Before the TEA Party, before the radical Trumpers, there was Donald Lobsinger. From the 60's through the 90's one could not attend a left wing protest or reformed Catholic ceremony without seeing him.
His message was devoutly conservative Catholic and anti-Communist carried out in a series of street theater stunts with his tiny group Breakthrough.
He passed without notice two years ago, his passing only now be discovered and told by veteran Free Press reporter Bill McGraw in today's Detroit Free Press. McGraw's article is a well-researched telling of this controversial and colorful Detroiter.
When the Bolshoi Ballet stopped in Detroit as part of a cultural exchange, he tossed anti-communist flyers from the balcony. When another touring Soviet troupe made an appearance at the Masonic Temple, Lobsinger and Breakthrough members tried to enter dressed as a priest, soldiers carrying a casket and a mourner.To protest the modernization of Catholic rituals and music after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, Lobsinger and acolytes showed up at Sunday masses at east-side churches dressed as clowns, playing guitars.
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