Family booted over T-shirts

Friday, August 06, 2004

THE SAGINAW NEWS

George W. Bush's T-shirt police got their family.

Campaign workers removed the Millers -- Marvin, Barbara and Theresa -- from Wendler Arena on Thursday minutes before the president's motorcade rolled up.

The Midland clan's offense?

Barbara Miller, a 50-year-old chemist for Dow Chemical Co., had carried in a rolled-up T-shirt emblazoned with a pro-choice slogan.

"I thought I might be cold," she said of the NARAL Pro-Choice America message on the cotton shirt, size large. "I use it for running. I never even thought about the message. I just wanted to see my president."

Jennifer Millerwise, a Bush spokeswoman, defended the campaign's right to kick out attendees suspected of aiming to spoil an event meant for supporters.

NARAL (National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League) Pro-Choice America's Web site says Bush "Endangers Women Worldwide, Cancels Family-Planning Funds."

"Sadly, there are people who try to enter these events with the goal of disrupting these events for people who have worked so hard and want to hear the president speak," Millerwise said. "It really is unfair to those people."

Barbara Miller said a young male campaign worker confiscated the offending apparel upon the family's 4:30 p.m. arrival. He returned with two others and asked the trio leave about an hour later.

"They obviously were searching for us," said Marvin, 53, also a Dow chemist. "And they came for us.

"I was probably voting for Kerry before. Now I'm 100% sure. Maybe I'll start campaigning for him. Maybe I'll start fund-raising."

He said the person who took his wife's T-shirt told them, "We don't accept any pro-choice, non-Republican paraphernalia."

It was the same young male worker, a female campaign worker and a security guard who demanded the family leave section 28 as they sat chatting a couple of hundred feet behind Bush's stage, he said.

The young man accused them of "smuggling in T-shirts," he said. The guard then grabbed their three tickets from Barbara Miller's hand, ripped them up "violently" and told her, "They're no good anymore," she said.

"This is democracy under Bush," she added flatly.

Her daughter, Theresa, 19, was wearing a hot pink T-shirt that read in white lettering, "This is what feminists look like."

"We just got kicked out," thundered the sophomore at American University in Washington to an audience of protesters across Johnson from the arena.

Emphasizing she was unfamiliar with the Millers' situation, Millerwise said such incidents are rare, though, she added, "it is campaign season."

"These events are put on ... for people of an open mind who are interested in hearing (Bush's) positive message and his vision for a future," she said.

That's how Theresa Miller dubbed herself.

"I have seen Kerry," she said. "I definitely wanted to come here and see what Bush had to say. I didn't come here to make a scene.

"I'm not an American? I can't see my president?"

© 2004 Saginaw News

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