Geraldine Green 18.8.05

ALL OF US

and i she replied in a watery voice as she slung her hips forward over avalanche

and ice and i she cried on the hillsides crumbling soil and i she replied to herself

as she stepped like an antelope over the wall of the dead. the dead that lay like sandbags against

an oncoming river or tidal wave they could not stop they could not be stopped. and i they replied

as they marched side by side over elongated river beds like crocodile teeth and i we all cried as

we leant forward against the wind’s long breath that took ours away as we lighted our candles

each day by slow day.

and i she called to the ones who won’t return and yes they all cried in voices uncertain yet louder

and louder and i they replied to their mothers and fathers and their families called back fervent

and loud and the clouds lifted their voices into the skies

and the rains came and the rains came and the rains came down.

and the doctors sighed and the medics tutted and they all did their best and they all

did their very best because they have been trained like the soldiers who march into war and they

have been trained to be humans after all and all and all and all of us cry.

—–
Submitted by the poet via email to Peacefile ‘to share with Cindy’; forwarded to AfterDowningStreet. The poet replies:

Greg

Hello there and thank you for posting my poem on Peacefile and afterdowningstreet.org websites. I’ve been keeping up to date with latest happenings. It’s just great that Cindy Sheehan has provided a focal point for people’s own feelings and thoughts on the matter.

Thanks again

Geraldine
Cumbria
UK

An official with the “coalition” that makes up Camp Casey had been talking to the ISO to diffuse the situation. I caught snippets of what he was saying… He said things like, “If it were up to me personally, I’d have no problem at all with you guys being here. What we need to do is all meet and discuss this, and figure out how we can all come together on this… The problem some people are having is not your presence here, but that you set up a rather large book table, with large signs and banners promoting the ISO, rather than the antiwar effort and Gold Star Families for Peace… All the money we raise here is to keep the peace effort here in Crawford going [free food, beverages, tents, shuttles, etc.], while some are objecting to your selling your books which goes to the ISO…” etc. It seemed that he was saying that they would be able to stay on, but that the ISO might have to do tone it down a bit.

At a few points on Saturday, members from the ISO *did* jump up on the table, trying to get everyone’s attention, shouting things like, “We’re getting arrested,” and “They are kicking us out.” This was at the beginning, when they were told rather forcefully by someone that they had to leave. (There was a guy who was being [aggressive] about it, apparently he was a Vietnam vet; after he initially stirred it up, he disappeared from the scene. Someone told us that they thought *he* was arrested.) A few times the cops (there were two of them) did pull someone aside, to talk to privately, but insisted that no one was being arrested unless they refused to pack up their books. We watched them pack up their books in boxes, and carry them to the trunk of their car. It seemed everything had calmed down, the cops kinda faded away, it was just the Camp Casey official talking with the ISO, so [the two of us] left, figuring it was being worked out… Personally I didn’t like the presence of the cops at Camp Casey, but I have to say that they seemed to handle it professionally; they tried to calm things down, and insisted over and over, “We are not the ones kicking you out. It is the Camp Casey people who object to your presence. We are here serving them; if they don’t want you here, then it’s our job to see that you leave…”

–received via email Aug. 27, 2005

All the people at Camp Casey would do well to abandon all their isms and adopt Sheehanism. For the simple reason that its the only damn thing that has worked.

"Raw talk revival" – good article. Tnx 4 the epiphany I got fm yr description of army base kids in practical terms living a socialist life. I’ve seen that life-style as elitist privilege, but of course: It’s simply a society (the military one) taking care of its own. And why not extend this to everyone? Very good Q.

It seems the concept of socialism has taken such a bad-mouthing & beating in the US over the past century, that noone (in the Dominant Public Sphere) any longer looks at its actual practical contents. Scared away fm looking at & pointing to good solutions, simply for these solutions being too similar to the denigrated concept of socialism. Neat trick fm the powers that be interested in stalling Equitable Reciprocity. Yet the roots of the USA can be found in the proto-socialist movement of the French / New England intellectuals of the late 18th century: Freedom, Equality, Solidarity being the main slogan (slightly updated – "Brotherhood" = Solidarity). Better keep that fact shunted aside by being talked to little pieces of no consequence (again in the DPS).

Living in Norway we keep being told ours is a semi-ideal society near to socialism – the social-democratic approach. But although on the outskirts of ‘Empire’, attitudes here are strongly ‘guided’ by signals fm the US. We can do as we please, as long as our economic premises follow US ways. Which leaves fairly little to discuss. Luckily our oil makes us filthy rich, allowing a semblance of equality to be poured atop the basic inequalities. Meanwhile the ideology (?) of ‘privatization’ gnaws at the roots of our hard-won welfare-society. Which is why I’m concerned with what happens in the US. It directly impacts us pretty quickly.

So when smbd in the US speaks truth to power, that is very much in my personal interest, too. Pls keep it up.

Mr. Moses:

So, I just read your counterpunch post from today (8/22/05) and I have to admit that I’m thoroughly perplexed. I enjoyed the quotes from the soldiers and veterans that you mentioned at the end and the part at the beginning about Marx was confusing but I enjoyed the sentiment of wanting to make Marxist ideas more accessible. All in all, though I just found it to be very convoluted and I’m not really sure where you were trying to go with it. Clearly you’re alluding to a lot of things that most of us (who are not able to go to Texas right now) have no idea about. Some kind of arrests, something about the International Socialist Organization and two different Camp Casey’s. Maybe I can dig around the internet for this stuff, but I don’t have the time to follow every twist and turn of the inspiring events at Camp Casey, so you’ll have to forgive me. Since many of us have full time jobs, families and many other responsibilities it may have been helpful to a number of your readers to fill us in this information.

The only thing I could piece together was a general criticism of how radical groups (presumably the ISO) don’t take the time to listen and report from Camp Casey. Like you, I’m a fan of the ISO and I read their paper on line. The current issue actually has a long article about Camp
Casey, written from there, right on the cover. The paper comes out once a week, so I’m sure there will be another report in the paper this week too. (They seem to have a couple reporters there.) The current issue also has an interview with two soldiers from Iraq Veterans Against the War, not to mention a long review of a book about the soldier’s rebellion in Viet Nam and an interview with an abortion rights provider. All of this seems to contradict your argument. It appears that the socialists, or the ISO, at least, is doing quite a good job listening and reporting what their allies have to say. Here is the website: http://www.socialistworker.org/. Maybe if you took a second to read their ‘sectarian’ newspaper you would have realized that your attack was unfounded in reality. Now all you’ve done is dishonestly (or ignorantly) discredited all socialist groups in such a way that certainly won’t help get marx’s ideas more into the mainstream, which you claim as a goal.

In solidarity, but disagreement…

—-

Reply: With such fine resources at your fingertips, I’m sorry you find yourself digging around the internet in order to understand what was going on at Camp Casey this weekend. I really should have been more helpful. Meanwhile, as I say in my article, the socialists have been quite reliable propagandists for the peace movement. My offer still stands: I would even help them peddle lit on site.

P.S.: I have seen such high quality mail from an article. I’m going to post every bit of it at peacefile.org/phpnuke

By Greg Moses

AfterDowningStreet / CounterPunch / PeaceJournalism / OpEdNews / BellaCiao / UrukNet / SamHamod

If by socialism you mean the kind of world that officers’ kids enjoy, then I’m pretty much for it. It’s the kind of world I grew up in. Free health care, pretty good job security, cheap movies (that I could afford to attend every night in a row), swimming pools, bowling alleys, shooting ranges, craft shops, safe streets, and no private property to speak of. The toughest day on base was the day you “cleared quarters”, when a soldier with clipboard would come to your house and tell you whether you had to spend another day scrubbing the most out-of-way corners of your home so that it could be turned over to the next family. Of course, if you passed that dreaded inspection, you were off to see the world, living somewhere far away in quarters recently cleared.

So I have spent the better part of a day trying to figure out what is making me feel so anxious throughout my body as I think about the day the socialists got kicked out of Camp Casey Two, arrested actually for the crime of not having better relations with the camp’s organizers. Like me, some of these camp organizers have learned their socialism in ordinary places and have fully enjoyed the writings of great socialist thinkers such as Karl Marx.

In fact, the first place I found “the best of Karl Marx” was on my grandfather’s very short bookshelf, in his study at the back of that beloved home in Highland Park, Texas. His name was Russell Moses and I was named after him, although from an early age everybody decided it would be better if people used my middle name so as not to confuse me with him. But like I say, the bookshelf was very short, and right beside the Reader’s Digest anthologies, grandpa kept an anthology of Marx.

I don’t know how America got to be so juvenile since then, but there was a time when a Southern boy with one glass eye could go to West Point, get a good job in the Army, retire as a Colonel, dedicate his retirement to teaching, vote as a Lincoln Republican, and die in East Texas with a mind open enough to see that Marx is simply one of the best reads going. I mean, even if your only interest is quality writing, why would you not have some affection for good ol’ Karl right next to (because it’s never in) the best of Reader’s Digest. Too bad grandpa died before I finally re-read Marx more thoroughly. We might have had a quite wonderful chat about that. In terms of pure writing, I’d have asked grandpa if he’d ever read Adorno.

From the very beginning of the post 9/11 debacle, socialists have been quite reliable opponents of the Bush juggernaut. They predicted more or less where this was all heading, and they hit the streets early hollering about it. Some of my best sources of news these past years have come from lists organized by socialists. Moms of dead or endangered soldiers might find out they have more in common with socialists than they would otherwise think. So I hope the parties work something out. In terms of world history, America is sadly missing out on the great secret that socialism is a mainstream movement, adopted by base commanders everywhere as the best way for officer’s kids to be raised. Not to mention land grant universities such as my alma mater, Texas A&M.

Meanwhile, when Cindy Sheehan attempted to re-center herself at ground zero of a peace tornado that blew up overnight over the Texas prairie, she pointed our browsers to lewrockwell.com, which is not socialist but libertarian. In Texas, if a libertarian stands a far better chance than does a socialist of coming out and not getting beat up, it has nothing to do with anyone’s considered opinion of the issues. It’s just the way our contradictions work down here. But libertarians also have been pretty reliable opponents of the so-called war on terror and right up until Saturday, even in Texas, the libertarians and socialists have stood in solidarity against the extremist initiatives of the Bush administration. Now is not the time for either side to provoke a sectarian sideshow.

If the ISO would consider it, a simple compromise may be possible. Do your tabling on the county road at Camp Casey One. It is public property. You have as much right as anyone else to be there. Even libertarians must agree with that. Plus, you’ve worked as hard against the war as anyone and for just as long if not longer. Showcase your own veterans. If PETA could work something out in the middle of all these meat farms; then it can be done. And if you need a volunteer next weekend, give me a call and a ride from Austin. I’m not (nor have I ever been) a member of the ISO, but I’ve always enjoyed your book tables.

