Posted By:
MAF Blogger Danny
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Dec 12
9:00 AM
Fort Bragg / Fayetteville, NC

I’m on the bus heading towards Raleigh and we are riding high after a great rally in Fayetteville. When we pulled up I was really excited to see a gigantic flag that someone had brought out, the base of which had to be held down by a truck, which had been pulled up so that the driver’s side tire secured the base and kept the flag from falling over.

It’s a good thing too, because it was very, very windy today and I kept getting blown away or pushed back while trying to hold a sign.

We had several radio stations come, ranging from country, to Christian music, and they had representatives at the rally helping out and just talking with all our staff. There was also a few cameras going around, one was obviously from TV and then another one looked like either an amateur grade camera or something for a newspaper reporter. In any case it was good to have that much support from print, airwaves, and tv media. We did not have a massive crowd but we had a good number of supporters which was fine because the lot we were rallying was just big enough for our bus and a dozen or so other cars, but didn’t have a lot of room past that. Our bus took up probably 6 or 7 parking slots on its own ha ha.

At the conclusion of the rally we had a flight of Patriot Guard Riders show up to escort us to Raleigh! This is awesome, these guys are the best. I don’t know if I have ever written much about who the PGRs are but if you have not heard of them you should definitely check them out at www.patriotguard.org.

I think the coolest thing that the Patriot Guard Riders do is protect the military families when they have to bury their son or daughter. There is a horrible group of people out there, you may have heard of them, called the Westboro Babtist Church who are basically a very unchristian, religious cult that delights in going to military funerals proclaiming that god uses our dead military as punishment for permitting homosexuality in our country. They picket and protest the military funerals with awful messages and signs that say “God hates fags” “Thank God for IEDs” and “America is Doomed”. These wackos go and make thing 100 time worse for families on the toughest days of their lives…when they bury their son or daughter, who has given up his or her life for the rest of us.

To keep these religious fanatics away from the military families, the PGRs ride together to military funerals and line up to separate and protect the military families and the Westboro people. The PGRs also go to the military funerals to honor the dead even if the families do not need protection from WBC or other groups.