PHOTO CREDIT: Evan Casey
Marie Khan.
The pro-choice vs. pro-life showdown made its way to Milwaukee last week, as a counter-protest group made sure its voice was heard during a large national anti-abortion rally that descended upon Milwaukee for seven days of protesting and training.
Approximately 300 activists with the Garbage Fyre Festival, organized by Abortion Access Front, hosted live events that included comedy, burlesque and music. They also held daily counter-protest events that included holding signs and passing out informational pamphlets about the positives of access to abortion. The event was called Garbage Fyre Fest as a “cheeky nod to the infamously failed, ridiculous Fyre Festival.”
This comes as Operation Save America (OSA), a national anti-abortion organization, chose to hold their national rally in Milwaukee. Lizz Winstead, founder of the Abortion Access Front (AAF), considers OSA a hate group. “We’re here to drown out those messages and have anybody who feels vulnerable to those messages know that they have supporters,” said Winstead. “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.”
Groups of around 50 pro-life protesters held graphic signs near Affiliated Medical Services on North Farwell and East Ogden avenues throughout the week. Pro-life protesters were also in front of the Planned Parenthood center in the Third Ward. However, clinic escorts and the police worked to keep these centers open. Milwaukee Police Department officers created a buffer in front of Affiliated Medical Services in order to “keep the center open,” according to an MPD supervisor. Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Clinic Access Project (NCAP) reported that all abortion clinics in the city remained open and served all the patients that came into the abortion center.
“At Affiliated Medical Services, all patients were seen and comprehensive reproductive health care including abortion was safely maintained thanks to the dedication of hundreds of local clinic escorts,” said duVergne Gaines, director of the NCAP. The NCAP works to keep abortion clinics open and to bring violent anti-abortion extremists to justice.
“Having entities like us, having escorts that are there to help people, having folks that are there to diffuse protesters is incredibly helpful,” said Marie Khan, the operations manager with Abortion Access Front. “It’s almost more helpful to get those people (pro-life protesters) away from the clinic so it can just be a normal place of business.”
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More than 100 attended a Garbage Fyre Festival kick-off event Sunday, July 14, at Red Arrow Park, which included info sessions about the importance of access to abortion. Protesters also went to Madison on Thursday to drown out OSA during a large rally they held at the state capitol. On the other hand, anti-choice protesters held training events in Milwaukee and were set up with signs in Downtown as well.Garbage Fyre protesters said OSA organizers are anti-women and anti-LGBTQ in addition to being anti-choice. 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.
“Bodily autonomy, freedom to worship and freedom to decide who you love should be valued and honored in Wisconsin and America. When it comes to access to reproductive care including abortion, anything less than full autonomy is reproductive coercion and government control over someone’s control of self-determination,” Winstead said in response.
