Three Reports on Cindy Sheehan’s Campaign:
Camping Out at
Demand That Bush Talk to Cindy and Get Out Now!
Cindy
Sheehan is the mother of Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, who was killed in
action in
As
Bush’s opinion-poll ratings have dropped below 40 percent, and as dozens of
U.S. Marines—and countless more Iraqis—were killed this past week, Cindy
Sheehan’s story is getting coverage from the major corporate media: the New
York Times, Associated Press, ABC, CBS, CNN, etc. The Bring Them Home Now coalition is waging a
“Talk to Cindy” campaign, generating e-mail and phone calls to the White House.
See below for three reports on Cindy Sheehan’s campaign. The link to the Bring
Them Home Now coalition home page is www.bringthemhomenow.org. We urge
our readers to support Sheehan’s campaign. See also Stan Goff’s tribute to
Cindy Sheehan, and to Kevin and Monica Benderman,
entitled “Resistance—Of Hoisting and Petards,” at his web site, stangoff.com—The Editors, Labor
Standard
Sheehan Draws Tears of Support
by Greg Moses,
August 9, 2005
Greg Moses is editor of Peacefile
and author of Revolution of Conscience:
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence.
When Robert DeLozier
saw the story of Cindy Sheehan on television Sunday, he told his spouse right
away: “I’m going up there. We have to drop everything and go.” At the Sam’s
Club of all places, says Robert, he nearly broke down crying while he was
shopping Monday morning thinking about what Sheehan was doing in memory of her
son Casey, who was killed in
“She’s
a strong woman,” says Robert via cell phone as he drives back home Monday night.
“She feels she has been wronged. She feels her son has been wronged. And she
feels like this whole occupation of
Robert
hands the phone to spouse Abbe Waldman DeLozier as their car glides up and down the gentle hills
of
“Yes,
Since
Abbe has experience with media, she volunteered to
help Sheehan sort out her media calls. There were 85 messages on Sheehan’s cell
phone. Abbe, with the two young ladies from
“The two young ladies were very professional,” said Abbe. “They had never done this before, but they were very good.” By the end of the evening, Abbe had made a master schedule for Sheehan so that she could begin to manage the line of media waiting from all over the world.
Returning
a call to a radio station in
Abbe doesn’t know much more about the powwow. An NPR reporter was on hand and the group asked for fifteen minutes of privacy to talk about some serious issues like what they were going to do if the cops showed up and started arresting people. The NPR reporter was gracious enough to give the tribe some space, and Abbe was hospitable enough to walk around with the reporter while the group worked things out. Then the NPR reporter took about 90 minutes of tape from Sheehan and Company which has to be cut down to perfect size by deadline.
Abbe thinks the media are responding to Sheehan because of her strong stand. “I’m not leaving until Bush just simply comes out and talks to me,” says Abbe in a respectful impersonation of Sheehan’s message. “She will not leave until they put her in jail, until she sees the President, or until he leaves Crawford for the summer,” says Abbe. “And she is very intelligent.”
When Robert and Abbe arrived at the camp about 4:00 this afternoon, folks had just moved off a “triangle” of grass at the request of police and were camped down in a “ditch area” with cows and fields for as far as the eye could see. Press reports put the group five miles from the President’s ranch, but Jim Harrington of the Texas Civil Rights Project says that if the media get to stand within a half mile of the ranch, so should the protesters. Legal help is another thing people are giving.
Later in the evening black suburbans started whizzing past. A stream of maybe 25, coming down the road, one after the other, about a minute apart, with government tags. Soon after that overhead came the presidential helicopter with a three-helicopter escort, buzzing past the camp and over to the Western White House. But the impressive action was down in the ditch among the small band of resolute activists who have flung themselves together for this circle of courage and tears.
“It’s very moving being out there,” says Abbe. “I’m so glad I went.” She’s going to clear her schedule and go back soon. “I’m very emotional, very glad. If I could communicate to you what it’s like to be there. If people could see it and experience it, well then number one...” But Abbe can’t finish the sentence. “I can’t finish the sentence, because I’m crying.”
“Let me just say,” says Abbe Waldman DeLozier through her tears, “that there would be millions out there. Millions.”
The following article from CounterPunch may be seen on the web here.August 9, 2005
Cindy
Sheehan in Dallas
What One Mom has to Say
to Bush
by Mike Ferner
“That
lying bastard, George Bush, is taking a five-week vacation in time of war,”
Cindy Sheehan told 200 cheering members of Veterans For
Peace at their annual convention in
Sheehan
left the VFP meeting on Saturday morning and is now
in Crawford with a couple dozen veterans and local peace activists, waiting for
Bush to talk with her. She said in
She told the audience of veterans from World War Two to today’s war in Iraq, that the two main things she plans to tell the man she holds responsible for son Casey’s death are “Quit saying that U.S. troops died for a noble cause in Iraq, unless you say, ‘well, except for Casey Sheehan.’ Don’t you dare spill any more blood in Casey’s name. You do not have permission to use my son’s name.”
“And
the other thing I want him to tell me is ‘just what was the noble cause Casey
died for?’ Was it freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to
make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the
“There, I used the ‘I’ word — imperialism,” the 48 year-old mother quipped. “And now I’m going to use another ‘I’ word — impeachment — because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail.”
As
the veterans in
The
co-founder of Gold Star Mothers for Peace objected to hearing that her son was
among the soldiers lost in
She railed against the notion expressed by officials in the Bush administration that bringing the troops home now would dishonor the sacrifice of those who have died. “By sending honorable people to die, they so dishonor themselves. They say we must complete our mission…but why would I want one more mother to go through what I have, just because my son is dead?”
The
Retired Special Forces Sgt. and VFP member, Stan Goff, today initiated a “Talk to Cindy” campaign to get Bush to meet with Sheehan. Contact information for the White House is: (202) 456-1111 or comments@whitehouse.gov
Mike
Ferner is a writer in
Military Families to Join Cindy
Sheehan in Crawford;
Gold Star and Military Families from
Across Country on Their Way to
CONTACT:
Military Families Speak Out
/ Gold Star Families for Peace
Ryan Fletcher, 202-641-0277, Dante Zappala
215-520-7040
The following press release was issued
August 9 by Military Families Speak Out and Gold Star Families for Peace. Their
web sites are, respectively, www.mfso.org
and www.gsfp.org.
August 9—CRAWFORD, Texas—More members of
Gold Star Families for Peace (GSFP) and Military
Families Speak Out (MFSO) are traveling to Texas to
join the protest outside of President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he
is vacationing for the month of August.
Starting today, Gold Star families, whose
loved ones have died as a result of the war in
On August 3, 2005, President Bush, speaking
about the dreadful loss of life in
In the first 8 days of August, 36 service
members died in
President Bush has consistently tried to
hide, and to hide from, the cost of the war in
Members of Gold Star Families for Peace and Military Families Speak Out who are traveling to Crawford will be available for interview beginning on Tuesday afternoon August 9.