Cindy Sheehan Busted In Front Of White House.....

My Chat with Scott Galindez
By Marc Ash
t r u t h o u t | Interview

Monday 03 October 2005

An interview with TO managing editor Scott Galindez about his coverage of the events at Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, and the migration of what began there to the massive anti-war demonstration in Washington, DC, on September 24th and beyond.
Marc Ash: Scott, thanks for spending a little time with the readers to share your observations and experiences. Just to give the readers a little background on you, you're no rookie when it comes to political actions. You've spent years working with grass roots organizations, and you are a veteran of numerous actions over the years. In fact, Father Philip Berrigan was your mentor, was he not?

Scott Galindez: Well, one of ... I met Phil Berrigan through a couple of others, William Thomas (Thomas), who has been vigiling in front of the White House against Nuclear Weapons since 1981, and the late Mitch Snyder, who I lived in community with for close to a year, working to end homelessness ...

Thomas was the first, along with his wife, Ellen. They were there when I passed through Lafayette Park one day, across the street from the White House. One of the other vigilers shouted out that I was too closed-minded to listen. He struck a nerve, and I stopped. While listening to their stories, I witnessed the Park Police ticketing the other vigilers and homeless people in the park for camping. It was that night that I became an activist. I was inspired by Thomas's story: he gave up everything he had to dedicate his life to eradicating nuclear weapons from our planet.

Then I met Mitch Snyder, who trained me in organizing as I helped coordinate the Mid-West for Housing Now! I would be remiss to not also mention B. Wardlaw, who actually asked me to help him with the organizing. After the march, I joined the Community for Creative Non-Violence, which runs what was then the largest shelter for the homeless in the country. I was assigned to help coordinate the Winter Campaign. We brought groups in from around the country to spend a week on the streets of DC by night and on the Capitol steps by day. At the end of each day, we would report to Mitch on our progress, and he would advise us on what we were doing wrong and what we were doing right.

I worked a lot with Phil Berrigan, and he taught me more about having faith - that while we don't see immediate results, our actions do have an effect in the long run. A few others who taught me a lot along the way were Paul Wellstone, Lisa Fithian, David Solnit, and you, Marc ... It would be probably take the rest of the article to talk about everyone, so let's stop there.

MA: The coverage of the events at Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, which you engineered along with William Rivers Pitt, broke new ground for independent, non-profit reporting. In fact, several mainstream news organizations quoted TO as their source. Did you and Will beat them to the punch?

SG: We beat them to the punch by covering Cindy Sheehan before she became a media sensation. We interviewed Cindy in Fayetteville, NC, in March and ran many of her own writings prior to that. What happened was reporters did Google searches for background, and there we were. TO doesn't wait until someone is a star to cover them if what they are saying is important. There were many others in Crawford who we have already covered: Aidan Delgado, Tim Goodrich, Camilo Mejia, Jeff Key, and Kelly Doherty from Iraq Veterans Against the War; Nadia McAffery, Celeste and Dante Zappala of Gold Families and Military Families Speak Out.

If the corporate media had been telling their stories to the American people, a million people would have been in the streets on September 24th. That is why t r u t h o u t is growing every day: we are telling the stories that the corporate media is refusing to tell.

MA: When you arrived in Crawford, did you know right away that something special was happening there?

SG: I knew something special was happening on my way to Crawford. I had a T-shirt on that said "A war budget leaves every child behind." On both of my flights, people asked me if I was going to see the grieving mother. Her message had already reached the mainstream. It didn't take long once I was there to see the excitement; even though we arrived the day after a huge rainstorm, the spirit at Camp Casey was amazing. Ann Wright was coordinating a move of tents to make room for the crosses that had just arrived from Santa Monica. Reverend Johnson, of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was giving non-violence trainings, and back at the Peace House, the big complaint was that PayPal couldn't handle all the donations coming in. It was only day 5, and Camp Casey was growing fast.

MA: To an objective observer, Cindy Sheehan's stand at Crawford, Texas, looked like a turning point in the war against the war. Was it an epiphany for the nation?

