COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: War Protests: General
Military recruiting spawns competing protests
PAT ARNEY, Press of Atlantic City
September 15, 2005
Protesters and counterprotesters demonstrated on opposite sides of Tilton Road on Wednesday over the issue of military recruiting.About 20 protesters from the Coalition for Peace and Justice, a regional peace-activist group, walked up and down the north side of the street, in front of the Hollywood Video store at the intersection with Cresson Avenue , for about 45 minutes, beginning about 5 p.m..
They carried placards with such messages as "Stop the War!" and "Our Guard Belongs in New Orleans not Baghdad ."
"We got a very positive response from people driving by," Norm Cohen, the group's executive director, said of honks from passing motorists. "I think, clearly, the catastrophe in New Orleans has gotten people to think about where our troops should be, especially the National Guard."
The counterprotesters - Somers Point resident Timothy Greene, 44, his wife, Becky, and their three daughters, Olivia, 8, Natalie, 6, and Lucy, 3 - walked up and down the south side of Tilton Road .
Natalie carried a sign that read "Future Marine." Lucy waved a U.S. flag.
"We're just a family," said Greene, who said he read about the peace group's planned protest in an area newspaper.
Greene said he thought it horrible that the peace group planned to protest the people who are fighting to protect the peace group's right to protest.
"If nobody was in the U.S. Marine Corps, they wouldn't be able to do what they're doing," he said.
Greene said he gave a placard to a sixth person who walked up and joined his group. That protester, a man who declined to identify himself, said, "I was going by and I don't like what's going on across the street." He carried a sign that read "Marines Equal Freedom."
Cohen said his group planned to walk across Tilton Road to the Armed Forces Career Center , a military recruitment office at the back of the Mainland Professional Center shopping complex, at about 5:45 p.m. to deliver a letter.
Cohen said the letter urges recruiters to place counter-recruitment materials in their offices, "to provide a balanced picture for any prospective enlistee, and for the recruiters to lessen their presence at area high schools."
When a reporter told Marine Capt. John Brown, a spokesman at the recruiting center, that the protesters planned to deliver a letter his office, he said, "It's their right to protest. Freedom of speech, that's what we fight to protect. It's not our intention to receive a letter from them."
Brown said he had an address to give the group, to which they could mail the letter, but the military's position is that its recruiting office is for its promotional material.
Brown said four people are based at the recruiting office, but he is stationed at Naval Weapon Station Earle in Monmouth County .
The peace group did not deliver its letter Wednesday. Northfield police Sgt. Paul Newman said the property manager asked that Cohen not come onto the property, and Cohen said he would comply with the request.
Cohen, however, said he might try to deliver the letter by himself today.
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