Peace Groups to Continue

Labor Support & Protest Veto

of Florida Speed Train

Saturday

 

 

Will Join Teacher Rallies Mar. 4th

(Hernando) & 8th

 

 

Coalition Contacts Sheriff Dept. and

Cong. Office Re. Highway

Demonstrations and Meeting w/

Congressman Nugent Re. Issues

 

 

Thursday, Feb. 24, 2011, Weeki Wachee/Spring Hill, Florida (Hernando County): 

 

 

The NatureCoast Coalition for Peace and Justice and the Florida Peace Action Network will demonstrate this Saturday, Feb. 26th, 10 AM, at the Weeki Wachee intersection (SR 50 & US Hwy 19) to support government unions in Wisconsin and Florida; and will also protest Florida Governor Rick Scott’s recent veto of Florida high-speed train funding.

 

 

The two peace groups will also join the teachers union’s planned rally in Hernando County on Friday, March 4^th, as well as a larger metro area demonstration on Tuesday, March 8^th.

 

 

The NatureCoast Coalition for Peace and Justice e-mailed Hernando Sheriff Nienhuis asking for confirmation of the department’s policy that highway protestors remain on the side of roads.  Last Saturday, a counter-protest group, against public unions, occupied the medium on U.S. Highway 19, thereby causing confusion as to the county Sheriff’s policy.  Captain Beetz informed Coalition Chair Brian Moore by phone that the policy still holds and all citizens would have to adhere to the same policy.

 

 

Moore also contacted U.S. Congressman Richard Nugent’s office in Spring Hill and Washington, DC, on behalf of the NatureCoast peace coalition, to request a group meeting between peace group members and the newly elected federal representative, former Hernando Sheriff Richard Nugent, to address the issues of the federal budget, the speed train, public unions and healthcare, among other issues.

 

 

The chair also inquired with Nugent’s office if the peace group would still have to conduct demonstrations outside Nugent’s Spring Hill congressional office, located on a narrow patch of road, on Spring Hill Drive.  

 

 

This difficult arrangement was due to the plaza office’s parking lot restrictions against public demonstrations.  When congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite occupied then her new offices at the Brooksville airport plaza, she refused to allow demonstrators in the parking lot in front of her office.  The demonstrators were relegated to a dangerous spot on the side of the highway, with cars passing by traveling 50 to 50 miles an hour.

 

 

At that time, then Hernando County Sheriff Richard Nugent had his staff make arrangements to warn oncoming traffic of the peace group’s presence with an electronic road sign.  Moore asked Captain Beetz of the Hernando Sheriff’s Department if he could obtain a ruling on that upcoming situation as well.

 

 

Last Saturday, 15 members of the NatureCoast Coalition, and the Florida Peace Action Network, demonstrated on a variety of issues, from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, to the pro-democracy movement in Egypt to the recent liberation in Tunisia to equal rights in Gaza for Palestinians.   The protestors also indicated the groups’ overwhelming support for public workers and their struggles for collective bargaining in the state of Wisconsin.

 

 

The two peace groups also had signs protesting Governor Rick Scott’s rejection of $2.4 billion federal funding of a speed train beginning in the Tampa-Orlando corridor.

 

 

The demonstrators held flags of Egypt and Tunisia, and an upside down American flag in criticism of the United States’ support of a number of dictators in the Middle East at the expense of people’s rights and freedoms, subjecting its citizens to abject poverty as well.  

 

 

[photos of the Feb. 19^th event to follow in separate e-mails]      

 

                                                                                   

 —END—

 

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