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The SEIU, the NPA & Organized, Premeditated Intimidation

Promoted from the diaries by Caleb.

It wasn’t a secret.  They were planning it for weeks.  Their plans were to protest and intimidate.  And, protest and intimidate they did.

They even brag about it on their website:

A little rain didn’t stop thousands of people from gathering on K Street to call out the big bank lobbyists corrupting our democracy.

After two days of confronting the bank lobbyists with National People’s Action, we were joined by our brothers and sisters from the AFL-CIO, Jobs with Justice, MoveOn, and hundreds of supporters from around the country.

However, before astroturfing K street on Monday, they decided to trespass onto the private residential property of two of their targets, one of which happened to be a neighbor of Fortune‘s Nina Easton!

Perhaps the SEIU and NPA thugs did not know she lived there.  They most certainly didn’t know she would write about their trespassing and intimidation this way:

Every journalist loves a peaceful protest-whether it makes news, shakes up a political season, or holds out the possibility of altering history. Then there are the ones that show up on your curb–literally.

Last Sunday, on a peaceful, sun-crisp afternoon, our toddler finally napping upstairs, my front yard exploded with 500 screaming, placard-waving strangers on a mission to intimidate my neighbor, Greg Baer. Baer is deputy general counsel for corporate law at Bank of America (BAC,Fortune 500), a senior executive based in Washington, D.C. And that — in the minds of the organizers at the politically influential Service Employees International Union and a Chicago outfit called National Political Action — makes his family fair game.

Waving signs denouncing bank “greed,” hordes of invaders poured out of 14 school buses, up Baer’s steps, and onto his front porch. As bullhorns rattled with stories of debtor calls and foreclosed homes, Baer’s teenage son Jack — alone in the house — locked himself in the bathroom. “When are they going to leave?” Jack pleaded when I called to check on him.

Baer, on his way home from a Little League game, parked his car around the corner, called the police, and made a quick calculation to leave his younger son behind while he tried to rescue his increasingly distressed teen. He made his way through a din of barked demands and insults from the activists who proudly “outed” him, and slipped through his front door.

“Excuse me,” Baer told his accusers, “I need to get into the house. I have a child who is alone in there and frightened.”

Now this event would accurately be called a “protest” if it were taking place at, say, a bank or the U.S. Capitol. But when hundreds of loud and angry strangers are descending on your family, your children, and your home, a more apt description of this assemblage would be “mob.” Intimidation was the whole point of this exercise, and it worked-even on the police. A trio of officers who belatedly answered our calls confessed a fear that arrests might “incite” these trespassers.

[snip]

In the business community, though, SEIU has a reputation for strong-arm tactics against management, prompting some companies to file suit.

Now those strong-arm tactics, stirred by supposedly free-floating (as opposed to organized) populist rage, have come to the neighborhood curb. Last year it was AIG executives — with protestors met by security guard outside. Now it’s any executive — and they’re on the front stoop. After Baer’s house, the 14 buses left to descend on the nearby residence of Peter Scher, a government relations executive at JPMorgan Chase.

Targeting homes and families seems to put SEIU in the ranks of (now jailed) radical animal-rights activists and the Kansas anti-gay fundamentalists harassing the grieving parents of a dead 20-year-old soldier at his funeral (the Supreme Court has agreed to weigh in on the latter). But that’s not a conversation that SEIU officials want to have.

No, they would rather not have a conversation about their intrusion onto another person’s property, nor do they consider intimidating family members immoral or unlawful.

And, they have no remorse whatsoever.

More than 1,000 visited two bankers at their homes Sunday afternoon to ask for meetings with Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase.

When mobs of goons and thugs trespass onto the private residential property of a private citizen and intimidate their children, and the police refuse to take action, no one should act surprised if a citizen acts to defend his property and his family from the lawless hordes…but, perhaps, that may be what the SEIU, the NPA, and their ilk want.

__________________
“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

For more news and views on today’s unions, go to LaborUnionReport.com.

Cross-posted.

Follow laborunionrpt on Twitter

COMMENTS

  • http://slcliberty.blogivists.com randy streu

    I wonder how they’d feel if we published their residence information and started encouraging folks to show up THERE?

    • trueconservative23

      for many protests, left and right, and shows how the notion of civil debate has gone out the window in this country

      • Tbone

        Please.

        • http://slcliberty.blogivists.com randy streu

          I’d say let ‘im stay. He says stupid crap. It is funny.

        • Caleb Howe

          .. attributed to this individual username. Is there some background info I don’t know?

