Swat Team Takes Down F4J at Lincoln Memorial

McDougall · Swat Team Takes Down F4J at Lincoln Memorial

Dateline: Washington D.C., USA
By: Fox News
From: Ragnar at F4J
Via: The Honor Network

Swat Team Takes Down F4J at Lincoln Memorial
Priority News Exchange Program News Item (PNEP)

http://www.myfoxchicago.com/myfox...;layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.4.1

Two British Fathers 4 Justice activists have been arrested at gunpoint by a Swat team at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.

Jolly Stanesby and Mike Downes scaled the statue as the tourists gathered around were warned to put their cameras down and stop "encouraging them".

A "support crew" of four other campaigners was also held as the memorial was evacuated by US authorities.

The men, who wore Captain America and Batman costumes, were being held in custody in Washington and could be deported or put on trial.

The group - which campaigns to ensure divorced fathers are given access to their children - warned that this was the first of "many, many more" similar protests across the States.

Matt O'Connor, founder of Fathers 4 Justice, said: "Yet again Fathers 4 Justice in the UK has led the way with an audacious protest to raise the global profile of fatherlessness and the social catastrophe it is causing in first world countries.

"Given the problem is not one that is unique to any one country or culture, a first world problem requires a first world, international response.

"This is our response to the inaction of the US authorities. There will be many, many more to follow.

"Now we have lit the flame, we can begin the struggle to make equal parenting a reality in the United States, and combat the insidious gender apartheid that separates children from their fathers in the family courts."

The group plans to run its first national awareness campaign in the US during the presidential elections.

Stanesby and Downes unveiled their Captain America and Batman costumes after first scaling the memorial dressed as tourists and unfurled a white banner which read: "For the Fathers of the Nation: Fathers 4 Justice has arrived www.f4jusa.com."

The memorial, which is on the National Mall in the US capital, was built to honour the 16th US President Abraham Lincoln and has been the site of many famous speeches, including Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream", delivered on August 28 1963, during the rally at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Fathers 4 Justice has staged similar stunts in the UK including scaling Big Ben, York Minster, Westminster Abbey and the Royal Courts of Justice, as well as throwing purple powder at then Prime Minister Tony Blair in the House of Commons.

Morph

to be honest is any of these stunts showing them to be responsible fathers?

I understand the hopelessness they must feel but surely there is a better way to campaign than this

McDougall

Is that from a father who has lost access to his kid(s) that is involved in the fight already with some organization, or wishes to be?

Or... is that just a comment as a kind of academic excercise from an armchair supporter who will really drop this topic once the next issue comes a long and tickles his fancy?

This is important for one is a very long answer about all the long list of more moderate steps that have been taken to no avail, and the other is an even more lengthy answer that would admit that we aren't all agreed to this kind of media grab ourselves, but we must do more than lecture others who are doing more than most.

Morph

I am commenting on an issue which has been placed on this board and to be portrayed as fickle is a bit crazy.

All posts are here open to comment not only by those who have experiance or a greater knowledge on the subject than most.

I'm only saying that the same arguements that were thrown at the suffragettes in the early part of the 20th century can be used again here. While i agree that putting on a batman costume and climbing a memorial is in teh same league as hunger strikes and bombings i can still see that these men are commiting criminal acts. Any judge must take this into account when the hearings for the custody of the childthey are protesting for comes up.

All i was saying is that in my view these men are being slightly counter productive for their own cases by doing this.

McDougall

I think millions of fathers, along with their side of the family, would generally say we have been to court many times and behaved in a proper way and have been told the court will not give any real access in the legalese language of the courts.

So they have nothing to lose in the relationship with kids, because they already have nothing! So they are desperate and are now acting desperate. I guess they should resign themselves to never seeing their kids ever again, yes? For modern equality means mothers get the children 85% of the time, because men and women are equal in all ways that men have traditionally had advantages, and while we must remain tradtional in ways that benefited women in the past.

I'm happy and married, but I would say that this idea of taking the best of both equality and tradtional chivalry and enforcing it against men is bound to take our societies down in the long term. As divorce and birth rates continue to hit all time highs this may be what is in store for us all in the future. Don't you get tired of Misandry( always seeing men at fault or are bad in comparison to innocent women)? One can understand this if you watch the tube, but since when has this be real or thruth?