SG: It was a turning point. I met many people who told me they had never attended a demonstration before, but when they saw Cindy, they were moved to act. They didn't just go to Washington on September 24th, they went to Crawford and spent days in 100-degree heat. It was the simplicity of the question "What noble cause?" Everyone got it, and when Bush couldn't answer the question or meet with her, people woke up. The media hadn't covered anyone challenging Bush before - now a grieving mother is asking what noble cause her son has died for and the Bush administration can't answer the question.

MA: There were a lot of powerful moments at Camp Casey in Crawford. You were there, what do you remember most vividly?

SG: There was one thing that happened more than once and it was what impressed me most about Cindy. Whenever a pro-Bush/pro-war protester came across the street to confront her, she would ask them to walk with her and talk privately away from the cameras. I saw on two occasions and heard about more where those conversations ended in hugs. There was also a night when Jeff Key, a Marine, went across the street and invited the counter-protesters to join Camp Casey for a candlelight vigil honoring the troops. A few minutes later he came across the street carrying a giant pole with an American flag on top, followed by the counter-protesters. Camp Casey greeted them with cheers.

On the stage at Camp Casey II there were Joan Baez, Steve Earle, and Jesse Dyan. Jesse was the sound guy who wrote a song called "What about Your Son" that really captured the mood of the camp. Each day there were other amazing moments. There was even a wedding at Camp Casey.

Another not-so-great moment that I will never forget happened when the crosses were mowed down by a pickup truck. Minutes after we learned that it happened, a Camp Casey volunteer logged on to her computer and found out that her pen pal was killed in Iraq. It was another one of those moments - Cindy rose to the occasion and comforted her.

The climax was when I arrived at the Capitol in Austin with Cindy on the Veterans for Peace Bus. There was a sea of people waiting to greet the first leg of the bus tour. Camp Casey was taking the country by storm.

MA: Okay, the bus tour is a story unto itself, but I'd like to fast forward to the destination, Washington, DC. A massive convergence for peace unlike any this nation has seen since the Vietnam era. Set the stage for our readers - what was DC like?

SG: I have been attending demonstrations in Washington, DC, and San Francisco since the late eighties. September 24th was the largest I have attended. People were still arriving from all directions at 12:30 pm, the time the march was scheduled to begin. The organizers never got a chance to get a lead banner set up, since there was a mass of people from the Ellipse to Lafayette Park. I was looking for the lead banner, but noticed that people just gave up and started marching on their own. I went up to Pennsylvania Avenue on the Lafayette Park side of the White House and started filming. Tens of thousands of people went by before I saw the lead banner. I assumed at that time that they were pretty far back, but it was four hours later before the end of the march.

One impressive contingent was the Iraq Veterans Against the War; they had dozens of veterans of the current Iraq war marching. There hundreds of family members of fallen or deployed soldiers from this war. There were many others marching for the first time. My friend and colleague, William Rivers Pitt, frequently commented over the weekend that the anti-war movement is now the majority, and it was clear on September 24th that the majority has been activated.

Cindy said many times in Crawford that she is convinced that the Camp Casey movement will end the war. September 24th was a huge step in that direction.

The events of September 26th were the next step. Hundreds converged on the Capitol to lobby Congress, and hundreds more converged on the White House to deepen their resistance to the war by participating in civil disobedience.

It is now clear that people are no longer going to sit back and let this administration send our young people to die for a lie. When Cindy Sheehan went to Crawford, Texas, to ask the President "what noble cause Casey died for," she woke up the nation and provided a catalyst for a mainstream movement against this war.

MA: Scott, thank you.

War-Hawk Republicans and Anti-War Democrats:
What's the Difference?
By Cindy Sheehan
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 04 October 2005

The past week in DC found me in many offices of our elected officials: Senators, Congresspersons, pro-war, "anti-war," Democrat, Republican. With a few notable exceptions, all of our employees toed party lines.

Thanks to those who met with me, because, except for Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), I was not their constituent. And I believe the Republicans who met with me, whether they knew it or not, were breaking with their leader on this, since he was too cowardly to meet with me.

