PHOTO CREDIT: Evan Casey
Abortion Protest 1
Pro-choice advocates hold signs near a pro-life rally event Tuesday.
Milwaukee’s pro-life and pro-choice showdown is in full swing.
Around 20 pro-choice protesters with the Garbage Fyre Festival held “Honk for Choice” signs on the East Side Tuesday, just blocks from a pro-life rally located near the corner of an abortion service center. The Garbage Fyre Festival is being held in Milwaukee to counter the controversial Operation Save America (OSA) rally which is holding events all across Milwaukee this week.
Around 40 pro-life protesters held graphic signs Tuesday near Affiliated Medical Services on N. Farwell and E. Ogden Ave. Milwaukee Police Department officers created a buffer in front of the abortion center in order to “keep the center open,” according to an MPD supervisor. Anti-abortion protesters were also in front of the Planned Parenthood center in Milwaukee.
Lizz Winstead, founder of the Abortion Access Front (AAF), considers OSA a hate group. OSA is holding demonstrations and training events for hundreds of organizers who are ascending on Milwaukee throughout the week.
“We’re here to drown out those messages and have anybody who feels vulnerable to those messages know that they have supporters,” said Winstead on Tuesday. “Where they go we will go, so when people hear them immediately they can learn from one of the groups in Wisconsin how they can fight back and know that the community is not co-signing on this.”
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Winstead said OSA organizers are anti-women and anti-LGBTQ. When asked about this, Ante Pavkovic, an OSA leader from North Carolina, said that abortion is not safe for women.
“No mother has the right, as far as God is concerned, to pay assassins to murder her own children. No mother has that right,” Pavkovic said in response.
Over 100 activists attended a Garbage Fyre Festival kick-off event Sunday at Red Arrow Park, which included info sessions about the importance of access to abortion. Organizers will be going to Madison Thursday, as OSA organizers plan to go to the state capital to lobby for their message.
You can learn more about Garbage Fyre events in Milwaukee here.
Read more of our coverage of the Garbage Fyre Festival here.
PHOTO CREDIT: Evan Casey
Abortion Protest
MPD officers guard the front of an abortion center in Milwaukee, as pro-life advocates look on.