Now if you’ll just bear with me for another 860 words, I’d like to tell you about Saturday night under the big tent. The libertarians were there of course, and the Democrats, the carnivores and the vegans, I can’t imagine that some Republicans didn’t sneak their way in to find out how to keep their kids and partners from being killed. And if we must know, the radicals were there too, even long after the arrests, even if they were not pushing those sectarian newspapers that you see at nearly every public rally these days, yes Virginia, even in Texas.

Our homespun sage Steve Earle said at the end of the evening (and this much has been previously reported) that we have to do two things: proceed with respect for others, that’s number one. And second, we have to respect our own views of things by refusing to self-censor. In this age of emerging transparency, nobody hides for very long anyway. Why get caught trying?

And I think this need for raw honesty was the artistic motivation for why James McMurtry played his Oklahoma tom-tom song (the same one covered so well, so well on Ray Wylie Hubbard’s new CD). This just ain’t the time to sing like we’re living in Disneyland. Just as slick talk and censorship got us into this godawful butchery, raw talk is going to cut the path that gets us out. Under the listening tent, we have to put it just the way we feel.

On stage Saturday night under the listening tent, although I can’t find news of it anywhere, not even in the so-called alternative press, there was a long line of emissaries from military families, including Iraq veterans themselves, all of them bringing open messages from within the ranks of the military. Fight like hell to end this war! That’s what they want us to do for them. That’s what we have to do anyway. So there are a lot of people, them and us included, who we cannot afford to let down.

My personal favorite was Eddie Boyd who on Friday flew all the way down from Baltimore and who Sunday would be flying all the way back in order to try and keep his job. When they asked if anybody wanted to speak from stage he said hell yes I do, and he said it plain. He said:

“I was one of those guys who fell for the con. I was one of those guys who believed we were out to defend democracy and bring freedom to Iraq. Besides in the neighborhood where I come from, there were not too many options. Eight out of ten of my best friends back home died from a life of crime.” (Back in his neighborhood, kids weren’t treated like officer’s kids.) Eddie was at Camp Casey to support Sister Sheehan and he wanted us to know that there are lots of honest, hard working people who feel this war is insane.

“And do you want to know what terrorism is?” asked Eddie. “Terrorism is being the richest nation on earth and letting 43 million people go without health care. Terrorism is giving money to large corporations for contracts in Iraq while refusing to put money into schools and hospitals. In Baltimore cameras are watching you 24 hours a day, and they say they are protecting our rights. They say they’re fighting for your right to speak. But ever since this war started I got less and less rights. I’m pissed off at this administration.”

“Right over there,” says Eddie pointing next door. “Is a president on Va-Ca-Tion! We’ve got wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the Philippines and other places. And this man,” says Eddie pointing, “decides to go on vacation! Today the line must be drawn.”

“When I came back from Iraq my mom could not understand where I was. Yes, physically I was all right. But mentally and spiritually I was dead. If we love our kids so much why don’t we keep them from putting on uniforms?”

“And what about the female soldiers who get into the military and face sexual harassment and assault. Don’t they too deserve every right to live in peace? If you want to find a terrorist, look at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that’s where the terrorist lives! And we need to do something about it!” As I scribble to keep up best I can, I think, Eddie Boyd has earned the right to say these things, and he has already paid too high a price. Will he be able to keep his job after all in the land of the free?

I take notes on sheets of paper folded into eight squares, which is sixteen squares of notes per sheet, if you count both sides. What I have just reported from Eddie Boyd is three and a half squares of notes from a 24-square evening of speeches. And I’m not finding any of this stuff online. Socialists looking for something to do? Why not come here and listen? With all due respect for those who bring literature, there is a crying need in the world today to get the words spoken from this tent out.

—–

Note: Democracy Now clips from Saturday Night, Aug. 20.

By Greg Moses

IndyMedia Austin / UrukNet / AfterDowningStreet

Two weeks ago in Crawford, Texas there was a lonely Peace House with payments to make and not much money in the bank. Today, there is not only a Peace House with enough money in the bank to pay it off, but there are two (count ‘em two!) Camp Caseys that now reach out and around the vacation home of the President of the USA, supporting a peace movement that the mainstream media are having a difficult time hiding.

And where is the money coming from? From the same places the people are coming from who show up to the Peace House every day. From all over the country. And a movement that some thought would die overnight after Cindy Sheehan left town to care for her ailing mother? That movement will surely be swelling to the largest numbers ever Sunday night as confirmation is spreading at the speed of light: Joan Baez is coming!

One of the Peace House organizers, Kay Lucas, speaking from her home in Moody, about 25 miles south of Crawford, says she doesn’t know how many letters her colleague Johnny Wolf picked up at the Dallas Post Office recently, but she does know that when the postal workers there found out that the Crawford Peace House was in the building, they spontaneously came out and applauded. As for what’s going to happen to the Crawford postal workers who sent all those letters back to Dallas, under the excuse that they were not properly addressed, Lucas says she doesn’t know that yet either. But right now she has to get busy finding some ice if you don’t mind, because another hot day is on the way, and they are already out of ice.

But the point of the postal story is that a peace flood is rising among the people of the USA, and it really can’t be stopped. Right now the question is not IF this peace movement is going to stop this war in Iraq. The only question is when. Because new voices are rising every day.

On Saturday Renee Kaplowitz of Austin and her daughter Dominique were in Crawford for a peace pilgrimage. Out at Camp Casey One, the famous bar ditch encampment along Prairie Chapel Road, Dominique strolled the county road hand-in-hand with an even younger girl and handed out folded paper peace cranes from a clear plastic bag. “Would you like a peace crane?” she would ask folks lined up to catch shuttles to Camp Casey Two.

The peace crane tradition among children was started by Sadako Sasaki of Hiroshima who folded them from her hospital bed, because she thought that if she folded 1,000 of them, the gods might release her from atom-bomb-induced leukemia. Since then, the folding of peace cranes has been a way for children to make peace, especially during August, when memories of the atom bombs are memorialized.

Later Saturday, out at Camp Casey Two, Dominique stood with her mother under a white canopy, facing neatly-placed rows of white crosses that glowed under the light of a full moon. With the light of day nearly faded into navy blue, Dominique and Renee stood together as down the tiny country road walked a tall trim soldier, trumpet in hand. The soldier stopped in front of them, raised the horn to his lips and played taps. There was hardly a whisper among the 300 or so witnesses who stood under the crystal clear dusk sky.

And then, for Renee, suddenly, it all came back. “I mean you act as if it’s gone, but it’s just not.” When she was seven years old, explains Renee, her father died. “It never goes away.” Into the clear night air, in answer to the silence of the prairie, Renee started singing. And her voice rang through the night like a trumpet.

“Let there be peace on earth!” To the gathered crowd, Renee’s singing sounded like the next perfect thing. To Cathy Courtney of Houston, Renee’s first line was immediately recognizable as a 1955 hymn by Sy Miller and Jill Jackson. So Cathy joined in. “And let it begin with me.” Together they sang the next line: “Let there be peace on earth, the peace that was meant to be.”

By the time it was over, with the full song sung, and the crowd milling slowly back under the huge tent, Dominque was hugging her mother with both arms, and Renee rested her wet cheek on her daughter’s shoulder.

So if you wonder where the money’s coming from, or the people, or the voices, or the soul of this newfound peace movement out here on the Texas prairie, then look no further than the place where Renee Kaplowitz was standing on Saturday night. Because this story, like Renee’s memory of her father, ain’t never goin’ away.

—–

NOTE: An earlier version of this story assumed that Renee’s father had been killed in war. But that has not been confirmed. The relevant sentence has been revised accordingly.

By Greg Moses

UrukNet / CounterPunch / OpEdNews / AfterDowningStreet
/ BellaCiao

Not having Cindy Sheehan in Crawford Friday turned out okay. Her absence didn’t stop the media from crowding around a noon prayer vigil. And nobody I talked to was planning to cut short their stay on account of her absence. In fact, as usual, folks were sort of falling in love with the land and each other, wondering how many days more could they squeeze in.

Take the example of Katie Sterling of Fort Worth and her traveling companion Pam Humphrey of Burleson, Texas. In the sweltering afternoon heat across Cedar Rock Parkway from the Crawford Peace House, they were tending to a field of 40 cars parked in neat rows, talking with big smiles about last night’s sleepover in the network of bar ditches that has become Camp Casey. “We planned to stay in Waco with relatives, but we couldn’t leave, so we slept in a ditch and it was great!” And why couldn’t they leave? Because they were having too much fun.

Humphrey has kicked around North Texas as a journalist and activist, but these are hard times in hard country and she had to let the journalist part go. The activism part is dedicated to a group called the Smarty Pants Liberals, who have made a project out of liberating the local Congressman, Democrat Chet Edwards, so he can vote less Bush-like. They were happy to see him vote against CAFTA, but would like to see less capitulation to the Patriot Act or the war agenda, two issues that Cindy Sheehan has dragged into the district behind her. The Smarty Pants met with Edwards this week, says Thompson. Although Cindy isn’t in town, the effects of the movement might help move a Bush country Congressman, we’ll see. Humphrey also organized a local vigil in Cleburne, outside the Edwards office, one of hundreds of local vigils held in solidarity with Cindy across the nation Wednesday night.

Or take the example of Dominic Stewart Guido of Ithaca, New York. He was born on the ninth of July, which makes him eligible to run for president in 2040. His mother Lisa is on maternity leave and could think of no better place to lounge around relaxing. “What better place is there for mothers and children than here?” asks Lisa as she points out Dominic’s older brother who in turn has found a playmate nearly his age, a little girl with streaks of body paint in black and white. Lisa and her partner Audrey have planned a full week here, and they are happy to be part of this.

To this little cluster of moms and kids, New Mexico poet Rick Burnley offers one of his anti-war poems that begins with the words “Georgie Porgie.” He has several of these poems that he’s been reciting at least since Feb. 2003, back when the peace movement first peaked before the Iraq war. And he is a preservationist noted for finding ways to keep developers from exploiting areas of his hometown, Placitas where coyote, bear, and deer drink from a creek, and great horned owls and bald eagles soar overhead.” Some time later, as I’m resting near Rick under the lush but narrow Camp Casey windbreak, he tells me how much he enjoys this green, cool space. It’s not quite what he expected to find.

No doubt Camp Casey has its focus in the illegal war on Iraq and the premeditated murders of men who have been killed in a lie, but when people like Pam, Lisa and Rick are drawn together, they bring with them shade and steady breezes for broader cultural refreshment. Time and again, people from so many places are finding each other in a long lost community. How can so many people from so far away find themselves so much in the same place?

