“It's good for Iowa to have a spirited debate over the future of the livestock industry in the state, but a line is crossed when that means protesting at someone's home,” wrote the editors of the Des Moines Register in an article that appeared in the July 17 issue.
The paper’s rebuke came after more than 150 members of the misleadingly-named Iowa Citizen’s for Community Improvement (ICCI) traveled in four buses on the morning of Saturday, July 14 to demonstrate outside the home of Aaron Putze, Executive Director of Coalition to Support Iowa’s Farmers (CSIF).
Amidst chants of “Aaron, Aaron come on out, see what Iowa is all about,” the angry throng also waved billboards, used loudspeakers and fanned out across the neighborhood handing out flyers voicing their displeasure about the resurgence of Iowa’s hog, dairy, cattle and poultry farms.
People living in the neighborhood weren’t amused by ICCI’s antics. Neither was the Register.
Protests, wrote the Register, “should not be aimed at the homes of individuals where innocent family and neighbors are affected.
“Of course, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement has the right to protest on public property,” the editorial read. “But showing up where the target of that protest lives is an intimidating tactic.”
Register readers joined the Register in denouncing ICCI’s intimidation tactics. “Actually, to many of us, the only thing you have shed a light on is your lack of decency,” wrote one outraged reader.
“They (ICCI) violated his property rights and possibly his neighbors’,” wrote another concerned reader. “What’s to stop them from violating mine too?”
Ironically, ICCI’s public disturbance came just hours after the annual meeting’s keynote speaker, Rev. James Lawson, spoke to the group about “nonviolence.”