The War Hawks I met with made my skin crawl. They so obviously are supporting a war that is not in our nation's best interest, nor is it making us more secure. I heard from Senators Dole (R-NC) and McCain (R-Ariz.) and Representative Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) about 9/11 and "fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here." That made me sick. George Bush and his lying band of imperialist greed-mongers exploited 9/11 and our national terror of other terrorist attacks to invade a country that had nothing to do with the attacks on our country. Now, in the aftermath of those lies, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians are dead, and almost 2000 of our brave young men and women. What makes the Iraqi babies and families less precious than ours? The crime that these people committed was being born at the wrong place at the wrong time. George took his war OF terror to their doorsteps. I even asked Senator Dole when she thought the occupation would be able to end, and she was incredulous that I would even think of Iraq as an occupation: she sees it as a liberation. I really wanted to know how many of them we have to kill before she considered that they were liberated.

The War Hawks (or war-niks, as I like to call them) also use the rationale that Saddam used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. I asked Senator Dole three times where Saddam got those weapons, and she wouldn't answer me. Because the smiling, kind, patronizing War-Hawkette knew where Saddam got the weapons. He got them from the USA. Saddam was a bad guy, but he was our bad guy (see the famous picture of the grinning Rummy shaking Hussein's hand) until he decided to sell his oil to Russia and France for Euros ... then, "Oh my gosh, Saddam kills his own people!!"

We didn't care about Saddam killing his own people after the first Gulf War, when George the First encouraged the people of Iraq to rise up against Saddam. We didn't care about the Iraqi children dying from the bombings and the sanctions during the Clinton years. All of a sudden in March 2003 those things became so important that it was urgent that our troops invade Iraq. Besides, the memo to Congress in which George asked for the authority to invade Iraq specifically mentions WMDs and terrorism - it says nothing about Saddam being a "bad guy" or about spreading "freedom and democracy" to Iraq. The reasons for our continued occupation change as fast as the old ones are proven lies.

It was horrible to talk to these three war-mongering Republicans; I almost felt like I had to take a shower after each visit, but they did not affect my resolve. Congresswoman Musgrave was openly hostile when we were ushered (by her very nice staff) into her office. Ms. Musgrave actually has a son in the service, but she got very defensive when I asked which branch of the service her son, who is stationed in Italy, was in. I was asking mother-to-mother, but she basically said it wasn't any of my business. I told her she must be very worried about her son and he would be in my prayers.

I know that it is hard to have a child in military service whether in Iraq or Italy. She also "supports the president" 100%. Do these politicians not realize that the people are withdrawing their support for this war and for this president at an unprecedented clip? To support George at this point is to support a sinking stone. To support George at any time is and was a mistake of tragic and immense proportions.

The War-Hawk Dems I met with were equally, if not more, disheartening. Although my meeting with Senator Clinton (D-NY) went well, I don't believe she will do anything to alleviate the suffering of the Americans in Iraq or the Iraqi people. I don't believe that sending more troops is the solution; it will only aggravate an already untenable situation. We met in NYC with Senator Charles Schumer's aide, who told us that the Senator thinks the occupation of Iraq is a "good thing for America," but he wouldn't elaborate on why. The aide was asked if the Senator had a vested interest in keeping this war going, because the Senator is certainly not stupid enough to believe that this misbegotten misadventure in the Middle East is good for anyone. I don't think the people of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi would agree with the Senator that this illegal occupation is a "good thing."

The "Anti-War" Dems perplex me the most, however. Except for the good guys, like the members of the Out of Iraq Caucus and a few Senators, the Democratic party line is that we must allow Iraq a window of two months' time, and after the referendum on the constitution this month and the parliamentary elections in December, it will be time to attack the failed policies of George and his cabal of liars.

In my meeting with Howard Dean, he told me that the Iraq issue was "hard," and the new Democratic "Contract with America" is going to have 10 points, and the first one is going to be "Universal Health Care." I told Mr. Dean that if the Dems didn't come out strongly against the war and against George's disastrous policies, we were going to become irrelevant as a party (which is already happening) and the "hard" issue should be the one that is worked on the hardest! I'll admit that the issue doesn't seem so hard to me: George and his sycophantic band of criminals lied to the world; too many people are dead for the lies; too many people are in harm's way for the lies; it is time to bring our troops home. I am just hoping against hope that the war is on the Dems' contract somewhere. George is always pulling out the old saw that what he does in sending our children to die and kill is "hard work." I hate to see that same adjective used to describe bringing them home. The war issue is not complicated: Wrong to invade and wrong to stay. Bring our troops home. Simple.

