However the people living in that town and the funerals that they try to ruin... you or really the people in those towns, can't exactly ignore these people.
Well they arent the first people to protest at soldier's funerals, 99% of the time it comes from the other side of the political platform tho. It goes to show you how remarkably similar radicals from either political side really are.
I know a lot of about how protests work because ive seen so many in downtown Cleveland, and when I was at hopkins in baltimore I would travel to D.C. Im sure Pussenboots can back up what im about to say having lived in the same setting.
Here is the typical outline of a modern protest:
1) the person who is going to lead the protest calls their local news hotline saying there is going to be a huge protest downtown.
2) 2-5 people show up and sit around in galleria B across from the key tower with a bunch of signs.
3) 1 of them goes to Caribou and buys some coffee and biscuits for everyone while they wait.
4) an hour later or so the news van shows up to see how the protest is going.
5) the reporter gets out, sets up his camera and starts filming
6) All 5 of the protesters start going nuts, chanting and yelling about whatever they are protesting that day.
7) random people walking by notice that there is a TV van over there by the protesters and decide to check it out for themselves.
8) Wanting also to get on TV, the people either a) join in the protest; or b) yell back at the protesters getting the "counter-point" of the reporter's story.
9) the camera man uses narrow angle shots to make it appear like there are tons of people there when in reality there are 11 including the camera man and the reporter
10) not wanting to stand in the building jetstream generated from the south winds going through building 55 and Key for too long for fear of messing up his hair, the reporter decides to call it off early because its only going to be a 2 minute segment anyway and he has enough footage.
11) as soon as the news van leaves the protesters calm down and pat themselves on the back giving each other compliments about how amazing they are; and, having been protesting for a grueling 45 minutes they decide its time to go home with a job well done.
*- granted im not talking about orgnized marches, although I did do the million-marijuana march sponsered by NorthCoast Norml, where we all marched and surrounded the justice building. We had a couple police motorcycles escorting us, 9th street got blocked and also that street between onterio and the jake, people lined up to watch us and cheer us on, news vans were everywhere, and even that BITCH jane campbell came out to silently support our cause.
We actually made it marching from The Terminal Tower to the Justice Building, and we did surround it completely. But then Akoustik Houka started playing in the park across the street to support what was supposed to be hours of not letting anyone in or out of the building, and everyone (including me) got distracted and started walking over to the park instead of forging our giant man-chain. Then after about 5 minutes or so, everyone, including the head of Norml who was also the event organizer was at the park dancing and smoking to the mind-blowing sounds of the houka.
but I digress. The point of that story is, when I got home and watched the news coverage (to see if me and my buddies were on TV) they had a completely different story to tell. They talked about how the traffic was stopped for miles and people everywhere had to stop what they were doing to watch this amazing feat of the human spirit joining together to protest a currupt government rivaled only by the million man march. They talked about how people were now sympathetic to our cause because they saw how heroic we all were and backed it up with interviews of people who were clearly bums. And they had an interview with Jane Campbell (also a bum) where she was talking about how 'its clear that this is an issue worth looking into and that the environment is still a huge concern for her' aka. "I have no idea what all those people were doing outside, but they looked like hippies and I need votes" (btw Pussenboots, I dont know if you know this or not, Jane Campbell is now a proffessor at HARVARD, I shit you not.)
The moral of this story is: the media is right 100% of the time, unless there is that rare occurence where you actually were there and saw the story first-hand.
I of course had never heard of them before I stumbled across it on YouTube.
but you still heard about them, and not because they made their own youtube videobiography