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- Nov 23, 2004
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Peace activist faces trial after crossing the line of civility
Columbia Tribune
By TONY MESSENGER
Published Sunday, April 24, 2005
Rita Preckshot went to a peace rally, and a fight broke out.
It started out as a typical Wednesday for Preckshot, a 49-year-old who stands about 5-foot-2 and has hearing aids in both ears. She was standing on her normal spot on Providence Road, holding her signs in support of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. For nearly four years now, this has been Preckshot’s life from about 4:15 to about 5:45 in the afternoon once a week. She started her solo troop-support effort to counteract the peace protesters who stand a couple of blocks away at the intersection of Providence and Broadway. The peaceniks hold signs that say things such as “honk for peace” and “end the occupation.”
They outnumber Preckshot every Wednesday, but she stands out there just the same, sometimes drawing another supporter or two to help her effort.
On this particular Wednesday - it was March 16 - her effort seemed to annoy a couple of the protesters. Not satisfied with their own peace protest, a pair of peaceniks grabbed their signs and made their way to Preckshot, who normally stands outside the Bloomers flower shop near Locust Street.
“Two of the guys from the corner walked down with a big sign that read ‘End the occupation,’ ” she remembers. One of them started taking pictures of a Preckshot supporter across the street, she says. “At some point, the other guy starts coming toward me.”
For a diminutive woman, Preckshot can handle herself. She’s a former police officer, and she isn’t easily intimidated. Still, a young man coming at her waving a sign in her face seemed a little aggressive, particularly from somebody supposedly advocating peace.
The man stepped closer. She backed off a step. He shoved a sign in her face, and she backed off once again.
“Don’t touch me!” she told him.
Then, she says, he pushed her.
“He started taunting me and reached out and pushed on my shoulder,” Preckshot says. “Each time he pushed, it got a little harder. When I saw his hand come at me again, I grabbed it. I felt fearful.”
As Preckshot pushed the man’s hand away, “he slugged me right in the face,” she says.
Perhaps "Punch for peace" would have been a more appropriate sign.
The man, Paul Allaire, doesn’t live in Boone County. He lists Arcadia as his home, though he’s a frequent attendee at the Wednesday protests. He has been charged with third-degree misdemeanor assault for his alleged attack on Preckshot.
In that regard, Preckshot has no complaints.
What does confound her, however, is why her weekly adversaries weren’t more helpful when police came to the scene.
After the incident, Preckshot went to a nearby gas station to call the police, and they quickly arrived to take statements.
None of the peace activists, however, would give up Allaire.
That’s what steams Preckshot more than the punch that smashed her glasses and knocked her hearing aid to the ground.
That didn’t stop police from getting their man. A few days after the conflict, Preckshot and her husband, Geoff, were at the local military recruiting office on Broadway when the peaceniks marched by on their Palm Sunday protest. The Preckshots saw Allaire, holding the same "End the occupation" sign. Geoff snapped pictures of the alleged scofflaw while Allaire flipped his middle finger in his general direction. He called police, and they tracked Allaire down.
Apparently, he didn’t go quietly. He also faces a charge of resisting arrest.
"The great irony is the lack of cooperation with the local peace people," Preckshot says.
Mark Haim, head of the Peaceworks group that sponsors the protests, takes umbrage at that remark.
Haim says the police never talked to him. He says he didn’t see anything. He says there are two sides to the story.
"We hold to a strict code of nonviolence," he says. I asked him whether Allaire would be welcome at future protests. He said the issue hasn’t come up.
Allaire’s attorney, Dan Viets, had no comment. Allaire, on the other hand, issued me a two-page statement written on the back of Peace Nook fliers.
"The only reason I even approached this woman was to try to understand where her extreme hatred came from," he says. The flier he says he was putting in Preckshot’s face showed President George W. Bush in a Hitleresque outfit and pose. He calls it a joke.
"I was neither being impolite nor threatening when I was slapped," he writes.
Sure you weren’t, Paul. And your middle finger just popped out of your fist when you walked by the couple four days later. In case you’re wondering what that looks like, I have the pictures.
The case is scheduled for trial May 13.
For her part, Preckshot wants to see justice done.
"If you can’t handle the conflict and the occasional negativity that comes with it, you shouldn’t be in the street," Preckshot says. She hasn’t had much conflict at all in her years standing along a busy road seeking support for troops. Her main concern has been avoiding traffic. In her heart, she believes most of the peace protesters feel the same way, even if they come down on a different side of the ideological spectrum. Still, she’s not willing to let the incident go, Preckshot says.
"I draw the line at getting punched in the face."