“It’s like the hundredth monkey,” says a schoolteacher from Madison, Wisconsin as we ride a packed van out to camp from the Peace House. She is referring to a popular theory of social intelligence that says when a certain number of individuals adopt a new behavior, it mysteriously becomes a social change. “Cindy was the hundredth monkey.” Once she stood up, it was time for everyone to stand. Folks in the van are nodding. I count four women and four men, all of them including me appear to be eligible for senior discounts. Somtimes those first hundred monkeys take their damn time.

*****

On this trip out, I notice something different as we pass the millionaire ranch that drew so much attention last week. Beginning about there, I notice that an American flag has been hung along with a sign. Then two SUVs pass in the oncoming lane with double flags attached to windows. It is time for our driver to point something out. “We have some counter-demonstrators out here. Dozens of vehicles involved. If they attempt to draw you into a confrontation, don’t go there. Don’t laugh at them. Don’t point a finger at them. Don’t flip a finger at them. And remember this triangle of grass belongs to the woman building that big house over there and she doesn’t want anybody on it, so stay off the triangle.”

Although Cindy is not at Camp Casey, familiar signs of leadership persist. Lisa Fithian and Jodie Evans are holding an open meeting in full sunshine, which is about as high level as you can get out here when Cindy’s not around. Folks just let them do their business, keeping a respectful distance. In a pair of shaded chairs, Annie and Buddy Spell chat quietly with an empty chair nearby for anyone who needs it. And that colorful guy who fired the shotgun last week was right, this is a battle of port-o-potties. Last week Camp Casey got one (“the victory of the week,” says Buddy, giving all credit to Austin attorney Jim Harrington). This week there are five.

Interspersed between the Texas cars that line both sides of the parking area along County Route 450A (the brand new mapquest name for Morgan Road) one finds license plates from Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Arizona, California, Iowa, Indiana, Maryland, and New York. Already there are bumper stickers that say “We Support Cindy Sheehan.” Up through the vacant road comes a woman with bullhorn asking: “is there anyone with a medical background?” Are you a doctor she asks a guy walking next to me. Thanks for the compliment he answers, but no.

One right after the other I see two t-shirts dedicated to soldiers named Torres, but it turns out they are two quite different stories. Sgt. Daniel Torres was killed on Feb. 4 this year by a roadside bomb in Iraq, one week after finding out that his partner was pregnant with his child. “He had a hunch it would happen,” said his father Sergio, who lives in Ft Worth. “When he came to visit us in December, he told us he didn’t know if he would return.”

Army Spec. John M. (Juan) Torres was found dead on July 12, 2004 in a latrine in Afghanistan. Neither his family nor buddies believe the Army report that says he killed himself. He was due to come home in two weeks. When the People’s Weekly World saw the Chicago father of the dead soldier carrying a protest sign about his son’s death, they followed up with a story in February. Today the elder Torres carries the same sign: John M. Torres, murdered by CID in Afghanistan. The mystery is a reminder that opium and heroin are primary exports of the region in which Torres died by gunshot.

“Bush Lies,” says a sign propped along Morgan Road. “Why does the media scrutinize the grieving mother and ignore the president’s lies.” That’s a pretty fair question for just about every example of media I can think of except for Amy Goodman who is standing nearby. “Meet the new Army of One” says a sign with a face of Cindy Sheehan, but here today is the network of one standing around in her default black jogging suit, a long distance runner if ever there was.

AM 1360 KLSD, San Diego’s Progressive Talk is just wrapping up its West Coast morning show, broadcasting live from Camp Casey, just as Amy Goodman had earlier broadcast live to her East Coast audience with the morning sun still low. And I’m beginning to notice among reporters on the scene today, laminated tags with White House logos on them. The presidential press corps, too? Talk about both sides of a see saw.

*****

One of the shuttle cars has just pulled up and a fellow tugs hard on an overstuffed backpack to get it out of the trunk. “I have enough in here to last me five days!” he brags. “And I love camping!” Can you tell he’s not put off by Cindy’s absence?

I’m almost to the end of the line along Morgan Road, and the chatter is lively. “I brought some white t-shirts, and I can write what I want on them.” The guy is ready to turn with this movement on a dime.

Now I’m at the PETA booth where the camp food is vegan or else. PETA is cooking free veggie burgers and barbecued veggie ribs. The ribs are not bad. Good sauce. But the grill is not too warm, and the ‘ribs’ are still cold on the inside. Still, the flavor is okay and nobody had to die. One of the cooks takes a call and talks a little about what it’s like to eat vegan in this part of the world. Either he eats grilled veggie ribs at camp or microwaved veggie ribs at the motel. As I scan the horizon I wonder where did they put the cows and goats today? The guy should write a book: how I staffed a PETA booth on County Route 450A and nobody gave me grief.

No wonder Rush and O’Reilly are in a panic. All their pet intolerances are softening up here at Camp Casey where PETA and cattle ranchers share the same street. Or as the left panel reads at the booth for Military Families Speak Out: “Hate Multiplies Hate”, “Violence Multiplies Violence”, and “Toughness Multiplies Toughness.” Note to selves: Tolerance Multiplies, Too. Across Prairie Chapel Road, a pro-Bush delegate is doing a live interview for cable news.

“Hi Diane, how you doin’?” someone says as a red shiny pickup pulls into the lane. “I’m doin’, uh, hot!” replies Diane Wilson with a grin. She eases the truck into park and steps onto the pavement. “Why don’t you try some sun screen,” says a camper. “Well,” says the bronze Gulf Coast fisherwoman, “I don’t want to start out doing something I can’t keep up.” Like wearing platform sandals. “I had on some clunkers, but I fell off them a couple of times, so I changed back to my boots.” Sure enough the brown points of the boots peek out from under her long dress. She’s used to hard work in the sun, but she has to admit that out here, “By evening you are whooped!” But you can telll by her grin that she means it in a good way. Back in the truck, she says “bye bye” and drives off.

Signs of camp organization appear at a welcome booth on Morgan Road about where shuttles unload passengers. Cree from Galveston is just now finishing a multi-colored sign that reads: “Welcome New Friends, Get Oriented Here.” A white board is being filled in with the day’s schedule and other camp info such as lead volunteers for task groups (Food, Traffic, Welcome, and Peacekeeping) and security contacts (Ann Wright, Diane Wilson, Lisa Fithian).

A canvas map handmade in Austin invites folks to place their home towns in magic marker. Only South Dakota and about three other states have yet to be claimed. Texas, California, and the NorthEast are the obvious clusters here. From the map you’d think Texas was the bluest state in the nation. In fact, with demographics that have just tipped Texas into a majority non-Anglo state, there is a call among Hispanic state legislators such as Aaron Pena to move the state into an early Presidential caucus that might better reflect a diversity not available in Iowa or New Hampshire.

Under a netted tent designated for Iraq Veterans for Peace, a dozen men are sitting close together in a circle listening to each other one at a time. It is Dustin Langley’s turn to talk about his experience as a Navy vet and his work at the “no draft no way” website. He speaks about the need to resist the way that Bush’s education agenda has made it easier for military recruiters to draw on student information collected by schools. There is provision for parents to opt out of this database, but he says the paperwork is usually buried in a stack of first-day materials that typically overwhelm folks. About this time Amy Goodman is also strolling the lane. She stops to listen for a minute, too. Just outside the netting sits Gulf War vet Rick Blumhorst, wearing his Army Green jacket, unfazed by the climbing heat index. At 100 degrees, it would still be about 20 degrees cooler than Baghdad on a hot day.

*****

Out near the rows of crosses in the naked sunlight stands a closely packed group of 75, including an impressive collection of camera crews. They are getting started on the day’s main events: a press conference at 11:30 and an interfaith service at noon, including a minute of silent prayer that is being taken up by peace activists across the country. Also, for the second day in a row, the women of Camp Casey are gathering letters for Laura Bush, asking her to intercede in the war policy of her husband’s administration. The letters are taken as close as possible to the Bush ranch, just a little further down the road.

Interfaith ministers for the noon program have been transported in three large vans to the first memorial crosses of Arlington West. There the pastors, priests, and rabbis debark for a silent walk up Prairie Chapel Road. Juan Torres of Chicago leads the procession with the sign that he has made for his son. And the mother of Daniel Torres marks the end of the line with her message: “Bush lied and killed my only son.” At the gathering point for the interfaith event, all the clerics kneel facing SouthEast, focusing their attention on the crosses that remember the dead.

As the ministers rise for a second prayer, I overhear a cell conversation at the Southern tip of the triangle. She is talking about all the giving that is going on out here. A man who shows up with food for 100. A florist who sends out 35 dozen red flowers to adorn the crosses. It’s enough to make you cry on the phone talking about it.

Rev. Andrew Weaver of Brooklyn is talking now about how the nation has allowed too many people to grieve alone in their losses to the war. But now, thanks to Cindy, he says, “We shall no longer mourn alone and grieve alone. We are in solidarity with their grief. In prayer he asks that we be neither blue states nor red, but “states of compassion.”

Moving back along Morgan Lane I see a woman carrying a flag-colored umbrella. “That’s a nice umbrella,” I say, hoping she will stop and say something about herself. “Yes, it’s an Estee Lauder,” says the woman as she passes me by. “And that’s why you don’t have one, dear,” says her companion smiling at my poor self as she moves by. It is about this time that I notice the shiny Lincoln Navigator being used by the CBS news crew. I don’t have one of those either. Looking at their blue and white umbrella folded up on the ground I wonder if it’s Estee Lauder, too.

At the Southern tip of the triangle someone has posted a No Trespassing sign to remind us that the little green patch of grass and gravel is private property, belonging to the woman building the the big house across the street. In the middle of the triangle stands Deputy Kolinek. But what exactly is he going to do when Amy Goodman walks right past him? She’s not waiting for her Democracy anymore on this high noon in Texas. May blessings shine down on her head this blazing interfaith day….

By Greg Moses

IndyMedia New Orleans / BellaCiao / UrukNet / CounterPunch / OpEdNews / LeftWardNet / AfterDowningStreet / SamHamod / GlobalResistanceNetwork

Two months ago while exhausted from a Summer Soulstice peace festival, and while looking with dismay into a long hot summer of war, Louisiana attorney Buddy Spell, his spouse Annie, and their guest of honor Cindy Sheehan decided they needed to do something, but not something too high energy. So they browsed through the train schedule and designated an Amtrak Crescent as their Peace Train. Come September they’d board the train in New Orleans and put out word to folks along the way to hop on for a ride to the big peace march in Washington D.C. That would be enough to keep their peace hopes on track. Of course, that was then.

