One thing you should know about our post earlier today on the long, strange trip of a bus filled with conservative Hispanics and marriage inequality proponents reaching out to Latino voters: according to the first (and, at this writing, only) comment left with the post, the vehicle marked “Vota Tus Valores” (“Vote your values”) is not affiliated with Republican U.S. Senate nominee Carly Fiorina.
Oh, yeah, and there's this: It failed to leave Santa Ana without assault allegations being leveled against one of the passengers.
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“Anthony Ash, a Courage field staffer, was assaulted when he tried to
film the latest stop on NOM's [the National Organization for Marriage] 'Vota Tus Valores/Vote Your Values' tour
across California,” reads a message Rick Jacobs, chairman of the Courage Campaign for marriage equality, sent to supporters this afternoon.
(Incidentally, the Courage Campaign still ties the bus to the Fiorina campaign.)
“Anthony's arm was struck by a man attempting to
obstruct the filming and Anthony's video camera was knocked to the
ground,” Jacobs continues. “Anthony is OK, but the camera is now permanently damaged, as is
the footage taken on it.”
The alleged assaulter is not identified in the note, which actually winds up being a pitch for contributions.
As the Weekly previously reported, the bus was parked at the intersection of Main and 17th streets in Santa Ana. Police there “were quick to respond, stopping NOM's bus from making a quick getaway,” Jacobs informs. “Our lawyers have filed a complaint with the police for battery and are now considering what other action may be taken.”
Ash and fellow Courage Campaign staffers Arisha Hatch and Phyllis Lozano have been following the Vota Tus Valores bus as part of its own “NOM Exposed” tour/web site aimed at exposing a poor reception received by the conservative campaign in California. The same bus has been used in other states to push for marriage inequality, with similar results, to hear Jacobs tell it.
“On their summer tour, NOM demanded that the Maryland Capitol Police remove our videographer from an event–and then threatened him with arrest. The police apologized to Courage for this incident, but NOM still has not sent an apology,” he says in his note. “NOM's bullying has got to stop. And we need your help to stop them.”
Cue the plea for “a contribution of $25 or more.”
Our earlier post, based on Vern Nelson's hilarious reporting on the Orange Juice blog, exposed a comedy of errors when it came to the bus trying to avoid the Courage Campaigners.
Obviously, things only got stranger as the Orange County leg of the tour dragged on.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.