A pair of political action pals rallying to impeach President Barack Obama fought a protest of their own when they said an irate middle-aged man pushed them and ripped down their posters.
“I was scared. The guy was just violent and crazy,” said Margaret Greenspan of the tri-state LaRouche Political Action Committee. “I’m used to people who don’t like us, but people who attack us and rip our signs down are not usual. We set up and people try to scare us like that. We have the right to be here.”
Greenspan, who had set up a booth on the corner of 26th Avenue and 212th Street in front of The Bay Terrace shopping center with her partner Daniel Burke, said a white man in his 50s pulled his car over around 10 a.m. on Wednesday, August 29, leaped out and started screaming at them and tearing down their posters.
One enlarged photo in particular, Greenspan said, which depicted the president of the Free World sporting a Hitler-like mustache, seemed to send the man into a furious rage.
“He said, ‘How dare you put a mustache on Obama in front of a synagogue,’” said Greenspan, 61, of New Jersey, who pointed to the Benenson Family Chabad Community Center directly across the street.
But when Greenspan said she whipped out her phone to call the cops, the man fled, “taking off like a bat out of hell.”
“We were shouting at him to leave us alone. We told him he should be ashamed of himself,” said Burke, 26, of New Jersey.
Greenspan, who justified the sign by comparing Obama to “a killer like Hitler,” was told by cops she could not press charges because it was just harassment, with no physical injuries, and not an assault.
“We’re fighting to get Obama out before the election because he’s trying to start a war with Syria which would lead to a war with Russia and China. It would be a worldwide disaster,” she said.
Burke stressed the fight wasn’t directly against the president, but also of his Republican presidential opponent Mitt Romney.
“We need a new candidate,” he said. “These guys are complete nightmares. Romney and Paul Ryan are straight fascists.”