“We had about 60 people signed up before Cindy went to Crawford,” says Buddy, “but that has tripled.” With a pre-boarding rally in Covington, Louisiana the night before Cindy and friends depart, the little town of Covington may soon be feeling like next month’s Crawford. And when the train hits Union Station, Buddy says ‘old fart’ activists will be greeted by the Campus Action Network, and wherever they go for the weekend, they will be marching 500 strong. And that’s how you go in just a couple of months from a little ol’ z-net zap to a global headliner by way of the little ditch that could.

Of course internet aficionados of the Crawford Peace House will know Buddy best as the daddy of Smudge kitty, who got semi-famous when somebody wrote about the little critter pouncing among the Rosemary branches last week. But Buddy’s not bitter about that at all. “No, I’ve just been practicing law for the past 20 years, working my ass off. And Smudge kitty, all she does is show up! Now somebody wants to sell pictures of her on EBay to raise money for Gold Star Families. And a New York publishing attorney is working on a children’s book.” As you can tell, when it comes to Smudge, Buddy is just as proud as he wants to be.

As organizers of the Louisiana Action Network, Buddy and Annie have been acting as their own lawyers and law enforcement liaisons for years. They are driving back to Crawford Wednesday night because the McClennan County Sheriff’s Department wants them there. There is a big move coming up, and believe it or not, the movement did not peak out last weekend as expected, so the complexities of keeping all things smoothly flowing are growing by the hour. Buddy and Annie made a good deal of headway with the local cops last week, so they need to get back to work.

As Buddy talks about organizing peacekeepers for last week’s events, I tell him that no peacekeepers were apparent to me when I was there. “When this is all over with,” he assures me. “I’ll tell you how that works. And I won’t mind giving up all my secrets when this is over, because this ain’t never going to happen again. It’s a perfect storm.” In language and tone, Buddy is slipping into his courthouse drawl, the kind of talking that gets things done among jurors and judges across the South.

Buddy started out his law practice in 1989, representing clients like Halliburton, Brown and Root. In 1993 he switched to criminal law and finds that he likes his new clients better. For one thing, they are human clients, not corporate. For another thing, he gets to represent some innocent clients these days, whereas with corporate clients, “that was never a possibility!” 1996 he became law partners with his spouse Annie, otherwise known as mommy to Smudge. And they have been keeping the faith in the peace movement with no idea that the dog days this year would prove to be so cool.

“In two days Cindy did through pure moxie what a lot of us in the peace movement haven’t been able to do in two years,” says Buddy. “It’s going to galvanize the movement. Lots of old problems have been forgotten.” There is no more talk, for example, that the ANSWER coalition and United for Peace and Justice will hold separate rallies and then stage feeder marches. Thanks to Cindy’s action in Crawford, the seemingly impossible knots within the movement have disappeared, “and everyone is focusing on the central issue: the dead and those who might die.”

No one as active as Buddy and Annie has much time to take in the news coverage, but Buddy did catch the Hardball interview, and he thinks Cindy held up well. “She did an excellent job,” he says. “And so did her sister.”

Something about the land and weather at Camp Casey strips away all your poses. What’s left is something like raw core. After two weeks of heat and activity, Cindy’s image is not only suitless, it’s anti-suit. We can look at Cindy the way we look at ourselves in the mirror before and after the styles have been applied. No way for the networks to outdo that. To watch a television reporter carrying the obligatory blazer in that heat is to watch a metaphor for all the silly posing that the deadly messages of war have wrapped themselves in for the past few years.

“We show up to Crawford exhausted to begin with (because of the travel) and then the weather really does wear you down. Yet Cindy holds up well. I’m 48 years old, too, and the days I spent at Camp Casey beat the hell out of me. I was glad to go home and get some bed rest.” Yet he’s rushing back into action with high energy this week, because the pilgrims just keep coming.

—–

Note: Peace Train info at www.newdemocracyrising.com

I wanted you to know that I sincerely enjoy and appreciate your writings collecting what’s going on on Prairie Chapel Road and with Cindy. You have captured the feeling, the emotion and the reason this all exists…..

Almost everyone has such a low opinion of politics in general – a cynicism deserved – that they have tuned out all about this nation and her leadership. The only time anything rouses them out of their stupor is when it becomes “personal” to them. GW has known this and used it well.

He has used personal fear, false patriotism; imagery of every sort to whip emotions. He has built a house of cards, not only in Iraq but also in America. There is no truth any more.

As long as Cindy stays on message and keeps a tight focus on where she has a rare standing – the loss of her son, and the questioning of the Iraq War – she rings a bell of conscience within the hearts primarily of Mothers. And when Mothers get involved, things happen – America wakes up and makes change.

Conveying that without the political edge is a very important job.

I think you are doing it well. [Texas]

—–

Just a note from a Californian in Germany to say thanks for the article about A Day in the Bar Ditch of Democracy USA

—–

You’ve heard more than once the comment about a piece of writing, “I felt as if I were really there.” Well, your piece on Camp Casey is such a piece. I dearly hope the canards and demonizations of the right wing press won’t destroy her. But then, she’s lost her child; what else can they do to her? [Ohio]

—–

I just want to thank you for what is by far the best article I have read on Cindy Sheehan and life at Camp Casey and Peace House. You managed to capture in-depth the personalities, motivations, and events so beautifully. You wrote it just as I experienced it, and it’s a hard thing to put down on paper. I’ll be sharing your article with a lot of people. [Texas]

By Greg Moses

UrukNet / AfterDowningStreet / CounterPunch / BellaCiao / DissidentVoice

“Every voice that comes behind Cindy Sheehan sparks a new voice, and someone else stands up. Someone else is not afraid anymore.” Mona is speaking from the back seat of a Camp Casey shuttle as the Texas prairie speeds past. Today Mona is not afraid what the President will think. But she is worried to death about her son, who is headed for Iraq next month. Mona’s anti-war movement is on a tight schedule indeed. Even the national protests scheduled for Sept. 24-26 in D.C. may be too late.

“I was on Air America earlier this week,” says Mona, answering to the usual round of “where you from?” She called the radio station from Ohio to defend Cindy Sheehan’s protest action, and someone asked her if she was planning to go. “Well, if I can arrange it, I’ll go,” Mona recalls. After she hung up, the station got calls. Someone offered a plane ticket from Ohio to Texas. Another offered the rent car. “So I’m here for at least a week, but I can always just turn in the rent car and stay longer.”

As we debark the shuttle on a recent afternoon, Deputy Kolinek from the McLennan County Sheriff’s Department is looking jovial. “You’ve got a question written all over your face,” says the khaki starched Kolinek to a t-shirt clad protester. “What is it?” As Kolinek listens to the question, a woman hands the deputy a chilled bottle of water which he opens right away.

A mist of cool water hits me in the face. It’s Fran, one of my traveling hosts. She has grabbed this delightful contraption from a CodePink bag of tricks. It’s a spray-gun mini-fan combo in bright plastic colors. All I can say is “do it again!” Days out here are like this. Juxtapositions of worry and joy, anger and delight, water and tears.

Over on Prairie Chapel Road, beneath a few freshly erected white crosses, some flowers have been placed. For 24-year-old Kelly Prewitt of Alabama, someone has placed a collection of colorful cut flowers on the ground. Florist delivery trucks are not uncommon out here. According to a CBS news report archived at the pigstye Iraq Page, Prewitt wrote his dad to say he was homesick. Back in the fateful month of April 2003 when Kelly was killed, his dad Steve was quoted saying he hoped his son’s death would mean something, that the war would do some good. Out here in the blazing light of August, Kelly’s mother Jean tells a French wire service that her whole attitude toward the war changed in December 2003 when the reason for starting the war was exposed as “a big lie”.

For 22-year-old Irving Medina of Middletown, New York, someone has cut wildflowers from the prairie–a sunflower and a purplish bulb from a nettle or thistle. Irving’s twin brother Ivan had just survived an 11-month tour in Iraq when a West Point officer and chaplain, dressed in their best uniforms, knocked at the family home. They were soon followed by tv cameras. Irving had been killed by a “homemade grenade” while on patrol in the streets of Baghdad in late 2003 reported the Times Herald-Record of Hudson Valley. He was going to propose to a woman when he returned. All the family knew was her name: Leslie. Was it Leslie who cut the wild flowers today? As I search to find a Crawford connection, all I come up with is Medina, holy city of the prophet.

A rose and a daisy have been placed at the cross of 20-year-old Christian Schulz of Colleyville, Texas, who was stationed at nearby Ft. Hood. His death is attributed to “non-combat” causes, but he died in a war nevertheless, July11, 2003. Finally, although no flowers yet appear at the cross of Pablito Pena Briones, Jr., who died from a “non-hostile gunshot” in Falluja, something about the name Pablito reminds me how young a 20-year-old can be.

By the time I reach the end of the line, Mona is bent over, trying to rattle loose one of the crosses from a pull-cart. From a string, hanging around her neck, dangles a laminated photo of a young man in uniform.

“Mona, is that your son?” I ask. She looks up, slightly startled, then, “Yes, that’s him.” Standing up, she twirls the picture to show me the flip side, a photo of her three grandchildren. Two of them are from her son’s family, one is from her daughter’s, but she has made a group photo for her son to take with him, to give him hope, to encourage him to come back alive. Back to her work with the crosses, she says in a wavering voice, “I sure hope I don’t have to put out one of these for him.” And we both stand there crying. “Where are all the mothers,” she asks, “that these crosses belong to?” A Korean reporter looks at us, and he is also frozen stiff by this grief. His pen hovers over his notebook, but what exactly is there to say?

“Ma’am, do you want me to help you put names on those crosses?” asks the gentle voice of a brand new volunteer who has just walked the line. Which helps to get us all moving again. Under the high sun, with cicadas and crickets buzzing from their invisible homes in the grass, Mona, with her hat brim pulled down, returns to her work among the field of crosses at Prairie Chapel Road.

“Today is kind of a blur to me.”–Cindy Sheehan
A People’s History of Aug. 11, Part Three

By Greg Moses

Bella Ciao / AfterDowningStreet / CounterPunch / UrukNet / OpEdNews / SamHamod

Penny strides into the front lawn of the Crawford Peace House talking about that time up in Racine five weeks before the alleged re-election when she stood along the street with firemen and everybody, and flipped the President the bird. “Thank you,” is what Penny recalls the President saying to her. “God, what a weak man!”

Like Cindy Sheehan, Penny is motivated by the death of her son, but Penny’s son was not killed in an overseas war. He lost his life to the politics of health care funding in Texas. “I’m only the Governor,” is how Penny recalls Bush’s response when she asked him to help restore a sudden cut in funding to the cancer research trial in Arlington, Texas that was doing good things for her son. “My son died because that treatment was delayed,” says Penny. And that’s one reason why she flipped the President the bird.

