Report from Camp Casey
11:30 p.m. CT, Wednesday, August 10
By David Swanson
I just spoke by phone from DC with Cindy Sheehan and Ann Wright in Crawford, Texas. Cindy has been doing interviews non-stop for the past few days. Ann and Diane Wilson and others have been doing most of the speaking with the police.
Cindy had hoped to spend the night tonight in the Crawford Peace House, but is heading out to the ditch along the road instead. "If anybody's going to be arrested, I need to be out there," she said.
Ann could not confirm any specific threat of arrest, but she said that she took the rumors seriously. The rumors are that the Sheriff's men will come arrest everyone after midnight.
Cindy said that Will Pitt from Progressive Democrats of America and Scott Galindez from Truthout will be filming anything that happens. Ann said the media have been alerted.
Supporters around the country have been independently arriving at identical proposals, namely that if Cindy is arrested, we should go en masse to our local police stations, inviting the media, and asking to be arrested. I think this makes sense, and that it should happen the day after Cindy is arrested, meaning Friday if she's arrested tonight. Noon. Friday. Everyone.
There are 70 – 80 people on the site at Camp Casey at the moment, Ann said. If they are asked to leave or be arrested, many if not all of them will likely opt for arrest.
Another rumor has it that someone has already purchased the URL freecindy.org or freecindy.com.
I've been managing two sites related to this: www.meetwithcindy.org and www.afterdowningstreet.org
Having been unable to find a server capable of handling a database-driven site with the traffic being received by meetwithcindy.org (and I've tried some of the best), I've put a simple static page there that will be updated as soon as the server recovers to include a link to this section on the afterdowningstreet site, which contains all the latest news about Camp Casey:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=taxonomy/term/13
I spoke with Ann Wright for quite a while, and she gave the following report.
It's raining for the third night. There are 70-80 people on site and another 80 out in hotels or houses. Another 50 or 60 stopped by during the day to spend some hours.
The rain let up around noon and they had a very pleasant afternoon. A crew came and filmed an ad to air on local TV in Crawford (I'm trying to get a digital copy).
"There's been an incredible outpouring of donations," Ann said. People are driving for hours and staying a while and driving home, and they're bringing cases of water and other supplies. "We've got people here from Georgia, Montana, California, Alabama, New York, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Pennsylvania….The enthusiasm is amazing. People have driven 12 hours to be here.
Tomorrow, Ann said, they will be putting up 500 crosses "to symbolize the unnecessary deaths of Americans and the unnecessary deaths of Iraqis."
Where will they put them?
They will have to put them in the two slivers of roadside ditch permitted them, each about 12 by 300 feet according to Ann, and the two making up sides of a triangle. The center of the triangle would be better for a demonstration, but the local owner had the police kick everyone off.
"Now," said Ann, "the cops are always coming through to clear out cars with an inch of tread on the road or people with chairs with one leg on the road. It's not the best place if we had planned – but this wasn't planned, and that is why it's so successful."
Ann enthusiastically recounted the power of Cindy's speech on Friday night at the Veterans for Peace Convention in Dallas.
The speech:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/1226
"Cindy announced she was going and said 'Who can drive me?' and people looked around and then all the hands in the room went up….We had a caravan of 15 cars and a bus at 8:30 the next morning. And it had spread like wildfire on the internet, so 40 or 50 activists from Dallas and Austin came out."
Slowly the assemblage has acquired tents and chairs, through purchase or donation. Someone supplies everyone with sub sandwiches every lunchtime. About 50 flower arrangements have arrived and been arranged in a "beautiful flower memorial," Ann said.
Ann expressed ongoing amazement at the energy coming to the site. "People are diverting vacation trips to come here instead. People on business trips in Austin and Houston are staying an extra day to come here. Texans who have never been to Crawford and never wanted to come to Crawford are here. And the military families that are here find it so heartening to be supported by all these people."