I guess there is enough Hypocrisy to go around on both ends of the political spectrum.
Columbia Tribune
By TONY MESSENGER
Published Sunday, April 24, 2005
Rita Preckshot went to a peace rally, and a fight broke out.
It started out as a typical Wednesday for Preckshot, a 49-year-old who stands about 5-foot-2 and has hearing aids in both ears. She was standing on her normal spot on Providence Road, holding her signs in support of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. For nearly four years now, this has been Preckshot’s life from about 4:15 to about 5:45 in the afternoon once a week. She started her solo troop-support effort to counteract the peace protesters who stand a couple of blocks away at the intersection of Providence and Broadway. The peaceniks hold signs that say things such as “honk for peace” and “end the occupation.”
They outnumber Preckshot every Wednesday, but she stands out there just the same, sometimes drawing another supporter or two to help her effort.
On this particular Wednesday - it was March 16 - her effort seemed to annoy a couple of the protesters. Not satisfied with their own peace protest, a pair of peaceniks grabbed their signs and made their way to Preckshot, who normally stands outside the Bloomers flower shop near Locust Street.
“Two of the guys from the corner walked down with a big sign that read ‘End the occupation,’ ” she remembers. One of them started taking pictures of a Preckshot supporter across the street, she says. “At some point, the other guy starts coming toward me.”
For a diminutive woman, Preckshot can handle herself. She’s a former police officer, and she isn’t easily intimidated. Still, a young man coming at her waving a sign in her face seemed a little aggressive, particularly from somebody supposedly advocating peace.
The man stepped closer. She backed off a step. He shoved a sign in her face, and she backed off once again.
“Don’t touch me!” she told him.
Then, she says, he pushed her.
“He started taunting me and reached out and pushed on my shoulder,” Preckshot says. “Each time he pushed, it got a little harder. When I saw his hand come at me again, I grabbed it. I felt fearful.”
As Preckshot pushed the man’s hand away, “he slugged me right in the face,” she says.
Perhaps "Punch for peace" would have been a more appropriate sign.
The man, Paul Allaire, doesn’t live in Boone County. He lists Arcadia as his home, though he’s a frequent attendee at the Wednesday protests. He has been charged with third-degree misdemeanor assault for his alleged attack on Preckshot.
In that regard, Preckshot has no complaints.
What does confound her, however, is why her weekly adversaries weren’t more helpful when police came to the scene.
After the incident, Preckshot went to a nearby gas station to call the police, and they quickly arrived to take statements.
None of the peace activists, however, would give up Allaire.
That’s what steams Preckshot more than the punch that smashed her glasses and knocked her hearing aid to the ground.
That didn’t stop police from getting their man. A few days after the conflict, Preckshot and her husband, Geoff, were at the local military recruiting office on Broadway when the peaceniks marched by on their Palm Sunday protest. The Preckshots saw Allaire, holding the same "End the occupation" sign. Geoff snapped pictures of the alleged scofflaw while Allaire flipped his middle finger in his general direction. He called police, and they tracked Allaire down.
Apparently, he didn’t go quietly. He also faces a charge of resisting arrest.
"The great irony is the lack of cooperation with the local peace people," Preckshot says.
Mark Haim, head of the Peaceworks group that sponsors the protests, takes umbrage at that remark.
Haim says the police never talked to him. He says he didn’t see anything. He says there are two sides to the story.
"We hold to a strict code of nonviolence," he says. I asked him whether Allaire would be welcome at future protests. He said the issue hasn’t come up.
Allaire’s attorney, Dan Viets, had no comment. Allaire, on the other hand, issued me a two-page statement written on the back of Peace Nook fliers.
"The only reason I even approached this woman was to try to understand where her extreme hatred came from," he says. The flier he says he was putting in Preckshot’s face showed President George W. Bush in a Hitleresque outfit and pose. He calls it a joke.
"I was neither being impolite nor threatening when I was slapped," he writes.
Sure you weren’t, Paul. And your middle finger just popped out of your fist when you walked by the couple four days later. In case you’re wondering what that looks like, I have the pictures.
The case is scheduled for trial May 13.
For her part, Preckshot wants to see justice done.
"If you can’t handle the conflict and the occasional negativity that comes with it, you shouldn’t be in the street," Preckshot says. She hasn’t had much conflict at all in her years standing along a busy road seeking support for troops. Her main concern has been avoiding traffic. In her heart, she believes most of the peace protesters feel the same way, even if they come down on a different side of the ideological spectrum. Still, she’s not willing to let the incident go, Preckshot says.
"I draw the line at getting punched in the face."
I guess there is enough Hypocrisy to go around on both ends of the political spectrum.