          • http://slcliberty.blogivists.com randy streu

            Anyone who calls himself “trueconservative” but fails not only to understand property rights but also the first amendment is clearly NOT.

            I believe this user chose the name in a bad-faith effort to gain credibility in our group. but I think his two posts so far prove he’s just a not-particularly-clever moby.

            And I’m not generally one who makes snap judgements… but there are some things that should be elementary to somebody who CLAIMS to be a Conservative.

          • http://slcliberty.blogivists.com randy streu

            nt.

      • Locked and Loaded
      • Achance

        and only in corrupt Blue cities where they know the cops won’t act and where the citizens are likely unarmed. You and your lefty friends wouldn’t want to try to mob someone’s porch in the civilized parts of the nation. But, I’d be happy for you to take a little run at my house; it’d be the very last thing you ever did.

      • http://slcliberty.blogivists.com randy streu

        Unlike Leftist protesters, Conservatives give a crap about the simple things like property rights and rule of law.

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    That lady giving the speech accepts no responsibility for what happened to her. It’s all the bank’s fault. Her son died shortly before the debt collector called. How are those two things related other than she expected sympathy for not paying her debts? His death didn’t have anything to do with her house being foreclosed upon, either.

    Now, I’d give sympathy for her troubles because I’ve done a whole lot of struggling myself the last couple of years and it ain’t been easy and I can’t say I’m out of the water yet. But that doesn’t excuse her own choices and it doesn’t make the bank the bad guy because she chose wrongly.

    To further expand on what randy said above, how would she like it if the banks gathered up a mob to gather at her home with placards about her not paying her debts.

    Now, I’m not excusing the banks because they did do some things in bad faith but that doesn’t absolve her of her part in the blame.

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    It was being moved.

  • itrytobenice

    You notice they don’t show up anywhere there’s likely to be a shotgun coming through the door. Some upscale NY residential neighborhood is safe for them.

    Where I live…not so much. Slugs.

    • Achance

      but cause less overpenetration; you wouldn’t want to bust up your neighbors’ houses while offing zombies. I might have some slugs in the sidesaddle or my pocket in case any individual zombies got to close and had to be stopped.

      • http://seekingliberty.wordpress.com fmaidment

        …in the .45ACP variety.

        Quicker reload when the mag is spent.

        • Achance

          I figure that and a little cover would get me by, but I do have a handgun for close in personal protection. I just prefer not to have to protect myself from things that have gotten very close.

          • http://seekingliberty.wordpress.com fmaidment

            Either one would work just fine…

            Perhaps, with 500 of them on my/your lawn, buckshot would be more appropriate.

          • Achance

            Nothing against handguns, but I don’t like big ones and just prefer my .380 PPK tucked in my belt or in my shoulder holster in case all else fails. I’ve finally practiced enough that I can jack a round into my Mossberg with one hand; seeing and hearing someone do that will crystalize a zombie’s perceptions.

          • http://impudent.blognation.us/blog kyle8

            I bought it right after Bill Clinton took office, as I was concerned that they would outlaw them.

          • http://seekingliberty.wordpress.com fmaidment

            I have two that use that round, though one will probably be used as the down-payment on a Remington semi-auto 12 gauge…

            I do need a SG, after all…

      • nessa
        • http://www.dcworksforus.com Kenny Solomon

          Just the first few close to the source.

          Oh wait……..That was in DC……. Never mind,.,,,,,,, The homeowner would have been arrested for having a loaded firearm in his residence.

          The people trespassing and tossing implied and stated threats would have been given the city’s medal of freedom.

          —- —- —- —- —-

          I’ve got ‘a few’ of the Rem HD shells. VERY interesting items. Quite a large number of pellets inside the different models,

          Nessa, Art, Kyle…… Check into these little gems. I like them quite the muchness.

          Talk soon.

          • Raven

            Filled with a certain mixture of household chemicals that bursts into flame on contact with oxygen.

            …Since they aren’t zombies and don’t need headshot…

          • Raven

            There’s a whole list of “exotic” shells you could use.
            I think starting with the “Flamethrower” would be fun…

            http://www.deltaforce.com/catalog/pg31.html

      • BlueStateSaint

        Winchester just came out with a 12 gauge load that has 3 00-buckshot over a 1-oz. Foster-type slug. Out of a rifled barrel or rifled choke, the buckshot are dispersed, and the slug is decent for 75 yards or so.

