Rebel of the Week: 85yo Lenore Zimmerman

“I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she said sarcastically. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.”

Last week, Lenore Zimmerman, an 85-year-old, Long Island grandmother was on her way to catch a flight when the TSA decided to make things hard for her. A true rebel, she requested to forgo the full body scanners which she worried could interfere with her defibrillator. That’s when the TSA whisked the 4-foot-11 grandmother away in her wheelchair to a private room and began removing her clothes.

Standard TSA procedure in the case of a passenger who refuses a body scan is to administer a freedom fondle pat down. This practice has been controversial in itself, especially after the Department of Homeland Security issued enhanced pat down procedures that allow TSA screeners to be far more aggressive and intrusive with their hands when patting down passengers. But to take it a step further and strip search an 85-year-old grandmother in a private room for absolutely no reason other than her desire to fly on an airplane… in my mind that’s a sexual assault. I don’t see any other way to interpret it.

Read the rest of my article at The Silver Underground.

Wes Messamore,
Editor in Chief, THL
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