Ann described a wife of a soldier preparing to ship out to Iraq, the mother of another who died, and an active-duty Sergeant from Fort Hood who's been to Iraq once and is going back again, but who has been speaking in uniform at Camp Casey about "the need for mothers to speak out to save their sons and daughters."
Ann was interrupted while we were talking, but came back and said, "Yeah, it really is powerful. The rain is letting up, and people are coming out of their tents. People all came here to be together and share ideas. And all because one woman came and said 'I'll sit here until the President of the United States talks to me.'"
Last night in a horrible thunderstorm, Ann said, she shouted over to Cindy's tent and asked "Are you awake?" The answer: "Are you kidding?" Cindy had a fever, a sore throat, and general exhaustion – at least that's what everyone says. She sounds anything but exhausted on the phone and through the media.
All the latest news about Cindy:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=taxonomy/term/13
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The Wonderful Crawford Petition
I was looking at the wonderful petition that people are signing to support Cindy and the Crawford Protesters.
I wasn't studying it, I was just grinning and crying all at the same time & making a few quick notes for myself. Later it occurred to me that everyone should see them and be inspired to go sign.
So the "attribution" has to go to the petition itself. Go look -- it'll rock you. All the states upon states, all the tones and attitudes and passions and determination. Thousands and thousands of people have signed.
Here are a very random sprinkling of phrases and words from the Crawford petition.
George's pride goeth before his fall .. abomination .. deranged man .. until you name yourself dictator for life .. Cindy, you have exceptional gumption .. stand up to the vultures who are pulling your strings, George .. hypocrisy of the Coward from Crawford .. under the command of the puppetmaster Karl Rove .. the extreme degree of deceit .. you forced a grieving mother into the Crawford Ditch .. Bush's turn to run but he can't hide .. I love my country, but hate my president ...
From Pasadena CA, "I am ashamed of anyone who is still being fooled by this Administration."
My own observation is that George is cringing in his palatial spider hole now.
If you can't get to Crawford, you can start your own homegrown army-of-one protest. You only feel ridiculous the first few forays out. Tiptoe in.
Gold Star and military families from across country on their way
Truthout snagged this press release from GSFP and MFSO...
In their grief and anger
they do not see that George Bush doesn't give a damn. He has no conscious. He feels no shame.
Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie, but rather mourn the apathetic throng, the coward, and the meek, who see the world's great anguish and its wrong, and dare not speak.
Ralph Chaplin
Rev. Peter Johnson
Peter, one the youngest surviving staff members of Martin Luther King's organization has been to Crawford, spoke to the people, and is now bringing in the things they need, porta pots, water, food, security, today Martin Luther King III is supposed to arrive.
David Van Os, Democratic Candidate for Attorney Gneral also arrived Friday afternoon to speak to Cindy and to the crowd. Kent Bratcher a local Waco attorney accompanied Peter Johnson and David Van Os to assess the needs of the people.
I am amazed and very thankful for wonderful people who have stepped up to the plate to help Cindy and all of the other people who are out there battling the heat.
I hope the world sees that we have a president who has a personal war going on in Iraq and has virtually ignored the families of these fallen heroes. The blood of every soldier in on the hands of George W. Bush. He lied to this country so he could take revenge on Saddam Hussein, he didn't care about the young Americans he sent into battle.GEORGE BUSH IS AWOL, HE RAN FROM COMBAT....but he didn't mind sending our children into war. If this war is so right, he should send in ginna and tonic, his twins to fight for this country.
The world needs to take a hard long look at what is happening in Crawford. We have a man who bought the White House who cannot speak because he has lied so much since he started this war.
Even his own wife doesn't have the heart to go and speak to these women. You call the Bush's religious people, what a joke they are dangerous people who need to be out of politics.
We need to support Cindy and everyone out there, they need to stay until the world knows and understands that George W. Bush is a hypocrite and a liar.
He had time to go to a fundraiser, but no time to speak to a mother who is grieving over her dead son. Her son was murdered by Bush, clear and simple.
The press has protected this president long enough.