        • Achance

          Yankee historians like to point to the fact that a considerable number of Confederate soldiers carried the old ’42 or even earlier smoothbore Springfield musket as some mark of their not being well equipped The ANV never lacked for weapons and was almost fully equipped with P1853 Enfield rifled muskets. Some units that had been in the West had the .54 Lorenz Austrian musket, common in the Western armies, and some had purchased/captured Union Springfield ’61s. However, some men preferred the old smoothbore which they loaded with buckshot and a ball for close in work. Especially in the Overland campaign, there was a lot of fighting on earthworks and at close quarters, a musket that was essentially a 12 guage shotgun came in pretty handy.

          • Doc Holliday

            but our artillery was not as good as theirs.

          • Doc Holliday

            I am not saying I was there :)

          • Achance
          • Doc Holliday

            I guess you are kind of like Patton on those issues :) I just WISH I was, and I thought I was weird lol.

          • Achance

            but I was so steeped in that stuff as a kid that I sometimes feel like I was there. My g/grandmother was a girl of eight or nine when Sherman’s troops showed up in the yard in December of ’64, this hard on the heels of her father, my gg/grandfather, having been killed at The Crater. I heard her stories first hand as a young boy and heard them endlessly repeated by by grandmother until I left home to go to college. My g/grandfather from my mother’s surname side fought in most of the ANV’s battles and my grandparents on that side had heard all his stories and would tell them for any who’d listen. Other sides of the family were less into it, but the closets were full of ghosts when I was a kid and some of them still call on me from time to time.

          • Doc Holliday

            I know what the war history means to you, you always write interesting stuff about it and your family. I also have been a Civil War buff since I was a kid. I have a book collection that includes pamphlets and other civil war paraphernalia I picked up from visiting Civil War sites all over the South while traveling as a youngster with my family. Many of these items are long out of print. To this day I still enjoy locating off the beaten track sites and I often feel the presence of those men. I am not saying they are ghosts, but their deeds will live forever.

    • cwilson

      We have a Castle law…

      OR, maybe — just maybe — the powers that be in the SEIU would try this in FL. I mean, do you think they really CARE if one of their rent-a-mobbers is, er, injured in the course of this “activity”. I’m thinking the TOP goons might view an incident like that as…good PR.

  • Achance

    without my permission. And anyone who wants to try can see if they can find 12 good and true to convict me.

  • bobojake
  • redneck_hippie

    in order. Yelling at bank executives. These drones are what put all of us in this mess in the first place. Somebody should give these scumbags a ticket to Greece. I hear they’ve been “fighting” for their rights over there, too.

  • bk

    like having highly paid professionals lining up more than a dozen school buses full of recruits. I’d imagine a fair number of the protesters were getting paid as well.

    That’s all fine and dandy free speech, whereas “outing” Valerie Plame was worthy of the death penalty.

    • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

      that was the other point I wanted to make … SCHOOL BUSES…

      Can we say government sanctioned and funded? Federal or state taxes funded those buses, hence illegal and not just for the intimidation factor?

      By the time I got around to posting I’d forgotten that little snippet (was trying to recc’ while it was being moved to the FP).

      • http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

        Most school buses are privately owned these days, I think, and leased out to school districts. Certainly the case in my area; don’t know about D.C. In that case, the union most likely just contracted with the vendor for buses what weren’t in use.

        On the other hand, if these were publicly owned, that’s a horse of a different color that should be investigated – except that the guardians of the public trust are paramours of the perps.

        But maybe some enterprising blogger could get to the bottom of this.

  • http://seekingliberty.wordpress.com fmaidment

    [from the video]

    “Will we stop?”

    “NO!”

    “Will we take back our democracy?”

    “YEAHHHH!!!”

    – -

    Um, we don’t live in a democracy. We live in a Constitutional Representative Republic.

    Democracy means “rule of the majority”. We have lots of stuff in our Constitution to prevent over rule of the majority. We have that because the Founding Fathers knew that the rights of the minority could be easily trampled by a majority in a pure democracy.

    If these people want to “take back [their] democracy,” I welcome them to move back to Europe, where democracy is in full swing. They’re also welcome to the economic turmoil, the joblessness and the over-regulation of their personal lives.

    But then, that’s what the unions want here, anyway, isn’t it?

  • raginpatriot

    Gee, is it just me, or are the SEIU purple-shirts increasingly coming to resemble Mussolini’s Black Shirts and Hitler’s Brown Shirts?

    I wonder what the Obama-SEIU counterpart of Kristallnacht is going to be, and how soon?

    • http://impudent.blognation.us/blog kyle8

      That is because it was from exactly the same people that the brown and black shirts were made from.

      What we call modern liberalism is really just a version of fascism. If you read the book “liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg you will see that there was really no difference in the economic plan, or the political tactics.

