Dan's Papers - April 24, 2009 - PROTESTING IN SOUTHAMPTON, RE-EXAMINED

Last Tuesday, Tom Wedell did what he has done practically every working day for the past year and a half, which is to drive his SUV 40 miles from his home in East Moriches to the Southampton 7-Eleven on County Road 39 to spend the day harassing and protesting against the undocumented immigrants. The immigrants are there, usually about 20 of them, outdoors on Aldrich Lane, standing peacefully by the side of the road on the public sidewalk hoping to be picked up for a day's work.

This Tuesday, however, was different. Around 11 a.m., somebody smashed the window of Wedell's SUV and stole one of his signs. It read DEPORT ILLEGALS.

"If they think that by breaking my mirrors and windows they can stop me from coming here," he said, "they've got another thing coming. They can go to hell. I am here exercising my constitutional rights as a loyal American."

According to Wedell, he had parked his car at the South Fork Realty parking lot, which is just to the east of the 7-Eleven. No immigrants congregate there. He had walked around in front of the 7-Eleven with another of his signs, and was down the block on North Sea Road, on the far side of the 7-Eleven, at Aldrich Lane, where these Spanish speaking people usually wait, when whatever happened, happened back where he parked his car.

Wedell is 49-years-old, formerly in the roofing business, and a fine American worker who feels these immigrants have taken jobs away from loyal Americans, thereby putting him and others out of work. Rumors abound that he is being paid by a union to be out protesting, but he claims not. He says nobody pays him to be out there. He does it on his own time and with his own money.

Wedell has every right to be out with a sign protesting these undocumented immigrants. He has every right to claim that American taxpayer money should not be used to support them. And he has every right to go to the police about his broken window. I truly hope the police find and arrest whoever did this.

But it is also true that Wedell has recently expanded his protesting to include harassment and intimidation of both the immigrants and even those who might just be walking along who wish to talk to them.

Although it is everyone's legal right to spew whatever sort of hatred they wish at anyone in America, they do not have the right to harass them up close and personal in a threatening and menacing way.

I have watched many protests over the years. Where protesters shout hate, the police keep them at a distance. People who are peacefully standing around minding their own business, whether it be because of their religion, their color or their place of origin, are protected by the police from being intimidated and interfered with by protesters. The protesters are moved across the street, away from those they hate. And if they don't stay there, they are arrested for harassment and disturbing the peace.

This however, does not happen with Wedell in Southampton. He is apparently free to move about exhibiting this behavior, right at the entrance to the Village of Southampton, mingling with those he despises.

Last week, before this incident, Wedell was asked to leave the 7-Eleven because he had come in demanding that the store refuse to sell food to people who intended to bring it outside to feed those who were hungry in these hard times. He also went to Town Hall and complained to a deputy building inspector enough to get him to come down to the Southampton Tire Store across the street from the 7-Eleven where Sister Breige Levery of the Sister of Mercy Church in Water Mill was operating a soup kitchen for the hungry. The deputy building inspector shut the soup kitchen down, a decision that was reversed four days later by the chief building inspector when he got back from vacation and determined that his deputy had enforced a law that was not applicable in this situation, and that, in fact, there is no law against operating charitable non-profitable soup kitchens.

In other words, Wedell is taking matters into his own hands.

Mayor Mark Epley of Southampton describes the situation as dangerous and volatile. Yet he doesn't act to separate Wedell from the people he harasses and require him to protest against them from across the street in an orderly manner.

Until he does, the people of Southampton will continue to have to live with a shameful situation right at the very entrance to the village, where visitors get Wedell and his flags and signs and angry taunts and shouts as the first taste of the experience of Southampton.