Boston University senior Lianne Gillooly sat handcuffed in the back of a police wagon, while her friend sat next to her unconscious and bleeding from his right eye socket.
Earlier that day, the Iraq Veterans Against the War marched with Gillooly outside the presidential debate at Hofstra University to ask Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who has made veteran support a point of pride in his campaign, what he will do to improve veteran affairs. They also aimed to ask Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama about his claim that the Iraq War is illegal and, if so, whether he would support service members who refuse to participate in the war.
‘The best-case scenario that we thought was going to happen was representatives from each of their camps were going to come down and give us an answer,’ she said. ‘But we were just completely denied anything.’
Gillooly said she went to the debates in Hempstead, N.Y.,’ on Oct. 15 after becoming good friends with a number of IVAW members through her antiwar activism, which over the years has taken her onstage with philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky, backstage with Rage Against the Machine and, most recently, behind bars in a holding cell.
Gillooly, a College of Arts and Sciences senior who is taking a semester off, was one of the three civilians and six veterans who were willing to cross police barricades and risk arrest in Hempstead. Six additional protesters were arrested after the veterans marched two by two toward the David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex entrance, where the debate was held.
Police handcuffed Army Sgt. Nick Morgan and took him to the curb where police on horseback knocked him on the ground and trampled on his face, giving him a concussion and fracturing his cheekbone, Gillooly said.
Police put Morgan in the wagon before bringing him to Nassau University Medical Center. Then, they brought him back to the holding cell, according to the official police statement.
‘We’re like, ‘Did they give you painkillers? Anything?” Gillooly said. ‘And he’s like, ‘They gave me a Motrin.’ The MRI picture [shows] two chunks of his face are cracked in.’
Their collective court date is scheduled for Nov. 10, the birthday of the Marine Corps and the day before Veteran’s Day.
Officials are charging the self-proclaimed ‘Hempstead 15’ with ‘disorderly conduct after allegedly walking around police barricades, into vehicular traffic lanes and failing to comply with Police Officers’ directives,’ according to the Nassau County Police Department news release.
‘I Support the Hempstead 15,’ a Facebook group started by Army Sgts. Kristofer Goldsmith and Matthis Chiroux, has grown to more than 3,600 members. Both Facebook administrators were arrested at the debate.
Gillooly said she entered the antiwar movement to make the American public return to its alleged original ideals ‘-‘- ideals she thinks were never realized.
‘Those ideals were never ever practiced as they were preached,’ she said. ‘They said freedom, equality of man ‘-‘- and they had slaves.
‘I love the purity of our ideals,’ she said. ‘I think that we have strayed so far from our ideals that they’re just an enigma, just a phrase used to justify what we do.’