The Real Joe Turner

by activism Friday, Jul. 15, 2005 at 5:06 PM

Joe Turner has a violent past.

On July 8, the Ventura County Star published this information about Joe Turner's past:

"In 1996, he pleaded guilty to disturbing the peace in Riverside. He said the charges were filed after he got into an argument at a demonstration with someone carrying a Mexican flag."

Now I know where I've seen him before. It was not just an "argument," and he was not just "disturbing the peace". I know, because I was there. Joe Turner, among other things, is a liar about his own past.

On April 1, 1996, Riverside Sheriff's Deputies were videotaped beating immigrants. On April 17, anti-Latino racists came from all over SoCal to Riverside City Hall, to voice their support for the beating. I was there. I have never seen such hate-filled people in my life. I went there with two Latino friends from La Resistencia to counterdemonstrate. One had a poster which I drew, showing a Native American pointing and saying, "Hey, White Man, where's your green card?" and the other, his son, had a Mexican flag.

We were all alone, in a crowd of several hundred haters -- it was the opposite of Baldwin Park 2005. Actually, it was worse. We fully intended to make our point peacefully, but the hatemongers surrounding us did not want to be peaceful. (They're so brave in great numbers, aren't they??? Thank God Baldwin Park reversed the equation!!!!)

They tried to grab the poster and partially ripped it, and a young tough guy came running up to assault my friend with the flag. He didn't succeed in tearing down the flag, but he did leave me with a bloody scrape on my elbow that lasted for weeks. This violent young thug was arrested, and according to the article above, it was Joe Turner!

Later on, I showed my bleeding wound to some of the racists, and one "nice" old lady snarled, "You deserved it." Maybe this is the same old lady who, nine years later, would claim she was hit by a water bottle.

I bet she "deserved" it, just like I "deserved" what happened to me.

As a result of this experience, I have NO sympathy whatsoever for anti-immigrant, anti-Latino racists, and nobody can tell me that they are NOT racist, potentially violent, anti-American, anti-free speech thugs.

If Baldwin Park had been reversed and it was 10-to-1 on their side, you damn BET they would indulge in violence -- just like Joe Turner did violence to me on that day in 1996. Their whole raison d'etre is anti-people, anti-human, so they don't care if people get hurt.

Now everybody definitely knows that Joe Turner is a violent, racist thug who hates American civil liberties and free speech, just like the Brownshirts in Germany in the '20's.

(I can't believe these whiny pricks have the fucking nerve to complain about people "shouting" at them, and claim that it's a "riot". They can dish it out, but they can't take it.)