Gathering of Eagles: NY

Action Alerts

It’s that time of year again! Armed Forces Day is almost upon us and that means we are into Operation Recruiter Appreciation mode! ORA, last year. was our first successful nationwide operation to show appreciation to our service members performing a vital mission while under continuous attack and harassment by the left wing fringe. These men and women, many of them veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, are little appreciated by the public and definite targets for the domestic insurgency. On May 17th, Armed Forces Day, Eagles will independently arrange demonstrations of appreciation at hundreds of military recruiting offices across the country. Each effort will be planned and coordinated by local Eagles, and each effort will, accordingly, have its own “hometown” flavor.

Mary-Sheba Graves has volunteered to act as the GOE point of contact for this effort, so that we may have one source for questions, answers, and suggestions. I ask all who are interested in either participating or getting more information to E-mail her at msgtex@sbcglobal.net.

So, what do you need to do to take part in GOE Operation Recruiter Appreciation? Use your imagination! Below is a list of suggestions, but feel free to come up with your own ideas of how to honor and thank our military recruiters.

Suggestions for ORA

• Deliver a pizza and some sodas to the recruiter’s office around lunchtime.
• Drop off some VIP movie passes you picked up from a nearby theater.
• Set up a table outside the office (after receiving permission) with some signs/banners advertising GOE and, more importantly, your efforts to honor the recruiters’ service and sacrifice. Perhaps have some goodies and a card for passersby to sign, adding their appreciation to our own.
• Have your kids help you whip up some homemade cookies and/or brownies, and have the kids deliver them. Once the ice is broken, the kids and recruiters will definitely enjoy the visit. Trust me!
• Invite one or more of the recruiters to your home for dinner later in the week.
• A simple hand-made card from a child, or even a smile and a warm handshake won’t cost anything but will lift some spirits and let our troops know you care.
• Take a homemade sign saying “Thank you!” or “God bless our military” along with a few friends and stand outside a local recruiter’s office
• During your visit, get some of the recruiters to pose with you for a few photos, so that we can share in your visit here on the forum. (Please remember to get permission to use their images/names)

You get the idea. We’ll leave times flexible, but I would recommend around lunchtime in your areas. Not only is it easy to tie in with food and beverages, but hopefully the recruiters won’t have to work too late on a Saturday. (I said “hopefully”.)

We do ask that all participants try to connect their shows of support with Gathering of Eagles. It’s a nice way for your particular recruiters to find out about our mission, and it will be the perfect excuse for you to share with them the knowledge that others across our nation are conducting similar shows of support and appreciation. Maybe have a homemade sign and/or business cards with our name and national, state and forum website addresses.

How do I locate a recruiter?
Find information on local U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard recruiters by entering your zip code at this site.

http://www.todaysmilitary.com/contact-a-recruiter

For an Army recruiter specifically, you may need to go to this location instead:

http://www.goarmy.com/contact/find_a_recruiter.jsp

What’s my next step?
E-mail Mary at msgtex [at] sbcglobal [dot] net with the following information:

• Your full name
• Three initials of your choosing to be used to identify you on an image map and/or spreadsheet
• Type of recruiter (Service or Services using this office)
• Location of recruiter (City and state are sufficient if it’s the only office in town; include address if there’s more than one to choose from in a particular city/town)
• How you are planning to honor our military recruiters (don’t be shy — give details!)

**I recommend to everyone who agrees to participate in this endeavor to contact the senior recruiter in the office(s) you plan to visit, to let him/her know your plans. They may have suggestions as to what the team might want or need to make their job easier, and you certainly don’t want to show up on ORA Day only to have the office empty.

Let’s let Our Recruiters know that we New Yorkers, appreciate them!

After Action Reports

A funny thing happened on our way to Patchogue this morning.

Driving East on the Southern State Parkway we put a call into Tom, our local Patchogue contact. He was already at the Recruiter Station with a group of about thirty waiting for the moonbats to show. Rumor had it that they were so upset by our strong turnout last month, when they tried to overwhelm us with numbers, that they decided to stay home or save themselves for todays afternoon action at Sunrise Mall. Heh.

It was a bad day for moonbats.

We checked with Tom a second time as we passed the Massapequa exit. Still no moonbats. Ok, lets take a detour and do a little recon of the Sunrise Mall area to see what’s happening there. Dave and I both got very excited when we saw a moonbat van ahead of us traveling in the same direction. It was a dead giveaway with its signs in the rear window about how too many had died and the general aura that the van had not seen a car wash in a very long time!

So we sidle up a car or two behind it and figure we’ll track it to moonbat central and save ourselves some scouting time. Great plan. Except the damn van just kept going south right past the exit for the mall. Dang it! So we dropped our tail and swung a u-turn back to the mall.

We drove all around the perimeter of the mall and there was not a moonbat to be seen, we checked out the area they were scheduled to be in at 2pm and decided we liked it. So much so that we decided that we would make it our own! One more check with Tom and still no moonbats in Patchogue so Tom directs some of the group there to rally with us in Massapequa.

We set up quickly, pounding rebar into the ground along Sunrise Highway. Out come the flags. Two big Garrison Flags frame the ends of our flag line. All five service flags, POW flag, Support Our Troops flag, Lest They be Forgotten flag, I have to say it was a pretty impressive array.

We tie wrapped a Honk for Victory sign onto two traffic sign poles at the front of the line and grabbed our own flags and signs to start our troop rally. And rally we did! Traffic started honking like crazy for us. Mall security, tipped off that a ‘peace’ protest was going to take place there, stopped by and I explained that we decided to preempt the regularly scheduled moonbat program. They liked that.

A News12 Long Island camera team arrived and told us they had been sent to tape a protest. They got a kick out of the fact that the regularly scheduled event had been hijacked by patriots! They took lots of video and we had a few interviews with them.

More of our folks started to arrive, John was the first and jumped right in with us. Then some Military MC riders, some PGR and even a newbie! A young girl arrived with a beautifully prepared sign and her own flag and joined us. She had been prepared to come down and counter the moonbats on her own, instead she found brothers and sisters already there holding the fort. She hadn’t even heard of the GOE!

The poor moonbats. Every time a car came by asking where the protest was going to be we told them the protesters had gone home. Heck, we told the same carload the same thing twice. Slow learners!

Finally a number of them did show up, but because we had already claimed the high visibility main entrance they were forced to congregate at a secondary entrance about a quarter of a mile away. Boo Hoo! The mall security were all over them like white on rice and Nassau County Police were all over the area as well to prevent the same kind of fiasco they pulled at Smith Haven Mall last month. The ‘bats never stood a chance.

The News12 crew did relocate to film some interviews with them but that was fine with us at that point, we had gotten our say in.

After a while Mo, a gold star dad, and some of the Veterans MC guys decided to take a stroll down moonbat alley to see if they were using photos of our fallen heroes to promote their craven political agenda. To no ones surprise we found they were and some interesting ‘dialoguing’ occured. Luckily no moonbats had a picture of Mo’s son. News12 Long Island captured some of these discussions.

They did have photos of at least two other of Long Island’s fallen heroes and Mo quickly placed calls to their families, but the moonbats melted away before the families could arrive.

It was a great day for patriots on Long Island!

See the photos here.

Local News coverage here.

DanNY