As for why she’s standing here in Texas, 1163 miles from home, she says of herself and spouse Mike, who should be shuttled here any minute from the stadium parking lot: “We have no idea what we’re doing. We’ve never done anything like this before. But it’s time we became teenagers!”

“There’s a lot we have on our side,” says Penny thinking about the movement that she has come to join. “There are a lot of angels here. Every one of those soldiers killed is an angel on our side. I’m working for the Apocalypse. Either take them or take me, but don’t leave us together anymore!” she grins.

“We had some friends up in Sturgis,” says Penny, speaking about the mega motorcycle convergence that happens up in South Dakota every August. “I told everyone there to come on down.” At Sturgis, Penny had some work on display. “I went from defense work to making motorcycle seats,” she says.

Then Penny begins to give another reason why she flipped the President the bird. As a long-time employee of a famed defense contractor, Penny watched them rebuild equipment using old parts from the warehouse, then purchase new parts for inventory, charging the government the cost of placing the new part on the shelf, while returning the rebuilt equipment. One day she was asked to “fill in” some prices for parts that had been taken from old stock, but which had cost the company nothing in recent years. She blew the whistle on that operation and was laid off in 2002.

Penny’s spouse Mike could tell another bird-flipping tale, too, she assures me, but he’s apparently been taken straight to Camp Casey in the car of Austin attorney Jim Harrington, so Penny hands me her card and catches the next shuttle out. A tube of caulk hits the sidewalk near my feet and I look up to see a volunteer on the roof trying to fix a leak.

*****

Julie Decker from San Diego County, California will be well known to television audiences in her home town. She and Tiffany Strauss traveled out here by airplane Tuesday, with San Diego reporters following every move. Julie says she heard Cindy on the radio “and 20 hours later” she was on the way.

Bob Carter from Houston shows up with a bag full of supplies and comes into the kitchen asking if he can write a check. Sure says Linda, the mainstay volunteer of the day, as she scurries to keep up with a pile of chores. Linda is a retired special education teacher who moved to Fort Worth from Stockton, California in 1975. In the mid-eighties she was activated by the Gary Hart campaign for President and interreligious activism in behalf of Central America. Peace Action is the group she most closely identifies with today.

Like Linda, Bob is a retired school teacher. He taught music and band. “I’m here because this is going to be big,” he assures me. “This might be the beginning of the end of the Iraq war. If we don’t stop this guy now he might bomb Iran and Syria. I don’t trust the man.” Because Bob was attending the University of Texas, he was given a draft deferment until graduation day 1954. “In war mankind is at his worst!” says Bob standing now in the front room of the Peace House. It’s incredible how we reduce young men and women to monsters.”

A UPS delivery is coming through the front door. Hadi Jawad signs for the small stack of boxes and envelopes as the driver surveys the scene.

“What we have to do is to change the general frame of mind,” continues Bob, after apologizing for preaching. “From our training, our education, and our media we don’t hear the other side. So 70 percent of the people in the USA agreed that we should start a unilateral war against a country that posed no threat? What the hell is going on! How can you change that frame of mind?”

Bob and his spouse park their tiny dog Biscuit in a side room at the Peace House and catch a shuttle to the camp. When Biscuit starts whining, I look at Linda and she says, “they said we could walk him.” So I take Biscuit to the garden for a walk around the labyrinth. Johnny Wolf laid out the design, which looks very much like the famous pattern on the floor of the cathedral at Chartres. It makes for an interesting foot trip today. First you think you are heading steadily to the center, then you find yourself moving out to the rim. But why doesn’t the path just take me to the center, you ask yourself, and just as you’re about to curse the labyrinth, you’re standing right in the middle. Very nice. A little lesson in patience for Biscuit and me.

*****

Directing traffic this morning along Cedar Rock Parkway is Tim, a Stonewall Democrat from Tarrant County (Ft. Worth). His face is beaded with the sweat of activity as he hurries to keep up with all the arriving cars, trying to keep people from parking in unauthorized zones, and running shuttles now in three locations: the Peace House, the camp, and the satellite parking lot at a nearby stadium. He has to go back home soon, so he also is looking at the time and for someone to replace him. Here is Michelle from Houston, but the velocity of arrivals is beginning to blur my notes, so I return Biscuit to her crate and hop a shuttle.

Just before the carful of pilgrims is ready to roll, Hadi knocks on the window of the car. “We have a Gold Star Mom, and she needs to get out to the camp.” Standing with Hadi is the mom’s escort from Military Families Speak Out.” So I hop out to catch the next shuttle as Hadi pauses to speak to a reporter from Argentina. According to a press release from MFSO, two Gold Star Mothers are scheduled for arrival this morning. Barbara Porchi of Camden, Arkansas lost her son Jonathan Cheatham in July 2003. Sue Niederer of Penington, New Jersey lost her son Seth Dvorin in February 2004. Niederer is a co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace.

Out at the campsite, Celeste Zappala takes her turn speaking at a press conference: “We lost our son Sgt. Sherwood Baker. He was thirty years old. He was killed on April 6, 2004 while he was looking for the weapons of mass destruction long after everybody knew they weren’t there. He was the 720th American to die. He was the first Pennsylvania National Guardsman to die. Seven more died this week.”

“When we buried Sherwood, I knelt down beside his coffin and I vowed to him I will speak the truth for him. This war is a disaster. It is a betrayal of our military. And it’s a betrayal of the democracy they seek to protect.” With wind beating into the truthout microphone and tears racing into her eyes, Zappala turns to step away from the camera: “Bring our troops home now.”

Stepping from the shuttle with a woman from Boulder, Colorado, the first thing we see is Cindy Sheehan walking toward us along Morgan Rd., television cameras close behind. She seems just a little bit nervous as she approaches us to ask how we’re doing, gently bringing her hand up to touch a shoulder. All those cameras certainly make me a little nervous as I ask how is her fever. “It’s still getting better,” she says. She has taken some medicine.

As Cindy and her media entourage continue their stroll, I hear a reporter identifying himself with the Baton Rouge Free Press, the anti-war newspaper produced by the Louisiana delegation. I also hear Jim Goodnow slowly spelling Terlingua.

*****

The sun is high now, so I pop an umbrella and stroll along the un-named lane where the crosses are now fairly well begun: Ernesto Blanco, a former student from Texas A&M University, killed by an “explosive device” on Jan. 28, 2003. Buried at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, at a funeral attended by the Governor. “My brother touched so many people,” said his sister. “Everyone that knew him felt like they were Ernie’s favorite, and that is a great gift.” He loved his life here in Texas: country music, Shiner Bock, and the Hill Country. I hear the clink, clink, clink that senior boots make as Aggie Cadets stride across campus. His sister Carmen hears him playing guitar and singing.

Viktar V. Yolkin of Spring Branch, Texas, one of three Texas soldiers killed when their Bradley fighting vehicle “overturned”. He had come to America in 1998 and according to the Houston Chronicle, “he insisted on joining the Army two years ago so he could wear the uniform of the nation he had come to love.” His ex-wife, who tried to talk him out of the military, said his body would probably be buried back in Belarus.

Robert Wise, a 21-year-old Florida National Guardsman, killed in Nov. 2003 by an improvised explosive device or IED. At high school in Tallahassee he played soccer, ran cross country, and was commander of the ROTC. He had been in Iraq seven months and was looking forward to seeing his newborn godson. When two helicopters collided, killing 17 soldiers, Robert’s father David told the AP that his son was greeting them in heaven, “Making it better on them … you know, with that goofy grin that he had.”

Isela Rubacalva from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico was killed by mortar May 8, 2005 near a chow hall. Her father Ramon is quoted by John Ross saying, “she died on Friday thinking about coming home to eat carnitas and beans, drink a beer and go to a dance. This war is useless, as useless as Vietnam.”

Jonathan B. Shields of Atlanta was killed when “a tank accidentally struck him.” As he prepared to join a mission to Falluja, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he emailed his wife in Texas: “This is the last time we’re going to talk. I’m not coming home from this.” Before all that, he had planned to enroll in culinary school, open a restaurant, and add more children to his family.

Among the crosses, one finds an occasional crescent or star of David.

Behind me, a late model Chevy 2500 eases quietly up the nameless lane from Prairie Chapel Road. Down comes the window and a middle aged fellow looks out, his spouse smiling from the passenger seat. “Good job, good job!” he says indicating the row of crosses. “We’re driving back from California to SouthEast Texas, but we just wanted to stop by and tell you how much we appreciate you.” Several of us thank the guy for stopping by, up goes the window, and the family trip resumes. I double back down nameless lane and turn SouthEast on Morgan Road to check the leg of road where folks are parking.

*****

It looks like headquarters here, the land of the goddess warriors. Near an open van several CodePink organizers pace with their cell phones. Camp director Ann Wright is here, too. Cindy Sheehan is sitting on an ice chest speaking with a reporter.

Further up the parking ditch, here’s a pure Texas classic. From the driver’s window of her brightly polished red Ford pickup truck stick the brown leather boots of legendary Texas activist Diane Wilson. The inveterate nonviolent warrior who changed chemical history down along the coast with her hunger strikes, and who was grinning and tromping around camp at dawn like a trooper on caffeine, has now gone sound asleep in the mid-day heat. She’s hunger striking again, in case you haven’t heard. The hunger strike started on Saturday the moment the cops stopped Cindy in the bar ditch and told her she could go no further. “Are you with me?” she asked Jodie Evans, and Jodie said sure. So Jodie and about 100 others are hunger striking this action.

About this time, Biscuit’s mother comes walking by, so we chat about the little guy. I tell her that I took him for a walk. She tells me the story of how he was found near a Houston highway at the age of eight months. He’s about three years old now. I wonder if he’ll ever get over his abandonment anxieties.

As I’m marveling at the purple color of the bud or fruit of a five foot tall nettle or thistle, up comes a new car. “I’m playing hookey from work,” admits the man from Austin as he locks up and walks toward camp. The newly installed Port-O-Potty has been inserted into the line of cars here. So the foot traffic is a little heavier than before.

Attached to a car, with California Premium Trailer plates, is an artful steel trailer. Into the panels that surround the trailer an artist has cut reverse silhouettes of the symbol of battlefield death: a bayonetted rifle stuck upside down into the ground with a helmet on top. So this is how the crosses got here. Cicadas and crickets sing as waist high grass blows in the westerly wind. In the ditches one finds abundant evidence of the media flood that has come and gone, leaving tire marks in the lush grasses. Along the East side of Morgan road the fence posts are metal. Along the west side, wood. I’m out on the prairie again any my mind runs free. Dragonflies make their way against the wind.

