Kinda surreal to wake up and realize the President of the United States of America thinks your friend, Martin Gugino, is an agent provocateur for ANTIFA.
But, my friend Martin is actually a 75 year old cancer patient who cares about others more than he cares about himself.
That’s why he was out there protesting that day in Buffalo when armed police in riot gear threw him to the ground, cracked his skull and knocked him unconscious as blood poured from his ear.
Yes, I know there’s a popular conspiracy going around that Martin faked the blood coming out of his ear with an elaborate system of hoses and a pump hidden in the bag around his neck, but anyone with half a brain who takes the time to think about that theory can easily find the holes in that notion.
For example, if that contraption was pumping blood out of his ear like that, wouldn’t the cops have seen it right away? Wouldn’t the EMT’s who worked on Martin have said, “Hey…wait a minute…what’s this?”
Wouldn’t the nurses at the hospital where he’s now being treated for brain damage have noticed something fishy?
And once it all hit the newswire, wouldn’t SOMEONE have said, “Hello, CNN? I think you need to know something…”?
Of course they would.
After I posted something on my Twitter and Facebook pages about knowing Martin, someone actually suggested that I was either a bot, or a CIA operative, simply because I doubted the President’s ridiculous conspiracy theory.
For the record: I am NOT a bot. I am NOT a CIA operative. Nor do I work for ANTIFA or any other radical group.
I mean, I am the program director for Peace Catalyst International here in El Paso, TX. But that’s not a radical anti-government group. It’s a non-profit aimed at helping Evangelical Christians learn to love Muslims.
So, after I Tweeted about how weird it was to have the President accuse my friend Martin of this conspiracy, it sort of blew up.
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Now things are REALLY getting wild. My Tweet jumped to over 1 Million impressions, with over 300K engagements before I could finish this blog post. Apparently Judd Apatow even gave me a Re-Tweet.
Yowza.
So, let me be very honest about my friend Martin: He can be an instigator when he wants to be. I can tell you stories about how he tried to slip hard liquor into a care box our house church was putting together for soldiers serving overseas one time. I can tell you about how he once walked over a mile to a grocery store just to buy a bottle of bleach so he could clean my dirty sink [not to be nice but specifically to provoke me], and how he often sent me emails about stuff that he knew would set me off or piss me off now and then.
But, does any of that justify what those police officers did to Martin that day?
No. It doesn’t.
In fact, I’m sitting here trying to imagine what Martin [or anyone else] could possibly say to a police officer that would justify being pushed onto the pavement hard enough to cause brain damage and put them in the hospital.
Nope. I got nothing.
Maybe, “Hey officer, would you please shove me really hard?”
But even then…. I don’t think so.
So, hopefully this post – if nothing else – puts to rest the conspiracy that my friend Martin Gugino is an agent for the Deep State.
He, and his subversive army of geriatric Catholic nuns who regularly feed the homeless at the Dorothy Day House aren’t working to embarrass the police state.
They’re doing that pretty well all by themselves, I’d say.
My hope is that Martin gets better soon. I’d really love to talk to him and find out what really happened that day.
My prayer is also that we could all find enough compassion to be concerned for people who get brutalized by the police for simply exercising their right of Free Speech.
Martin deserves better. We all do.
**
Keith Giles and his wife, Wendy, work with Peace Catalyst International to help build relationships between Christians and Muslims in El Paso, TX. Keith was formerly a licensed and ordained minister who walked away from organized church over a decade ago to start a home fellowship that gave away 100% of the offering to the poor in the community. Today he is the author of several best-selling books, including “Jesus Undefeated: Condemning the False Doctrine of Eternal Torment” which is available now on Amazon.
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