      It was and always has been a conspiracy of the following: 1)Rich elitists, 2)Corporate whores, 3)Academic wannabees, 4)ethnic and other special interest groups, and 5) the unions.

      They are trying to loot and steal and control everyone else, and will commit any crime, tell any lie, and try anything to get their way.

    • docinpa

      will be very difficult when most of the proposed victims are much more heavily armed than the Brown/Purple Shirt in question

  • Jack_Savage

    From the article:

    “Of course, HuffPost readers responding to the coverage assumed that Baer was an evil former Bush official. He’s not. A lifelong Democrat, Baer worked for the Clinton Treasury Department, and his wife, Shirley Sagawa, author of the book The American Way to Change and a former adviser to Hillary Clinton, is a prominent national service advocate.”

    They created and propped up these goons. They deserve every trampled plant they got.

    But Jack! But Jack! We must decry these incidents every time they happen! No matter to whom!

    Nope. Not when they happen to their fellow travelers.

    • Cheryl

      but you saved me the time.

      You reap what you sow and all that. I couldn’t agree with you more.

    • http://seekingliberty.wordpress.com fmaidment

      …but I surely don’t approve of the NPA, SEIU and others violating his private property and intimidating him and his family.

      And I certainly wouldn’t want them to think that our nonchalance in the face of one of their own getting this treatment was some kind of implied permission to do it to one of us. What they did was immoral and, if it’s not, should be illegal.

      They didn’t have permission to be on his door step hosting a protest, but there they were. That should have gotten them each a ticket, if not carted off to jail.

      • Jack_Savage

        The police, who were called and were on the scene, didn’t have the stones to make an arrest out of fear of “inciting vioence”. If there was ever a reason to carry, that was it. They won’t move a muscle to protect anyone, but they will write a hell of a report.

        So help me, I would have shot my way to the front door then back out to the street if one of my kids was in that house. THAT would have to pass for nonchalance on my part.

    • http://slcliberty.blogivists.com randy streu

      but this is how we gain converts.

      When their fellow travelers kick them in the teeth, we denounce the beaters and try to get their teeth back.

      We’re the good guys, Jack: our support must be for the unjustly treated. We, unlike the democrats, don’t have the luxury of selective justice.

      • Jack_Savage

        Trying to get these Dems to see the light would be like trying to convert Bin Laden to Christianity.

        We may be the good guys, but I am tired of fighting with one hand tied behind my back. I say we stand guard around our own for once and to hell with the ones who are wallowing in the cesspool they created. When they look at us and think “I’m with them. They fight.”, THEN they are welcome to join us.

        Sure, I’ll point out these goons, call for an investigation of the police and fight them whenever I can, but I won’t spend a dime of my money or a minute of my time worrying about some Democrats that got caught in the crossfire.

        Sorry. I understand your point, and wish I could be that level-headed.

        • http://slcliberty.blogivists.com randy streu

          and I sympathize.

          It’s just, we can’t be checking the voter registration of everyone hurt by these goons. THAT would take more time and effort than simply carrying the fight to wherever the goons open fire.

          • Jack_Savage

            I will fight these bastards wherever they are, and if a Democrat benefits, then I have no problem with that.

            Apparently the occupants of that house found that they were fresh out of friends.

  • JadedByPolitics

    behavior has been accepted by Democrats as part of their support but this too is coming to an end. The Democrats and those who support them have decided to become ANIMALS and the rest of US AMERICANS who live like decent human beings are going to throw them ALL to the curb!

  • http://pocketchangeproductions.net/ anotherindyfilmguy

    If the local police are afraid to protect their own citizens and the “Justice” department will not crack down on this kind of behavior then it is time to start shooting the mobs and their organizers when they try to go onto peoples residences to intimidate them. What is to stop the mob from deciding to vandalize everything and kill the occupants?

    This is just beyond the pale of what is acceptable and if the O’s administration does nothing about then he should be impeached etc.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    This is war.

    • IJB

      …Until these guys get violent at a Tea Party rally. It’s inevitable.

  • pamela1631

    Come to mind in dealing with unruly crowds.

    Worked for the Navy in 1958 Beirut Lebanon dealing with a murderous mob on the waterfront.

    They have gone over the proverbial line and think themselves unstoppable and above the law.

    We need The New Untouchables to deal with the lawlessness of these brigands.

    Follow the money $$$$$

  • http://www.scragged.com petrarch

    Obviously not in New York. But if they tried this in Texas, wouldn’t the homeowner have had the legal right to blow them all away, at least the ones that were on his lawn?