Back down Morgan Road toward camp, I am beginning to get a sense of family. Here is Annie from the Louisiana delegation running an errand, and Diane Wilson is awake now speaking on the cell phone. She lifts a boot to wave hi, and I make a note: it’s the left boot. Cindy Sheehan and the departing reporter exchange hugs.

Nearby, Bill Mitchell is trying to get some shade and downtime, but he’s being harrangued by a lefty on revolution overdrive who want a petition signed pertaining to some issue that apparently needs lots of explanation. “I’m here,” says Mitchell finally, “because my son was killed in Iraq.” That seems to startle the lefty somewhat, but I don’t hang around long enough to learn whether it shuts him up.

The chalk tally where the crosses begin marks today’s official tally at 1,841 killed in Iraq, 13,769 wounded. Next to that is a poster with thumbnails of the first 1,000 faces. While looking at these signs I can’t help but notice the one right behind them: “Posted No Trespassing.” It won’t be too many days before the juxtaposition of these signs will define a conflict.

*****

“Motorcade incoming!” someone shouts as we all freeze and look NorthEast along Prairie Chapel Road. Is it Condoleeza Rice? Donald Rumsfeld? Bush? Because the line of cars contains a cop car, someone jokes: “He’s been in office seven years and they finally figured out what he’s guilty of.” But the joke draws an immediate rejoinder: “They won’t arrest the head honcho.” A television news truck peels away from the ‘motorcade’ and parks inside the triangle as banter in the crowd continues. “Somehow these people think you don’t have the right to change your mind.” Both this ‘motorcade’ and the next dissolve before our eyes. They were purely accidental arrangements of vehicles that somehow just got bunched up on these narrow country roads.

The precinct four road department is back again, with the driver of the truck asking, “Where’s my help?” And the response: “What do you need help doing?” The atmosphere seems to be loosening up quite a bit between protesters and officials. I take in some last images of animal life out here, Lucky Dog, a buzzard, and a butterfly, before taking the next shuttle back.

“What’s your name?” asks the woman in the passenger seat. After she hears from the driver and me, she says, “I’m Gen Vaughan.” Wow, talk about dropping a heavy name. If you don’t know, do a Google on Genevieve Vaughan to get lots of details on this pre-eminent feminist organizer and philanthropist, proponent of gift economics, matriarchal studies, and women’s radio. Then get out your calendar and save these dates for the Second World Congress on Matriarchal Studies: Sept. 29 – Oct. 2, San Marcos, Texas.

Back at the Peace House I’m going for some trunk supplies in the Honda that I rode in, but I’m also distracted by what’s parked nearby. It’s a friggin Yellow Cab! I mean here in Crawford a Yellow Cab? The mystery is answered somewhat when Air America political satirist Barry Crimmins climbs into the cab and rushes toward camp, but I wonder, did he catch that cab on Park Avenue? Anyway, I’m thinking I should hang out here at the Honda. Last car I saw here was driven by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, but that was hours ago.

The side lawn of the Peace House is now drawing a small crowd, thanks to Hadi’s world famous wok veggie deluxe. Recipe: get a Texas sized wok, preheat on an outdoor cylinder grill, add veggies and spice to taste, and serve with rice. Mark Green is going crazy for the stuff, chomping down his third bowl and telling me how to trade in electricity the honest way.

Austin musician Bill Passalacqua is singing vintage Prine and updated Zevon. He had the whole house grinning up at the VFP convention last weekend. And he’s getting some grins here too. Dick Underhill is shaking everybody’s hand. He tells me that Kay Lucas is the story to go for, so make sure the guys from truthout, Air America, and Rolling Stone don’t hear this, because I need the scoop.

But what’s remarkable here on Thursday afternoon in the side yard of the Peace House, August 11, is the tent that’s going up. Three foot metal posts are being pounded into the ground by guys that look like they’ve done this thing a time or two, and a large white canopy is secured overhead. A half dozen volunteers are dragging out cases of water from inside as portable water coolers are being dragged over the stones of the labyrinth.

Jim from Austin wants to videotape my philosophy of religion, but I take a rain check on that. The heat and the hours are swimming my thoughts around. Under this freshly raised tent, I may be getting religion right about now, but I couldn’t unpack a concept for him. We agree to try again in air conditioning.

*****

Going for a bottle of water, I meet the most interesting fellow. His name is Tom and he didn’t drive too far to get here. By some kind of luck he got out of the military in the summer of 2001, but he knows lots of soldiers who were still in when 9/11 hit. One of those soldiers, a friend of his, went to Iraq. Back from Iraq, the friend fell into deep depression and was eventually discharged. “They messed him up,” says Tom. “And if they messed up my friend, that’s not right.” So Tom went and bought a brand new digital camera, because his favorite bloggers on the internet want to see more pictures. “How do we get to camp?” asks Tom. To which I reply, “Come with me, I’ll show you.” This tent is working great.

By Greg Moses

IndyMedia Austin / OpEdNews / PeaceJournalism / UrukNet / AfterDowningStreet / Bella Ciao

CAMP CASEY, TX (Aug 11-Part Two) With a dozen or more activists still unbedding themselves from the floors of the Crawford Peace House, and with the push-pot of coffee in the kitchen already pumping dry, I think about that tall cup that Cindy Sheehan was holding this morning and decide to follow her lead to Crawford’s Coffee Station across the tracks.

Trains this morning have headed due north along this Burlington Northern Santa Fe line. Either they tow flatcars double-stacked with cargo from port Houston, hoppers that could carry Texas lignite coal, or tanker cars filled with the number one Texas export: stocks from the Texas chemical coast (although if these cars are headed north, they probably are not bound for the number one purchaser of Texas exports: China). As one train last evening made a blinking light out of the setting sun I counted 79 flashes between cars.

Crossing the tracks from the Peace House, the first line of defense offered by the town is the white limestone Security Bank of Crawford. Something about the name and location of the bank makes me want to learn more. It is an allied member of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association and an official depository for Dawes County, Nebraska. According to the FDIC bank find, the Security Bank of Crawford is actually a branch office of the Security Bank of Whitesboro, a sole subsidiary of FIRST GRAYSON BANCSHARES, INC. EMPLOYEE’S STOCK OWNERSHIP TRUST of McGregor, valued at $75 million. The banking operation has been doing business since 1940 with branch offices in Whitesboro, Collinsville, and Crawford.

Further on, crossing another slender highway called Lone Star Parkway, is the Yellow Rose, a retail haven for all things Bush (both Laura and W) complete with a storefront altar to the American civic religion: a monument of the twin tablets, written in the same English that Moses used to speak to God, and a fake liberty bell in between. From here we definitely want to take a left turn toward the coffee shop, not a right turn to the fire station where Bush votes for himself. At the Coffee Station, gas is selling for a mere $2.35 per gallon. If we have not yet loved the oil companies with all our hearts, under W’s leadership we’re getting there.

At this point you can either pick up a copy of today’s Waco Tribune with a top-o-the-fold color photo of activist Jim Goodnow, who hails from the arts community of greater Terlingua, or you can just shake Jim’s hand as he spreads morning cheer to fellow customers who do not fail to smile back. A couple of months ago Goodnow was contacted by a Congressional office to see if he might be recruited as a soldier to help militarize the border with Mexico. In a letter to the editor of the Desert Mountain Times, he said: “If this call for troops to be mustered impacts your heartstrings in any way, please call me and share your thoughts Should we not unite, stand tall, and in a strong firm voice, just say no?”

As the cashier rings up my coffee, she discreetly lip syncs the rapid-fire lyrics of Lynyrd Skynyrd on the radio. By this time, with tall coffee in hand, and Southern Rock grinding the air, I’m smiling too. On the pavement outside are tile markers placed in key positions that say “Pirate Country”, and overhead is stretched a wide banner that announces the Tonkawa Traditions Fest. In Pirate Country, at least one has the courtesy to recall.

Returning to the Peace House along the South side of Cedar Rock Parkway, I pass a newly carved ditch that is trying really hard to empty itself from heavy rains. Towering overhead are metal grain elevators marked with logos that say Coop or Sioux. Come harvest time, they will load hopper cars full of corn, wheat, or sorghum. With a bank on the Northside, a farmers Coop on the Southside, and with people heading west to buy and sell, at least the President has chosen a home town that is not too difficult to understand.

Just before I get too close to the KLIF car, which has been stalking the Peace House since I left, I cross the street to the Peace House. License plates around the Peace House say Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, and California. Everyone is up and at it. Attorney Jim Harrington has just arrived from Austin to play sheriff for our side. Last time the cops here busted protesters, it cost the city $45,000 dollars in cash, not to mention the expense of a trial that had to be moved into the in the civic center. Harrington did that legal work pro bono, so we’re all pretty glad to see him now. Time to catch shuttle number one out to camp.

*****

Our early drive to the camp does not go unrewarded. “Fawn!” exclaims the driver as we turn a corner and see two spotted fawns following their mother into some trees. It’s feeling more and more like a lucky day. Driving the car is Burnet, a jovial host who was planning to return home to Houston tonight, but, “I’m having so much fun I might stay.” The other passenger is Joe from Boston. And it’s pretty remarkable if you think about it that the first two passengers to camp on this auspicious day both have PhDs. But Joe is the one with the PhD from Harvard.

Burnet points out the Broken Spoke Ranch on the right, where Bush will dine with millionaire supporters Friday night. The fence around that ranch is unusually high and new. Usually when I see a fence like that I look for antelope, seriously. But since the enclosure seems free of exotic game, this fence looks like it is built to keep certain creatures from jumping in. Finally we arrive at the splendid triangle, home base for Camp Casey.

Not only is this a triangle, but it’s a right triangle with all the Pythagorean reverberations. No doubt the first right triangles were laid out like this on the ground. So let’s begin where the hypotenuse meets side A. Here George Bush has been pink slipped, a code pink symbolic act, where they unfurl a huge pink cloth cut to the curvy image of a grrrl’s body. This pink slip is hung from the windbreak of trees that hug the fence line at side A. It billows like a sail under prevailing southwesterly winds. “Out of Iraq Now” says the pink slip.

As we walk southeasterly along Morgan Road, Camp Casey is also waking up, folks sitting up, staring out tent openings, stretching, tying shoes, rolling up sleeping bags, and taking down tents. Camp director Ann Wright is already wearing a Camp Casey t-shirt–a very impressive sign of mobilization. On the back of the t-shirt is a black question mark overlaid with a pink W. On the front it says in red and black: “Bush… Talk to Cindy! Moms & Vets will Stop War.” Wright is the former Ambassador to Mongolia who wrote a long letter of resignation following the USA-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. She has 15 years experience in the diplomatic corps and 26 years in the Army reserves.