I think if one is not speaking out right now against the killing in Iraq, one is supporting it. I believe that the members of Congress who have always been, or are now, opposed to this war, need our 100 percent support, admiration, and encouragement. Everyone else needs to be prodded in the right direction. I implored every member I spoke to this past week (and during our bus trip) to lead our country out of the desert. I believe that if they did, America would follow them through fire to bring our troops home.

Finally, I was harrassed at the Capitol Building by a thug security guard, who screamed at me to get out of the building until my next appointment. I complained to another security guard about the disrespectful treatment that I had received from the other guard and he said that most of the employees were "Republicans" and they didn't appreciate what I was doing. I have news for them: this is not about politics - to me, this is about flesh and blood. This is not about right and left, this is about right and wrong. 19 troops were needlessly killed in Iraq this past week. 19 families were destroyed senselessly and avoidably. Hundreds of innocent Iraqis were killed for just being home that day, just being out shopping, or just going about their daily lives. An average of almost three of our young men and women are killed every day in George's abomination. While the War-Hawk Repbublicans are wrongfully supporting a wrongheaded war and the "anti-war" Dems are hemming and hawing about the politics of this administration's misguided and evil policies, how many more families will get the news that their lives have been destroyed in the tragic meantime?

What are they waiting for?

Something about that woman is hopeful and effective. Screw it let's just let women run the world. Anything is better then what we got going on know.

What a kook.

"What a kook." Yes you seem to be. Most Americans believe like Cindy that Bushie deliberately lied us into war.

You know whats kooky? B-movie actors running the government and the people so out of touch with reality that they vote for him because there like sheep. they think the persona is real. Nevermind that. Tico, what do you think of the Illuminati?

I do not agree with Tico. Cindy Sheehan is not a kook. She's a citizen. She may criticize government and government officials and other citizens agree with her criticisms.

She's asking questions that many of us want to be answered.

How long will our occupation or liberation of Iraq continue?

How many more lives are we willing to expend until the administration deems that our mission (whatever that may be) in Iraq is done?

How rich and powerful must Bush, his cohorts, and his corporate cronies (who will undoubtedly finance the campaigns of future Bush-wannabes), become before enough is enough and they take their hands out of the war coffers?

Reagan's been out of power for nearly 20 years ... let it go.

She's still a kook.

You're stating an unsupported conclusion. Therefore, it is frivolous and arbitrary and no weight or merit can be given to your statement.

<shrug>

It's my opinion. Weren't you just yammering about Sheehan's right to express hers? Why do you not afford me that same deference?

Sheehan is constantly offering up unsupported conclusions. May we presume you consider them to be similarly frivolous, arbitrary, and worthy of no weight or merit?

I walked into thet one as**ole. Damn lawyers. You got me.

Debra Law, Arguing with Tico is a waste of your energy. Like plowing soil that is not fertile. He doesn't even understand the motives of his argument. Someone warned me about arguing with him when I first got here. I didn't listen. Then after a while I said to myself "What the hell am I doing spending all this energy arguing with these people". You think your having a discusion with them but it's just a degeneration of energy and progress. Please try it for awhile and i'll ask you what you think later.

From Despair to Hope
By Cindy Sheehan
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 07 October 2005

There were many nights after Casey was killed and we buried him that I had to restrain myself from swallowing my entire bottle of sleeping pills. The pain and the deep pit of hopeless despair were almost too much to cope with. How can a person be expected to live in a world that is so full of pain and so devoid of hope? I would think to myself: "It would be so easy to take these pills and go to sleep and never wake up in this awful world again."

The only thing that restrained me from committing the cowardly and selfish act of killing myself was my other three children. How could I put them through something so horrible after what they had already been through? I knew that I had to live and I knew living was going to be (and still is) the hardest thing I have ever had to do. However, I know why some people kill themselves: it is the lack of hope. For me it was the black pit of knowing that I had to wake up every day for the rest of my life with the same pain of knowing that I would never see Casey again: that I had to exist in a world without him, and just existing is no way to live.

