Water Buffaloes: Army and Flintstones at Conflicting Conferences

A protester talking to Gabe Gutierrez of NBC News outside the Marriott Philadelphia

This morning I was at a protest at the Marriott Hotel between City Hall and the Convention Center in Philadelphia.  The entrance was surrounded fencing to keep the protesters away.  The Moms for Liberty conference we were protesting was not the only event at the hotel this weekend.   

In adjoining ballrooms with just a partition separating them in some cases, The Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs is holding its annual meeting.  Somehow the 650 Moms for Liberty attendees and the 400 FJMC conference goers got booked at the same time. The FJMC was not pleased. The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a feature article today about the conferences booked together with opposing politics.  Here is the article.

A Moms for Liberty chapter recently apologized for quoting Hitler in a newsletter. That story is here. The FJMC has Holocaust survivors among its members.  

Late this morning I was at the fence near the entrance and saw Dave (above) and asked about his shirt.  I asked him if he had ever drank from an Army water buffalo. The trailers that haul water for soldiers to war zones. 

Dave said he never drank from a water buffalo, his shirt was for the Water Buffalo Lodge from the Flintstones.

 

Dave and I laughed about the conference planners and the hotel booking these two groups on the same weekend in the same conference space and not seeing a problem.  these two groups, we agreed, are as different as Army water buffaloes and the Water Buffalo Lodge.

Dave was very good natured about the security hassles in and out of the hotel. "These meetings can be kind of dull," he said. "It's much more exciting with cops around the entrance and protesters chanting every day."