I’m so excited I can barely contain myself. The Lord is going to blind me!
Last night was a fairly calm night, as Phil and those with him were the only ones hanging around. The exception was Edwin, who vanished soon after we arrived. With Phil was Cesar, a preacher I’d seen around only a few times.
He came up to us immediately as we approached the post office corner, and started in on his usual shtick. “I love you. You are my sister,” he said, indicating me, “and you are my brother.” He waved his hand at Kazz. “I love the both of you. But you need to respect us.”
He rambled on in the vein of “respect” for a while, and his main premise seemed to be that we would be bringing the wrath of God down on us if we continued to do what we do. He ignored me when I told him that while I respected their right to preach what they wanted to preach, I didn’t have to respect what they were saying. Also, the very fact that he seemed to be threatening us with God’s wrath was not terribly “respectful” of him to do.
“I can make you blind,” he said, looking at me. “For a little while, you will be blind.” I took this again as somewhat threatening, until he assured me that he had no need of touching me. He had only to speak to God, telling him that I was a child of Satan and to reveal himself to me. He did this, at my request, and he told me that the blindness would start some time the next day.
Read more...
Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Gadfly
1 Comment »
This Friday night was sparse with us-lings, since many were at the SFTS end-of-year party. Kazz, Spyral, Ezra, and I all dropped in on the revelry; Spyral and Ezra decided to stick around while Kazz and I went out to Mill.
An unpleasant little surprise awaited us upon our arrival. The Door were out, in all their screaming, shouting, spooky glory. I had never yet seen them, only heard tales of their insane antics and occasional violent behavior. They were all I could have hoped for and more on this night. A large number of them were dressed in black bodysuits, dancing and wailing with skeleton-painted faces as a mad preacher howled above their writhing bodies. Some waved ghostly gauze banners with images of what may have been demons on them. A reasonably large crowd looked on, and Omar and Jim stood not too far from where we set up the speaker.
Read more...
Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Gadfly
1 Comment »
Apologies that this took so long to post.
Mill Ave. wasn’t quite crawling with preachers this Saturday, which isn’t to say there weren’t any. Since it’s usually pretty devoid of them on Saturday nights now, there seemed to be a comparatively large amount. Al and his cronies were handing out their “I.Q. Test” tracts by the Light Rail, and we kept an eye on them for a while. Then word came that the dreaded Jeremiah was on on the corner of 5th St.
A cameraman was out to document Jeremiah’s incredible preaching abilities, and we set up our equipment nearby. Joe and Kyle were already there, and Rocco turned up a while after. We were bothered for a while by the adversarial cameraman, who intimated that we were cowards for not “preaching” our beliefs on our own, instead of merely reacting to the street preachers. He didn’t seem to understand when we tried to explain to him that we aren’t really fond of annoying people without cause.
Read more...
Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Gadfly
3 Comments »
The lit cross is visible again on ‘A’ Mountain, most likely due to the upcoming Christian holiday of Easter (the vernal equinox, and thus Ostara has already past.) It was visible around the same time last year as well. A decoration that counts probably about sixteen feet in height, made of a series of round-white lights fashioned in a cruciform. The holiday will occur this upcoming weekend on April 12th.
Also creating a different atmosphere on the Ave happened to be the Tempe Music Festival.
Read more...
Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Amerist
1 Comment »
Art Walk had a showing of the Way of the Master evangelicals on their usual spot at the Roosevelt triangle. Some people who haven’t been seen in a while joined Al and Edwin, mostly in the forms of Erin and Richard. The Resistance arrived with a great deal of people and set up amidst them sometime around 7:30pm—Todd, Rachel, Gadfly, Rocco, Kazz, among others.
The other groups lacked this time, nobody set up across the street in the opposite corner as sometimes happened in the past.
Read more...
Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Amerist
No Comments »
Once again, Mill Ave is shut down due to the visitation of the Tempe Art Fair. White tents take up the center of the road, leaving the street open to all comers and passersby. The Resistance was sparse today but thick enough to entertain themselves on the preachers who came out to do some speaking. As usual, they found them set up in the middle of the intersection at 5th and Mill Ave—the diagonal between Urban Outfitters, Coffee Plantation, Hippie Gypsy, and American Apparel.
The Resistance consisted of Rocco and Gadfly, with a visitation by Kazz and Spyral.
