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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Targets Of Protesters Want Rallies Doused Woman Who Turned Hose On Vegans Gets Sympathy

Associated Press

The righteous indignation was so thick, you could have cut it with a knife.

On the one side was a group of anti-fur protesters who’d carried their cause to the home of a department store executive. On the other was his wife, Gina Pickell, so offended by the intrusion that she turned a garden hose on the protesters - even following them to the middle of the street.

The law appeared to be on the side of the protesters, who hauled Pickell into court.

But in the arena of public opinion, Pickell was a clear winner. About 100 supporters rallied outside the courtroom carrying placards - “Justice Fur Gina” - and garden hoses. Many wore fur coats.

“It was just lovely,” Pickell said. “It gave me the confidence I needed to go into that courtroom.”

Her first trial on two counts of simple assault ended with a hung jury March 20, and she faces a second trial in May.

Even the jury forewoman, who refused to give her name, expressed sympathy for the defendant: “It makes me want to go out and buy a fur coat and a hose,” she told the Eastside Journal.

Has public protest, which helped to awaken a nation to the injustice of racial discrimination and turned a significant portion of the Baby Boom generation against the Vietnam War, run its course?

“I’m sure some people have become jaded to certain things. The protest or the rally was probably a much more effective tool at one time,” said David Groves, a spokesman for the Washington State Labor Council.

At a recent demonstration by 700 people seeking union rights for strawberry pickers, “I’m sure we had a few irritated people out there when we were blocking traffic and marching around grocery stores,” Groves said.

“The hope is that for every person you irritate, there is another person who you educate.”

Pickell says the issue in her case goes beyond conflicting ideology.

“I just disagree with their tactics. I think people are getting kind of sick of this kind of thing,” she said. “Harassing someone at their private home? That’s going too far.”

The anti-fur protesters, from the group Vegan Frontline, say they were within their rights when they staged a small demonstration Dec. 14 outside the Pickell home.

“We were standing on a public sidewalk,” says Jessica Peters, a 19-year-old college student and one of two protesters who pressed charges.

“She walked all the way to the middle of the street and started blasting us on the street. We were dripping wet in the middle of December,” Peters said.

The political climate is part of the reason for the growing intolerance toward protesters, says spokesman Cress Vellucci of the National Activist Network based in Sacramento, Calif.

“People are enjoying the status quo,” he says. “They don’t want to see struggle. They don’t want to feel guilty about buying this or eating that.

“I don’t think tactics have much to do with it. Some people are more aggressive, but that element has always been around,” Vellucci says.

But targets of protests - especially of demonstrations by anti-abortion groups - say the issue sometimes is personal safety.

“You start to feel as though you need to grow eyes on the back of your head,” says Pat Shivley, manager of the East Side Women’s Health Clinic in Olympia.

“Most of the people who protest our clinic aren’t activists,” Shivley said. “To me, they’re just terrorists.”

At issue in the Pickell case was the sale of fur-trimmed coats at Bon Marche stores, which are owned by Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores.

“Her husband’s store was selling fur and he was telling people that he wasn’t,” Peters says. “We wanted to make sure people knew that.”

The protesters handed out leaflets to Pickell’s neighbors and held up signs urging people not to patronize the regional chain, police said.

Pickell concedes some fur-trimmed coats were available. But she says her husband, chain chairman Ira Pickell, was instrumental in the decision to close fur departments in the 36 full-line Bon stores.