One day about three weeks after Casey was killed, my daughter Carly came out and hit me with my reason for living: her poem, "A Nation Rocked to Sleep." One stanza reads:

Have you ever heard the sounds of a mother screaming for her son?
The torrential weeping of a mother will never be done,
They call him a hero, you should be glad he's one, but,
Have you ever heard the sound of a mother weeping for her son?
The first stanza reminded me that I was not the only one in the universe who had such excruciating grief, but the verse that helped me claw my way out of the pit of despair, one agonizing inch at a time, is the last stanza:

Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?
The leaders want to keep you numb so the pain won't be so deep.
But if we the people let them continue, another mother will weep.
Have you ever heard the sounds of a nation being rocked to sleep?
I knew when she recited those lines to me that I would have to spend any amount of time, money, or energy to try to bring the troops home before another mother would have to weep. I was ashamed of myself that I didn't try to stop the war before Casey died. I foolishly thought: "What can one person do?"

Well, I now felt that if I couldn't make a difference, I would at least try. If I failed, I vowed that I would go to my grave knowing that I gave it my best shot.

I started to gradually get 3 doses of hope back and then slide 2 doses back. I had a marvelous time in Florida during the campaign, working against George Bush. I founded Gold Star Families for Peace. I was a main speaker at the peace rally in Fayetteville, SC. Casey and I were on the cover of The Nation. I testified at Congressman John Conyer's Downing Street Memo hearings in June, 2005. I felt that I was one chip at a time eroding public support for the occupation of Iraq.

Then in August of 2005, after I had already separated from my husband of 28 years, I was sitting at home watching TV (a very rare occurrence) and I saw that 14 Marines from Ohio were killed in one incident. If that weren't heartbreaking and sickening enough, George Bush came on the TV and said that the loved ones of fallen soldiers can rest assured that their loved ones died for "a noble cause." That enraged me and inflamed my sense of failure. I did not believe before Casey was killed, after he was killed, and on August 3, 2005, that invading a country that was about as much threat to the USA as Switzerland, killing tens of thousands of innocent people all for greed, for power, and for money was a noble cause. I decided to go to Crawford to ask him what the "noble cause" is.

Then George had the unfortunate temerity to say something that has enraged me for months. He said we had to "complete the mission to honor the sacrifices of the fallen." I have been publicly calling for him to stop that for months. I don't want one more mother to have her heart and soul ripped out of her for no reason: for lies and crap. I wanted to go to Crawford to demand that George quit using my son's honorable and courageous sacrifice to continue his dishonorable and cowardly killing.

The rest is history. The more the American people came to Camp Casey, the more letters, cards, emails, phone calls, and packages of support we received, the happier we at Camp Casey became.

We realized at Camp Casey, we remembered something, after almost 5 years of the virtual dictatorship of control we have in America now: we the people have all the power. We the people NEED to exercise our rights and responsibilities as Americans to dissent from an irresponsible, reckless, ignorant and arrogant government. We realized, a little late, but not too late, that when George said, "If you're not for us, you're against us," we all should have risen in angry, righteous and patriotic unison and said: "You are damn right, you lying, out of control madman. We are so against you and your insane rush to invade Iraq."

We didn't rise up then, but Camp Casey taught us that it is okay to raise your voices against the government. Not only is it "okay" but it is mandatory if your government is responsible for killing innocents. It is mandatory, if there are no other checks and balances in place, that we the people be the checks and balances on the media and government.

I thought all my hope was KIA on the same day Casey was KIA. Carly's poem gave me a reason to live. Camp Casey, with its wonderful feelings of love, acceptance, peace, community, joy, and yes, optimism for our future, gave me back my desire to live. I can now smile and laugh and even mean it most of the time. These things we often take for granted but I never will again.

Living with hope that our world will one day exist in a paradigm of peace, love, and non-violent conflict resolution is a very good way to exist. I love being alive now and will devote my life to peace with justice so our children will never, ever be misused by the war machine again.

Thank you, America.

Thank you, Casey.

That was a beautiful piece.

She's a beautiful lady.