classroom. After police released pepper spray and
threatened the crowd with a Taser, the protesters gathered outside
Bingham Hall.
Police spokesman Randy Young said the pepper spray was “broadcast”
to clear the hallway. He said officers' use of force was under
investigation by the department.
Inside the classroom, several student protesters screamed curses at
Tancredo and Riley Matheson, president of the UNC-Chapel Hill chapter
of Youth for Western Civilization.
“This is the free speech crowd, right?” Tancredo joked.
UNC-CH geography professor Alpha Cravey joined protesters in chanting the names of Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus.
But campus visitors and some faculty members in the capacity crowd of 150 urged the students to let Tancredo speak.
“We are the children of immigrants, and this concerns us,” said
junior Lizette Lopez, 22, vice president of the Carolina Hispanic
Association. “So we would at least like to hear what he has to say if
you want to hear what we have to say.”
The protesters relented, and Tancredo began to speak, describing
failed state and federal legislation aimed at providing in-state
tuition benefits for undocumented immigrants.
Two women stretched out another banner, first along one of the
aisles and then right in front of Tancredo. Tancredo grabbed the middle
of the banner and tried to pull it away from one of the girls. “You
don't want to hear what I have to say because you don't agree with me,”
he said.
The sound of breaking glass from behind a window shade interrupted the tug-of-war.
Tancredo was escorted from the room by campus police.
About 200 protesters reconvened outside the building. “We shut him
down; no racists in our town,” they shouted. “Yes, racists, we will
fight, we know where you sleep at night!”
Reached by phone after his departure, Tancredo said he had never
been silenced by protesters, even at American University where 400 of
them recently attended one of his speeches.
“We're very sorry that former Congressman Tancredo wasn't able to
speak,” Chancellor Holden Thorp said in a prepared statement. “We pride
ourselves on being a place where all points of view can be expressed
and heard, so I'm disappointed that didn't happen tonight. I think our
Public Safety officers appropriately handled a difficult situation.”
Police spokesman Randy Young said he couldn't recall student protesters shutting down another campus event.
“Fascists are fascists,” Tancredo said. “Their actions were
probably the best speech I could ever give. They are what's wrong with
America today. … When all you can do is yell epithets, that means you
are intellectually bankrupt.”
UNC graduate student Tyler Oakley, who had organized the protest,
said he regretted the broken window but not silencing Tancredo. “He was
not able to practice his hate speech,” said Oakley. “You have to
respect the right of people to assemble and collectively speak.”
Lopez said she had mixed emotions about how the event ended.
“We were more interested in an intellectual conversation instead of
a shouting match,” she said. “Ironically, the people that are trying to
get our voices heard silenced us.”
Matheson, who formed UNC-YWC this year with seven other
conservative students, said he knew Tancredo would be controversial but
he never expected this kind of response.
“I didn't expect them to literally chase him out of the building,” he said.
Staff writer Samuel Spies contributed to this report.
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Protesters Stop Speech
Police use pepper spray, undirected Tasers at protest of Tancredo talk
Laura Hoxworth, Staff Writer
Published: Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Student protestors enter Bingham Hall on Tuesday evening to protest an
anti-immigration speech given by former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, who was
brought to campus by Youth for Western Civilization. Protestors
included members of Students for a Democratic Society and Feminist
Students United.
2protest415
Protestors were cleared from Bingham Hall when police used pepper
spray and the threat of Tasers after students interrupted Tancredo’s
lecture. Police, who followed the students along their protest march
from the Pit, refused to allow more protestors to enter Bingham after
the lecture hall was full.
Police used pepper spray to disperse crowds of protestors in
Bingham Hall on Tuesday outside the room where former congressman Tom
Tancredo was scheduled to speak on immigration but was forced to leave.
Campus police also discharged a Taser, sending sparks in an arc
they said was meant to disperse the crowd, not to subdue an individual
protestor.
Tancredo, a former Republican U.S. Representative from Colorado, a
former presidential candidate and an outspoken critic of immigration,
was brought to UNC by the new student organization Youth for Western
Civilization.
About 150 people gathered in Bingham Hall auditorium, and many more
protestors gathered in the hallway after police declared the room full
and blocked the doorway.
“I’m here because I represent UNC-Chapel Hill and I don’t support
racism or fascism in the institution in which I am an educator,”
graduate student Jason Bowers said.
Riley Matheson, president of Youth for Western Civilization,
introduced Tancredo amid hissing, booing and shouts of “racist” and
“white supremacist.”
“This is an organization that seeks to promote Western
civilization,” Matheson said at the event. “We believe that our
civilization is under attack from liberal forces.”
Matheson said his organization supports people from every race
participating in Western civilization, but that they must be properly
assimilated to American culture first.
“No matter how many times you chant racist, that doesn’t make it true,” he said to the crowd.
After Tancredo entered the room, protesters kept him from speaking
by shouting insults and holding a sign declaring “no dialogue with
hate” in front of his face. Tancredo waited calmly while protestors
held the sign and chanted.
Two protestors holding the sign in front of Tancredo were escorted
into the hallway by police, where the Taser and pepper spray were used.
“The cops were trying to tell them to back up,” said first-year
student Chris Sparks, who was in the hallway with the protestors. “It
was a good 10 or 15 minutes that they would not back up. The cops did
what they had to.”
Randy Young, spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, said
officers made a “broadcast transmission of pepper spray” to disperse
protestors after they tried to force their way into the room.
After protestors exited the hallway, Tancredo spoke for about two
minutes before a protestor outside the building banged on a window,
shattering the glass.
Tancredo was escorted out of the room by police after he deemed the situation too volatile, Young said.
Protestors then exited the building and gathered outside.
“Free speech was destroyed today at
Chapel Hill by the breaking of glass and violence,” said William Gheen,
a former UNC student and president of Americans for Legal Immigration.
“If this is the type of academic atmosphere being cultivated here, taxpayers need to start pulling their f---ing money.”
Sophomore Adrian Lopez, a member of the Carolina Hispanic
Organization, attended the speech to protest Tancredo’s view, but said
he did not agree with how the protest was handled.
“I feel very embarrassed about how the student body went about doing this,” Lopez said. “It got completely out of control.”
No arrests were made, but there will be an investigation into criminal activity by protestors and the use of force by officers.
DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE WITH OUR ONLINE ACTIVISTS AND SEE THE VIDEOS OF THE VIOLENCE AT THIS LINK...
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