At a Veterans for Peace convention near Dallas last Friday, Wright thanked the VFP for existing. “This organization to me is one of the most important in America,” said Wright as she introduced a panel of federal whisteblowers. “Thanks to the VFP, men and women in the USA military are standing up to say there is more than war, because some administrations misuse the military, and that is where we find ourselves today.” Her introduction alone of whistleblowers Colleen Rowley from the FBI and Jesselyn Radack from the Justice Department drew a standing ovation from the full room of 50. And that was the day before Cindy Sheehan made her trek from the VFP tent.

Wright, of course, accompanied Sheehan on that first sweltering hike through the bar ditch of Prairie Chapel Road, and she has become part of this movement’s central command. Folks out here express respect for Wright’s diplomatic character. And she is ever on task. Soon she will be calling in transportation, reorganizing campers for the day’s events, and reserving prime tent space for Military Families Speak Out.

A more radical wing of the movement is represented by the next t-shirt I see. It is a picture of Native American warriors: “Homeland Security: Fighting Terrorism since 1492.” This is about the time I greet Will Pitt from Truthout as Scott Galindez works nearby with tripod and video camera, determined to prove that a revolution can be televised.

Meanwhile the McLennan County Road Dept. (Pct. 4) makes its first tour of the triangle today. BTW, the Precinct 4 Commissioner is the only Republican on the court. The other three are Democrats. In terms of the usual party politics in McLennan County, Bush won the Presidential vote by a landslide, but so did the Democratic incumbent for Congress, Chet Edwards.

About this time, up drives a vintage edition Chevy Caprice Classic Brougham with Melvin at the wheel. Last time I saw Melvin he was nodding out about 3AM at the porch of the Peace House. Now he is already returning from a shopping trip to Target, trying to explain to Anne why he doesn’t need to be fully reimbursed for the stuff he just put on his credit card. You can see by the smiles all around that he is making friends. Says Anne to Melvin: “Yes, it’s spontaneity and it’s working and it’s beautiful and y’all are here because you want to be here and…” her comments trail off into Melvin’s smiling face.

Moving a little further down side A, or Morgan Road, I see hefty rolls of measuring tape being unpacked. I happen to know what this means, because last Friday morning I had been sipping coffee with a VFPer from Tacoma. He had helped to lay out an Arlington West display there, and he spoke of the exhaustive care they took to make sure the crosses were neatly placed so many feet apart to mimic the respectful military order of graves at the Arlington national cemetery near D.C. These huge rolls of tape are the first visual evidence of what will be done today, all day, as 1800 crosses get pounded into the ground around Camp Casey and tagged with the names of USA soldiers killed in Iraq. “We need to figure out a way to also honor the Iraqis killed in this war,” said my Tacoma informant. “But how do we do that? Eighteen hundred crosses are difficult enough to deal with.”

Tim Goodrich is spotting his perch for the day under the windbreak along Morgan Road. This morning he has changed into desert khakis so there will be no mistaking the fact that he is an Iraq Veteran Against the War. Later in the day with the sun scorching down on his neck, I see him studying the names on the crosses. As I think about the pictures I’ve seen of VietNam vets at the Memorial Wall in D.C., I certainly don’t ask Tim Goodrich what’s going through his bowed head.

“Air America is here says someone from camp command. Call Pacifica, they ought to be down here, too!” Air America, that reminds me. Last night on the porch the woman who drove 18 hours straight from Iowa said she prepared for her trip by first going on line and writing down all the Air America stations along Interstate 35. There were a few dead spots, but she was pretty pleased to keep company with the network, nearly the whole way.

Symbols of protest are lined up facing the morning sun. “Arlington West” on a t-shirt. “Attila the Preppie Coke Head” on a cardboard square. Then another t-shirt. “Hey wait”, I plead. I need to write this one down: “Where Are We Going? And What’s With the Hand Basket?” Oh. Yeah. “Some people have to think about it for a minute,” says the woman grinning. Hey, don’t look at me; I’m not the Harvard PhD.

By this time I’ve wondered down Morgan Road past the triangle, where cars are parking in the bar ditch. So far about 20 cars. A guy carrying a bag of ice comes walking toward me from where he parked further up. Way out at the end of the line of cars, I turn back to survey the scene. In every direction the Texas horizon sweeps a circle that is ankle high. Only the windbreak at side A pushes the sky from view. If ever there were a Roy Bedichek moment this is it. The gentle naturalist from neighboring Falls County could point it all out. These marvelous prairie grasses. Are they Big Bluestem, Brushy Bluestem, Purple Threeawn, Buffalo Grass, SideOats Grama, Inland Sea Oats, Canada Wild Rye, Blue Hair Grass, Gulf Muhly, Lindheimer’s Muhly, Seep Muhly, SwitchGrass, Texas Blue Grass, Little Blue Stem, Prairie DropSeed, Indian Grass, or Eastern Gama Grass? I’d like to think there’s some Sand Love Grass out here. Later today, one of the crosses will be adorned by a cutting from a Texas Thistle.

Back at the triangle, four crosses have been carefully placed and pounded into the Denton Silty Clay at the righteous angle where side B meets side A. For the rest of the day the crosses will march NorthEastward along side B to Prairie Chapel Road where they will muster in a disciplined row. The first section of crosses, between Morgan Road and the tent reserved for Military Families Speak Out, is ground dedicated to the sons and daughters of Texas. As of yet, however, the crosses are as anonymous as the short stretch of road that they face. So far, this is a fitting memorial to the dead and unnamed.

*****

Heading back to the Peace House, I sit in the front seat with Burnet as the back seats are taken by a photographer and her daughter. Upon arrival, we find Cindy standing in the front lawn equipped with a hands free cell phone, conferring with a cadre of CodePink organizers. Inside the first room, attorney Harrington stands facing the door from his makeshift legal outpost, sorting and re-sorting a short stack of papers. When Hadi enters the house, he and Harrington hug. “We sold anti-war buttons for a dollar apiece to raise the downpayment for this house,” Hadi tells me. Johnny Wolf took the risk of putting his name on the deed, but Hadi is letting me know that the Peace House is a collective endeavor. Back out front, Cindy and her CodePink entourage are backing out in a white Chevy Impala, back to work at Camp Casey.

And Wisconsin has just arrived….

By Greg Moses

AfterDowningStreet / CounterPunch / UrukNet /
GlobalResistanceNetwork / OpEdNews / Bella Ciao / SamHamod /

CAMP CASEY, TX (Aug 11) Thursday is only a few minutes young, but Cindy Sheehan is already running late. Rumors are percolating that police will swoop into Camp Casey at midnight to arrest everyone, and she dare not be late for a date like that. So she says, “I really have to go now,” and takes her leave from the soft light and murmur of the Crawford Peace House lawn. Before she goes however she does have time to say that her fever is getting a little better.

Among the dozen or more activists who remain at the Peace House, Sandy sits on the front porch looking toward Cedar Rock Parkway, the two-lane highway that runs East-West. About 12:30, Sandy sees a cop car speeding West, then another at 12:37, but the rumors and signs add up to to zero as other activists ask, “did you see the cop cars at the convenience store?” Apparently the law enforcement professionals were speeding to their coffee break.

The wee hours of this August morning are pleasant enough for the Texans who gather in a tight cluster of chairs on the porch, occasionally brushing away a June bug or a fire ant. A tube of fire ant medication makes the circle, and Sandy’s companion Rusty sqeezes a modest glob of the gel onto his bare feet. The temperature is falling slowly through the 80s, but the humidity is stubbornly high as a threat of rain passes overhead.

Sitting next to Rusty in our clockwise review, Melvin is telling a story about how he was working for Dick Cheney’s company Brown and Root when they dropped a machine on him, crushing his body from jaw to pelvis. With cane in hand, he talks about his home in the oil patch of SouthEast Texas and how his mama don’t like Republicans either.

Mark Green, one-time Democrat candidate for Congress from the Fort Worth area, tells us that next time he runs for office he wants a party behind him, and that’s the focus of his activism these days. He tells us by the way that former Speaker of the House Jim Wright is still active as a teacher in the Fort Worth area. Thinking about the ethics investigation that resulted in Wright’s abrupt resignation from Congress in 1989 makes the 80s seem like the age of Scout’s Honor.

Pulling up a chair from the lawn to sit at the top of the porch steps, Tom likes to joke that he drove all the way from Portland. Portland, Texas, that is. Tom is the entrepreneur of magneticpeace.com the alternative choice for folks who want to wear yellow magnets on their cars, but who would prefer peace signs to ribbons. He’s looking for the owner of the car with the slogan written on the back window in wedding white shoe polish: “Jesus is Prince of Peace not God of War”, because the car sports one of his magnetic peace signs, too. He tells a real interesting story about trying to locate a manufacturer. The folks who make the yellow ribbons said they wouldn’t make those peace signs even if he paid them to. And you thought those yellow ribbons were not pro-war?

Dot from Dallas sits against the wall that divides the porch from an adjacent room, wearing her t-shirt from the Dean campaign. It was Howard Dean who kicked her into gear politically after seeing the man speak in Dallas during the summer of 2003. Green says he was there, too.

Dot’s turn to tell her story gets interrupted about one o’clock in the morning when up the short sidewalk from the highway walks a woman barely middle aged. She has just driven in from Iowa. Her son is a soldier stationed in California. She figures she has a year to stop the war before he completes his training. He wouldn’t like it that she’s here, “but we all have to do what we must,” she says softly.

A man and woman are walking up the sidewalk now. “This is a military spouse,” says the man to Peace House host Hadi. And Hadi takes the woman inside to her sleeping space. The man is “reservist turned activist” Tim Goodrich, one of the co-founders of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He wears an IVAW t-shirt and says, “it’s like a sauna out here.” Before too long he also takes his leave, opens the door to the Peace House, and turns in. After some time chatting the woman from Iowa enters the Peace House to get some sleep and I climb also into my bunk, the passenger seat of a Honda.

Easing the seat backward to catch a nap, I flip down the sun visors to see if they will block the light from the porch. Over my right shoulder to the East an amazing star shines so bright I think it must be a planet, maybe Mars. But no, John Walker’s website “Your Sky” informs me that my overnight companion is Altair, Southern anchor of the famed Southern Triangle. As Jim Kaler writes: “The Arabic name ‘Altair,’ reflective of the constellation itself, comes from a phrase meaning ‘the flying eagle.’ ” The star calls me out. I have to get up, stand in the middle of Cedar Rock Parkway and watch that eagle glisten. Tiny frogs sing in all directions.

Overnight the pilgrimmage to the Peace House continues. A delegation from Louisiana. A pair of travelers from Dallas. A peace movement comes together before my opening eyes.