Amazingly, the old-school core components of the Way of the Master evangelical group made it out! The preacher crew turned out to be Al, Jeremiah, Richard, and one other new individual of unknown disposition. This created an unexpected reunion of evangelical preachers who haven’t been out in a very long time. It’s been several months since either Richard or Jeremiah have been seen by the Resistance. Much to the amusement of all, Jeremiah took the stand later in the night and delivered his usual speeches—the rest didn’t really spend much time on their amps for the time people were out there to listen.
Read more...
Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Amerist
2 Comments »
The Resistance didn’t see much in the way of anything to resist when they put foot on the Ave. They congregated for a while at different restaurants and mingled. It took them a while of wandering around the Ave before they eventually found a single, lone preacher way out by the now closed Borders. That would be Al.
Rocco held a sedate discussion with Al most of the night about civil justice. The crux of the argument hinged on how positive law and social justice work and how harm is involved. The usual assertion involves something to the end of “any transgression against an infinite god is therefore an infinite crime deserving of an infinite punishment.” Except that social justice is a system based on harm. Thus the suggestion of transgression suggests two things (1) that the Christian god can and must be harmed for a transgression to happen and (2) that harm is comparable to “infinity.” It seemed interesting that someone decided to take an argument about justice to this particular quote rather than the obvious argument by definition: “a finite harm to an infinite object is infinitesimal, a harm that approaches nothing.” Although, this did have a stake in Rocco’s argument as well as sidebar.
Read more...
Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Amerist
1 Comment »
Tonight the Resistance found Jonathan’s crew, including Phil Washer, milling around the corner of 6th and Mill Avenue at Hippie Gypsy. Later into the night Jim Coleman came out as well as Vocab Malone and his group—who were a lot more amiable and easy to speak with than Jonathan’s group.
The group with Jonathan brought with them one of the loudest amps that anyone has yet brought, almost as loud as Shawn Holes and Jeff Rose (if not in the same ballpark.) The cone-of-sound manages to compete with the louder buskers on Mill Ave. Accusations of its misuse have been mentioned as well including last Friday someone holding it against Rocco’s ear, and this weekend—directly witnessed—having it pointed directly into Omar’s face. The outcome of pointing it at Omar created a nearly 90 second feedback fencing match.
This activity is becoming more unacceptable as Jonathan, and his group, has moved from simply ignoring respondents to being part of assaults. They are failing fundamental civil responsibility by acting as bad neighbors to the Ave, causing injury, breaking the commons, and not engaging in actual discourse with the community. They should really clean up their act.
Read more...
Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Amerist
No Comments »
The Resistance left meetings at ASU taking cars and light rail up to the First Friday Art Walk, arriving in parts around 7:30pm and found an noticeable crowd attending the various parts of our favorite artists’ faire. They set up in their usual spot in the triangular easement between the split of 3rd at Roosevelt. Joining the Resistance again with Kazz also was Spyral who spent most of her time next to the Resistance speaker on Roosevelt.
The Way of the Master preachers set up on the same corner and also across the street closer to 4th and Roosevelt. In attendance we had Valerie, Al, Lee, John, Edwin, among other notable faces. Passing out tracts and using their amplification. Both the position on the triangle and across the street used amplification; and later into the night two positions were set up on the triangle on opposite when Edwin came from across the street to the triangle.
Omar spent most of the night talking to John2 from Streetfishing. He is the large male with a heavy face and loud voice who generally sets up on the opposite side of 4th and Roosevelt. He also brings two young girls with him ages ranging possibly between 8 and 10 years old, who he uses as an excuse to tell people to “Watch their language,” and also uses to pass out tracts. The girls are polite and quiet, clean up after themselves and attempt to avoid people littering tracts by simply dropping them on the ground—it’s not uncommon to see them darting out from where they’ve huddled near John2 to hand one out.
Read more...
Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Amerist
No Comments »
The Resistance appeared on Mill Ave at about 8pm. Almost every corner had been taken up with various entertainers, people doing Mill Ave work, and other functions. The first encounter that members of the Resistance had with anything related to their mission was an offhand conversation about Christian convictions between some common folk mingling.
Eventually, Al, Jim Coleman, and Valerie set up in front of the Post Office and were immediately met by Kazz and other members of the Resistance. Although, they were quickly siphoned away to a set up that Omar had taken at Urban Outfitters which became more of the Resistance corner than anything else—no preachers countered them at all.
Edwin wandered past during the night commenting that he and others had gone to check out the light rail.
Read more...
Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Amerist
No Comments »
