Re: Could this be the rift that starts the civil war?
Looks like the nutbags are gettin riled up
Uneasy street: Furor at hospice riles neighbors
PINELLAS PARK -- It's a dead-end street less than a half-mile long that for days has been center stage in a historic right-to-life drama.
Near one end of 102nd Avenue is Triple O Auto, where Scotty Jackson, a single father raising two sons, has grown used to being cussed at and ridiculed by people clutching Bibles and waving signs.
Near the other end is the misnamed Oceanside Estates, a government-subsidized apartment complex for the elderly and the disabled. There, Rick Avant can't stroll the grounds without cops descending on bikes and golf carts to warn him away from the fence.
In the middle is Woodside Hospice, an X-shaped set of one-story, red-brick buildings and villas where Terri Schiavo will die, probably within days.
Neither Jackson nor Avant, strangers from either side of the street, minds uninvited guests. But the throngs gathered on 102nd Avenue often have displayed little appreciation for niceties, and some have been downright rude.
Since March 18 when Schiavo's feeding tube was removed under court order, Jackson, 44, a good-natured South Dakotan, has run out of patience with protesters who think nothing of blocking his garage-bay doors with their cars, jeopardizing his livelihood.
When Jackson asked one man to move his car, the visitor screamed an obscenity at the garage owner, and "then he walked off with a Bible in his hand."
Triple O stands for On Our Own, and there are times when Jackson struggles to pay his bills and is forced to work on a Sunday -- upsetting one protester, who heckled him about working on the day of rest.
Jackson's a tough guy, a burly 266-pounder who has survived two near-fatal motorcycle accidents. So he can take the abuse. But what bothers him more than anything are the children, caught up in the dispute that has divided a family and the nation.
Like the students at Cross Bayou Elementary, on the west side of the hospice, who needed a police escort as they arrived at school. On the day Schiavo's feeding tube was pulled, 200 of the students stayed home.
Or the 10-year-old who was arrested trying to take a cup of water to Schiavo, with his father standing proudly nearby. Or the 7- or 8-year-olds he has seen wearing T-shirts bearing fetuses and the words "Abortion kills."
"When I was 7 or 8, I don't even know about the birds or the bees," Jackson said. "Why are they wearing anti-abortion T-shirts? Why are they even here? To me, that's just parents drilling beliefs in their heads. To me, that's just brainwashing."
A block to the east, in the parking lot of Oceanside Estates, Avant is heartsick about the kids, too. If their parents want to come down, that's fine, he said, but leave the children at home.
The former chef in Massachusetts, who has been unable to work since he mangled his arm in a factory accident, is most troubled by thoughts of the 70 other patients who are dying at the hospice next door.
None of the men and women venture out anymore to sit in the manicured garden, taking in the fresh air and listening to music as they live out their last days. And their loved ones can't visit without going through checkpoints, security clearances and a macabre death vigil: the women with black lips and faux blood dripping down their faces, the guy with the bullhorn warning about damnation, the signs that demonize Terri Schiavo's husband as a murderer and adulterer, the man cradling the skeleton.
"Honestly, I think more of the people whose lives are being interfered with than I do about Terri," Avant said. "It's sad, they can't enjoy their own back yard. Just 15 minutes ago the SWAT team came through the parking lot."
Carrying a bowl of deviled eggs, Sharon Turner of Clearwater conceded the crowds have made it tough to visit a friend dying of cancer at the hospice. Barred from taking a camera to the room, Turner said, she couldn't even snap a picture of the 75-year-old woman clasping a bouquet of flowers she had just received. There, has, however, been an upside.
"There are so many cops inside, and they are so nice, my friend is really enjoying them," Turner said. "I don't know what she'll do when they go away. She'll probably be bored. . . ."
Avant, meanwhile, longs for peace and a return to civility on 102nd Avenue.
For a few days, he joined the throng, holding a sign that read, "The Christian right is America's Taliban." But he no longer feels safe on the street.
And Avant, who used to work in a home for the mentally challenged, doesn't agree with advocates for the disabled -- and some of his neighbors -- who see Schiavo's death as a doorway to euthanasia, where the imperfect or the unwhole are at risk.
"Believe me, the rights of the handicapped and the disabled are not being taken away," Avant said. "If anything, the radical right is trying to take away the rights of the average American citizen."
Yet, as night fell Saturday and protesters lined up for a candlelight vigil, 102nd Avenue remained a crucible of American rights, those of the demonstrators, the neighbors and one dying woman.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/...ack=1&cset=true
