Over the past few weeks we’ve seen police officers from LA to NY stand around while rioters loot and burn business. In cities like Seattle, Portland, and Minneapolis, police under orders from democratic mayors have allowed anarchist terrorists to take over large sections of the city. It seems like the whole country has descended into lawlessness but thankfully one city is still cracking down on crime. Cops in Westerly, Rhode Island threatened to arrest an elderly blind woman for trying to talk to people in a park about Jesus.
63-year-old Gail Blair was a nurse until 1991 when a disorder caused her to lose her vision. The disabled woman, until recently, had spent her time in Wilcox Park next to the Westerly library talking to people about her Christian faith. According to her, if she was able to engage someone in a conversation, she would offer them a pocket copy of the the Gospel of John.
Fox News reports that in July 2019 Blair was at Wilcox Park with her church Bible group when she was approached by Westerly police officers. They informed her that she had been banned from the park and library and if she didn’t leave or tried to return, she’d be arrested.
Apparently officials at the Memorial and Library Association claimed that Blair had been accosting patrons and giving them religious pamphlets. Keep in mind that she is a 63-year-old blind woman, so how much accosting is she really capable of?
“I do what the Pocket Testament League urges. Simply offer them a Gospel of John, the Word of God. No arguing,” said Blair.
While the library claims that that they’ve filed numerous complaints against Blair there exists no evidence of that.
“The Police Department searched for all incidents that involved complaints or trespass notices issued to anyone for distributing information, pamphlets, soliciting, selling, hawking, etc., and found none apart from when the Association called the police to eject me from the park,” said Blair.
They never filed a complaint against Blair or anyone until they called the cops to eject her from the park without so much as a warning. And for the record, the library association has banned Blair from the park and library for 2 years.
Being blind, Blair’s options for enjoying outside spaces are severely limited because she, “cannot independently access another public park or another free public library.”
Blair has filed a complaint with the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights against the Memorial and Library Association claiming she was banned “because of [the Associations’s] unlawful discrimination against me on the basis of my disability and my religious beliefs.”
A representative for the association told Fox News it “does not engage in nor tolerate any forms of discrimination,” adding that it has not received a copy of the complaint and “cannot specifically comment on the allegations made by Gail Blair.”
“The Association vehemently denies any claims of discrimination or wrongdoing and it looks forward to receiving a copy of the complaint in order to rebut and disprove any claims made by Ms. Blair.”
How many other elderly blind Christian women has the association banned recently? It seems like they should be acutely aware of this case.
I bet if Blair had been trying to pull down a statue of a white male historical figure or been spray painting “defund the police” there wouldn’t have ben any issues, as these are now protected forms of speech in liberal enclaves. Her biggest problem was thinking that her 1st Amendment rights of free speech and religious freedom exist in places run by godless America-hating leftists.
