Kesher Talk

The end of an era - in New York anyway. The lone Bush campaign table on the streets of New York displayed its wares for the last time on Saturday. But only because Ray is making his annual winter trip to Florida and plans to set it up there until the election. Go Ray!

Saturday was Yom Kippur, so I was not helping out at the table. But on a beautiful hot sunny Sunday - after a morning field trip with my shul to buy my lulav and etrog on the street on the Lower East Side - I made my way crosstown through Chinatown and the City Hall area to the marina restaurant near Ground Zero for a farewell brunch with 20 other campaign table volunteers. It was especially gratifying to find out that 3 people there had found out about Ray's table from this blog! Here is Ray's report:

A young G.I. was one of the first visitors to our table Saturday morning. On leave from Iraq, Boyd was visiting the Big Apple from his home state of California with his father and sister. He’s due to return to Iraq today, Tuesday. He’s stationed two hours south of Baghdad, where he says people are generally friendly to our troops and are grateful for what we are trying to do. Many soldiers are so committed to the good work we are doing in Iraq that they don’t want to leave even after they have an opportunity to do so. The insurgency involves a small minority which is no match for our military, Boyd says, and the real problem is political: we are being too nice to the enemy. “All we need is two bombs,” is how he put it.

Boyd is one face of America: respectful, patriotic, optimistic, firm, positive, wanting to serve and help. As he was trying to share his experiences in Iraq with us, the other face of America stood no more than five feet away and tried to drown him out with invective – in the name of free speech, of course. A left-over hippie from the 1960s, this man had been thrown into a state of raging disbelief over our table. Our very existence discombobulated him. “This is New York, you don’t belong here,” he bellowed, “go home.” The sight of people eager to buy our stuff seemed to cause him to writhe in pain: “how can you give them money,” he moaned. “If it wasn’t for the ACLU, you wouldn’t be here, you would be arrested.” The enormity of the self-deception, that we owe our freedom to left-wing lawyers, not to soldiers like Boyd.

Besides Boyd and his family, we had lots of other wonderful Bush supporters at the table Saturday. An off duty policeman sightseeing with his daughter showed us the back of his shield, where he had affixed a small picture of Bush and Cheney. A rather hefty woman from Bush’s hometown of Midland put on a cap and a whole bunch of buttons she had bought, saying she was going to wear them all day as she traveled around the city (she had “Don’t Mess with Texas” written all over her). Natasha, a young Haitian refugee from Miami, simply told us she loved Bush. Contrary to the Sharptons and Charlie Rangels, she assured us that Bush has a lot of support in the Haitian community. We had another military family with a son stationed in Georgia who might be sent to Iraq. And a woman who had just come from Union Square was ecstatic to see us. She reported that what is rapidly becoming known as Red Square (today’s Washington Square Park), was an orgy of left-wing hatred, with a full array of signs, T-shirts and other gear replete with four- letter words, swastikas and other nuanced expressions of anti-Bush passion.

Our last day out with the table also ended on a high note sales-wise: it was our second best day since we started our campaign. We also had our most volunteers ever, with 18 people showing up. Our thanks to Elizabeth (who brought little Lola along); Doug and his mother Arlene; Judy; Kevin and Lesley; Connie and her brother Bill and friend Liz; Peter and his children Juliet and Collin; Julia and her husband Lev; Liivi (the Belle of Estonia Returns), and Reynolds. Special thanks to Laverne who, faithful to the Gipper’s injunction above, volunteered each and every day we did the table, stayed from opening to closing and helped me lug the gear back to my house.

We wrapped up our Bush/Cheney campaign on Sunday with a terrific outdoor brunch in Battery Park. We were all delighted to have in our company 22 volunteers, friends and family: Rona and her husband Mark; Connie, Bill and Liz; Laverne; Doug and Arlene; Peter, Noelle, Juliet and Collin; Judith; Peggy and her husband Sam; Judy; Gerry; Debra, her husband David and their son Max; and Ray’s wife, Pat. One of the young waitresses at the restaurant asked Bill for his “No Flip-Flops in the White House” button and pinned it right on her black apron, to the delight of the group (hopefully she still has a job). On our way out a man approached us to ask where he could get the buttons we were wearing (he had looked “everywhere”), so we gave him some of what we had left.

I’m off to Florida Saturday to campaign for Bush. I would like to encourage everyone to wear your Bush/Cheney gear every time you can – by doing this, we are bearing personal witness by our presence, our conduct and our demeanor, of our support for Bush and Cheney. As we have learned doing our table, this presence, this personal witness, is sorely needed and has a very salutary impact. This is the very least we can do. I would also urge you to do anything else you can to continue to campaign for Bush/Cheney up to Election Day. . . . I also carry extra buttons with me wherever I go, as people ask me in the street where they can get the button I’m wearing. For those who may want to purchase a few buttons for this purpose, these are the main companies I got my stuff from. . .

http://www.georgewbushstore.com
http://www.republicangear.com
http://www.shopmetrospy.com
http://www.authenticgop.com
http://www.iheartgwb.com
http://www.freedomhq.com

Regards,
Ray Agostini

You heard what the man said.

posted by Judith @ 9/28/2004 06:17:11 PM