Tuesday, July 09, 2019

From The Winter Palace (Oops White House) Archives-When The Cossacks Kept The Peace-Of The Graveyard


From The Winter Palace (Oops White House) Archives-When The Cossacks Kept The Peace-Of The Graveyard 


By Brad Fox, Junior

Nobody wanted to touch this archival piece with a ten-foot pole. Not because anybody was afraid that they might be taken away in the dead of night although that is a greater possibility now that previously given the police-military state like atmosphere displayed on July 4th 2019 in front of Lincoln Memorial but because nobody had anything but bad or hurtful memories from being within a mile of the White House, or even in Washington in the old days when one only went to that town to bait the bear, so to speak. That is anybody who was old enough to have been around when this publication (in hard copy form) first started to spin news and commentary and sent guys, mostly guys but a few bravo women too, to Washington not only to cover the actions but get knee -deep in them (with arrests to show for their efforts and expense reimbursements.)

So it was left to a younger guy, me, not tarred by any direct experience but plenty of “war” stories from my father Brad, Senior. According to him this photograph (since verified as correct) was taken in the Spring, March or 2011 when the Obama, get this the Obama administration, he of the Nobel Peace Prize and such, when some veterans my father was connected with, and acted in this case as press agent for, decided to handcuff themselves to the White House fence (a legal no-no, okay)to oppose yet another escalation in troop levels in Afghanistan after short drawdown.

The Obama administration like all previous ones and subsequently too since we are in never-ending war mode in Afghanistan and elsewhere did not take kindly to this very active form of protest by a band of what by any definition were winter soldiers in the best sense of that word, akin to those who saw what their duty was in Valley Forge days. This day though maybe because of the early season hot spell, the Cossacks, the horse coppers who are part of every round-up of protesters decided to press the issue at least among those not tied to the fences. As in the days of the Russian Revolution that Leon Trotsky, a participant, so eloquently wrote some people had to scramble under the horses to get away (since they were not committed to arrest). Some things never change and as Trotsky also pointed out the role of the coppers, on foot, in wagons, or on horse is the same. Also the same is the hard fact that reporter Brad Fox, Senior was one of some one hundred plus protesters, arrested, booked, and fined that day. Thanks, dad, you did good.
  




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