Anti-choice fanatics repulsed during Milwaukee showdown

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Milwaukee clinic defenders link arms to keep clinics open.

SOCIALISTACTION AUGUST 1992 5 and ROSIE CRUZ MILWAUKEE, Wis.— "Move 'Em Out of Milwaukee" was the rallying cry for clinic defenders mobilizing to keep clinics open here. The Milwaukee Clinic Protection Coalition coordinated the defense efforts of NOW, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and many other groups and individuals. Some, like a local Unitarian church congregation, became active clinic defenders for the first time.

Three groups, Lambs for Christ, Missionaries to the Pre-born, and Youth for America-who targeted Milwaukee for a six-week campaign to close down abortion clinics-were encouraged by several factors. These included the large Roman Catholic population, the closing of a clinic last year, (the Bread and Roses clinic), and, most important, the encouragement of city District Attorney McCann, who promised in advance not to prosecute the anti-choice commandos.

Their planned tactics included using children, some as young as seven or eight years old, to block access to the clinics. The Rev. Joseph Forman, a leader of Lambs for Christ most recently famous for thrusting a fetus under the nose of Governor Clinton at the Democratic Convention in New York, participated. They came to Milwaukee expecting that there would be no organized response.

But local pro-choice supporters had learned from the Buffalo, N.Y., experience. Leaders of Buffalo United for Choice were brought in to help organize a serious defense. Organizers called for 1000 clinic defenders a day to answer the anti-choice fanatics, and they have gotter, that response from pro-choice supporters around the country since June 16.

Beginning at 5 a.m., defenders were deployed around the clinics, several rows deep. They stayed there for as many hours as necessary to ensure that every patient got into every clinic that was open. A telephone network and hotline kept defenders informed on where they were needed.

"Hey, hey, ho, ho, We kicked you out of Buffalo, Hey, hey, hee, hee, We'll kick you out of Milwaukee," was a popular chant. Defenders also used songs to counter the 900th chorus of "Amazing Grace," using pro-choice verses from the civil rights song "We Shall Not Be Moved."

Clearly the most effective discouragement to the clinic attackers was their almost complete failure to get anywhere near the clinics to block doors or harass patients.

The role of the police and the press is worth noting. As mentioned above, the city District Attorney had promised in advance that no arrests would be made. An injunction was sought against the antichoice forces, not by the clinics, but by the police department, to prevent, among other things, on-the-job back injuries to policemen!

Initially, when the police showed up, they were cheered by clinic defenders. But their intervention g ave the clinic blockaders an opening. On the first day, the police arrived at the Brown Deer Clinic and cleared out the clinic defenders, opening the way for the anti-choice forces to block the doors. As Stephen Glynn, an attorney supporting the Clinic Protection Coalition stated, "If they let us do our job, this wouldn't have happened."

At another clinic, the following day, police saw-horse barricades replaced triplelines of clinic defenders—opening another breach. Clinic defenders were truly perplexed, to say the least, as to why the police, on the basis of their injunction, were actually aiding the clinic blockaders.

But the pressure of the mobilization of massive numbers of defenders forced the police to adopt different tactics. When these reporters returned Saturday, June 20, the police were imitating clinic defenders, deploying shoulder-to-shoulder defense, or standing inside the clinic defenders' own lines of defense. This recalled a description, in The New York Times of the Buffalo clinic defense, where "the pro-choice lines were so solid, the police had to ask permission to cross.

In the first week, 326 anti-abortion blockaders were arrested, 118 of them children. The parents of these children, who cynically used them as clinic blockaders, were not cited until the campaign was into its second week.

What really made the difference in MilTina Beacock/Sockalist Action waukee was not the police or the arrests. It was the fact that the anti-choice forces were consistently out-mobilized. The clinics stayed open and the blockaders were reduced to sitting in the streets. Frustrated at the clinic doors, the anti-choice groups began to discuss other tactics, like picketing doctors' homes.

All those interested in defending the right to abortion have to be ready to mobilize at the clinics. This is the decisive element of this fight.

Anti-choice forces are boasting that they will attract 10,000 supporters to Milwaukee on Aug. 8. While this is one more example of their frequently wild exaggerations, all pro-choice partisans in the area are being asked to turn out on that day. For information, call the Milwaukee Clinic Protection Coalition, (414) 283-1100.

One unintended effect of the Supreme Court's latest assault on women's right to abortion is the new wave of successful clinic defense organizing.

Less than one year after the Wichita, Kan., attacks—where Operation Rescue (OR) succeeded in denying women access to clinicspro-choice organizers in Louisiana, a state famous for recently having adopted a draconian anti-abortion law, succeeded in keeping abortion services available and functioning. They successfully withstood a large-scale attack by OR, the Lambs of Christ, and hundreds of other anti-choice fanatics in a mid-July siege in Baton Rouge.

Ann Schiffman, Director of Louisiana Choice NARAL [National Abortion Rights Action League], told Socialist Action how it was done. A coalition that included groups such as NOW, League of Women Voters, and NARAL, was able to mobilize "well over a thousand" pro-choice defenders. Some 1500 defenders were trained in preparation for Operation Rescue's pre-announced attack.

The anti-abortion zealots numbered 2000 during their largest event, according to Schiffman. This was a pre-dawn 5 a.m. "ominous" parade of candle-toting anti-choice demonstrators singing "Our God is an Awesome God." However, not all 2000 were prepared to storm the clinic.

"Operation Rescue never made it to the clinic property," said Schiffman. She explained how the coalition had enlisted the aid of the city in erecting an eightfoot fence around the clinic. The assailants were unable to scale the barrier during their several attempts to storm the Delta Women's Clinic.

Clinic patients were escorted in for abortion services by pro-choice escorts and by police, including the Baton Rouge chief of police. Apparently, pro-choice organizers, like Schiffman, were able to convince the city authorities that Operation Rescue's criminal activities would cost the city far more hardship if they failed to act against them than if they prepared to stop them.

Abortion rights fighters should take heart at the Louisiana victory. If the woman-haters can be stopped there (and in 100 degree heat!), they can be stopped wherever else they raise their ugly heads.

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New rise seen in movement to defend abortion clinics