As soon as the sky lightens up into the faintest shade of blue, I rummage the trunk for my toothbrush. Soon I’m back on the porch with my back to the front window, checking out a little animal carrier tucked underneath a chair. Out from the Peace House comes a man with a sign that he slides behind my back onto the window sill. “Expose the 9/11 Cover Up.” I move down a chair so that the sign might be read by others.

Turns out the little animal carrier came in with the Louisiana delegation carrying a 9-week-old kitten named Smudge. Leaping into a sprawling Rosemary bush, Smudge looks up at me with eyes of great adventure. And someone is placing a huge cup of coffee under my nose. “Here, please hold this,” says Cindy Sheehan before she scoops up Smudge kitty for a little face-to-face schmooze. And Sheehan introduces me to Smudge’s mommy, Annie who in turn tells me that the kitten has been with the family for about a week. I try to imagine this whole world as a nine-week-old kitten would see it, as Smudge leaps and pounces in the freshness of the day.

By Susan Van Haitsma

CommonDreams

Returning home from the national Veterans for Peace (VFP) convention Held August 4 –7 in Dallas, Texas, I opened my daily paper to an opinion editorial entitled, “‘Thank God for the Atom Bomb;’ it saved thousands of lives.” I thought of a contrasting statement made during the convention by GI resister and conscientious objector, Camilo Mejia. “Conscience is a place where one meets God. Conscience is what makes us human, more than intelligence.”

The meeting place of conscience is what really saves us. In fact, during the convention, I heard more than one veteran say it: Thank God for Veterans for Peace. You saved my life.

Celebrating its twentieth anniversary at this convention, VFP has been growing by leaps and bounds in recent years. Membership has increased from about 550 in 2001 to some 4,000 today, with 123 chapters across the country. Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) also celebrated their very busy first year of activity.

The convention marked the first as Executive Director for Michael McPhearson, an Army veteran whose 20 year-old son is scheduled to be deployed to Iraq this year. McPhearson’s opening address to the convention began, “First, thank you for existing.”

During the convention, placards declaring the five points of VFP’s statement of purpose followed the assembly, appearing prominently during the business sessions, then migrating to the big tent stage as backdrop for the speeches and entertainment. When these vets get together, they have a very good time. But they meet primarily because they have a mission.

We Must Work to Increase Public Awareness of the Costs of War

Brad Johnson, VFP Chapter 80, draws from his 20-year Navy career when he talks with students in Duluth, Minnesota. He visits high schools with his “War is Not the Answer” banner. When students ask what the answer is, he doesn’t hesitate. “I ask them how many windmills they see around here and how they are doing in their science classes.” Straightforward, funny and wearing one hoop earring, Johnson must be capturing the students’ imagination with his anti-war message. He clearly appreciates the opportunity. “I’m buying back my soul,” he says, “one classroom at a time.”

Like Brad Johnson, Vietnam Air Force Veteran, Brian Willson and his partner, Becky Luening also believe it is crucial to explore the “why’s” of war. Willson and Luening took the train to Dallas from their home in Northern California because trains make the most efficient use of fuel per passenger. Willson said they decided to attend the convention because when he saw the preliminary schedule, there was no workshop addressing the structural and root causes of war. He offered to facilitate one. “Our system requires war,” he says. “Do we want to be anti-war, or do we want to get rid of war?”

Willson is well-known as the attorney and activist whose legs were Severed on September 1, 1987 by a Naval munitions train carrying weapons bound for Central America as he and others protested on the tracks. Willson walks skillfully with two prostheses. He and Luening live close to the land, growing much of their food and conducting their business locally. Willson no longer uses air travel and declines most speaking engagements. “When I am invited to speak, I ask, ‘Can I get there without harming the earth?’”

We Must Restrain our Government from Intervening in the Affairs of Others During the convention’s opening plenary, Iraq Veterans Against the War co-founder, Mike Hoffman took the stage along with seven other IVAW members. They spoke of their appreciation for older vets, especially Vietnam Veterans Against the War, who helped them learn to organize in the midst of war. Marine veteran, Stephen Funk, the first conscientious objector to serve time in a military prison during the Iraq war, said that one of the first groups to reach out to him when he became a GI resister was VFP. He said he knew he didn’t have to be suspicious of the group’s motives.

One IVAW member said, “I am a veteran of Operation Iraqi Plunder. To call it Operation Iraqi Freedom is an insult to Iraq and an insult to humanity.” He described symptoms of PTSD he is experiencing: fits of rage, sleepless nights, tearful outbursts. Another IVAW member said, “When people tell me they are proud of what I did in Iraq, I say, ‘Well, I’m not. You don’t even know what I did over there.’”

Hoffman and other IVAW members have been criss-crossing the country over the past year, appearing at schools and public demonstrations. They speak from experience, challenging what vets call “a culture of silence” in the military. To a standing ovation at the convention, Hoffman said, “Bush hides behind the troops when he is criticized. He claims that critics don’t support the troops. Troops are his shield. Well, IVAW will be the shield of the peace movement!”

We Must Seek Justice for Veterans and Victims of War

A banner created by the Santa Fe VFP chapter read, “Who will support the troops when our troops become veterans?” The banner included eight photographs from the book, “Purple Hearts,” of veterans who have lost limbs or suffered other injuries in Iraq.

One of the resolutions considered during the day-long business session of the convention was a proposal to revise the VFP statement of purpose to read, “We Must Seek Justice for Veterans and Other Victims of War,” in order to make the point that veterans are war victims also. However, the VFP board and convention voted to keep the statement as is. “Veterans are victims and also executioners,” said David Cline, board president, reflecting the group sentiment that VFP members take responsibility for their actions in war. One vet commented, “Veterans are in both worlds, and in fact, so are most people.”

The VFP convention commemorated the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, or as it is known in Vietnam, the American War. Many Vietnam veterans have traveled to Vietnam since the war to participate in projects that promote reconciliation and restoration. VFP member Suel Jones, spoke about his involvement with Vietnam Friendship Village, a community for children and adults affected by Agent Orange. Jones described his amazement that the Vietnamese people welcomed him even when they knew he had killed Vietnamese people during the war. “Veterans who go back to Vietnam with me always ask two things,” he said. “What the hell were we doing and why didn’t I come back sooner.”

Justice for GI resisters was a major focus of the convention. Workshop panelists, plenary speakers and late-night documentary films explored GI resistance during the Vietnam War and Gulf Wars I and II. Vietnam GI resister, Steve Morse was on hand to talk about the huge increase in calls to the GI Rights Hotline, which he coordinates through the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors. Lee Zaslofsky, a US Army deserter and Canadian resident since 1970, spoke about his current role as coordinator of the War Resisters Support Campaign, which is lobbying for political asylum and providing practical assistance for 15 US military deserters in Canada. An estimated 5,500 soldiers are in deserter status in the US. Whether soldiers of conscience go to prison, as have Camilo Mejia and Stephen Funk, or seek refuge in Canada, as have Brandon Hughey and Jeremy Hinzman, or just go AWOL, VFP supports them.

We Must End the Arms Race and Reduce and Eventually Eliminate Nuclear
Weapons

Anita Cole enlisted in the Army because she believed the military was “a meaningful and shared public effort.” She felt there weren’t enough outlets for such efforts outside the military. While she was stationed in Japan, she visited Hiroshima. She began to realize that the shared public effort she’d joined “was the most destructive system in the world.” Her belief system “crystallized,” as military regulations call it, and she was discharged as a conscientious objector in 2002. An articulate spokesperson for the rights of conscience, she now serves on the board of the Center on Conscience & War and answers calls for the GI Rights Hotline.

The convergence of anniversaries during the 2005 VFP convention included the 60th year of remembrance of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Attending the convention from Japan was special guest, Dr. Satoru Konishi, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing. Dr. Konishi addressed the convention in halting English, describing his memory of the bombing and subsequent campaign for a nuclear-free world. He closed by reading a poem by Japanese poet, Sankichi Toge, who died from radiation poisoning several years after the bombing. Reciting the poem, Dr. Konishi’s voice suddenly gained strength.

“Our fathers, give back to me, Our mothers, give back to me, Our elders, give back to me, Our children, give back to me! My self, human, give back to me And all humans linked to me! Peace, give back to me, One, indestructible forever, As long as the human’s human world will last.”

When another special convention guest, Cindy Sheehan, finished her Already legendary address to a very enthusiastic standing ovation, Dr. Konishi spontaneously gave her the first hug from the front row as she stepped from the stage.

We Must Abolish War as an Instrument of National Policy

The human life we have taken and keep taking in war cannot be brought back. But, the human connections we make now could be our saving grace. The camaraderie – the love for each other – is what most veterans, including Casey Sheehan, have paradoxically cited as the main reason for following orders into war. VFP understands the significance of camaraderie because the same kind of bonding is necessary for waging peace. VFP members and chapters across the country are involved in powerful, creative efforts to strengthen human connections. In the process, they create the kinds of meeting places where lives are saved.

Susan Van Haitsma is active with Nonmilitary Options for Youth and is an associate member of VFP Chapter 66 in Austin, Texas.

By Greg Moses

IndyMedia NYC / Bella Ciao / UrukNet / InformationClearingHouse / CommonDreams / DissidentVoice / LoneStarIconoclast

Back in the 60s you could say two things about Navy and Air Force veteran Dick Underhill: he liked to do the work that nobody else wanted to do, and he was a Goldwater Republican. Today as Underhill shuttles in and out of Crawford, Texas, running supplies and tending to lists of things to do in support of Cindy Sheehan, you could still say he likes to do the work that nobody else wants to do, but you couldn’t call him a Goldwater Republican anymore.

“You have heard about PTSD, haven’t you?” asks Underhill in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon from his Austin home. “That’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Well, I have a name for something else that I call PASD. That’s Post Awareness Stress Disorder. It’s what happens to you when you’ve been raised all your life to believe the story that the slaveholders and merchant pirates who founded the USA were good people and that the government of the USA is the best in the world. When you find out that’s not true at all, it does leave you under stress.”

The foundation of Underhill’s Goldwater Republicanism was an economic conviction born out of his background as a working class juvenile delinquent who made something good of his life. Anybody, said that conviction, can pick themselves up by their own bootstraps no matter what. If Underhill had done it, so could everyone else.

But the foundation of Underhill’s economic conviction began to crack during the seven years (1978-85) that he spent working for the Parsons Corporation building the Saudi Arabian city of Yanbu from the ground up. Since he was single at the time he could travel quite a bit, so he saw the worlds of SouthEast Asia, India, and the Middle East. Whenever he saw extreme poverty, he heard the same formula for economic opportunity: get access to USA markets. But that wasn’t quite the bootstrap of his convictions, so he began to question his economic theories.

In Tucson during the 1990s Underhill began taking lots of courses at the community college and University of Arizona, where he learned how to outgrow his childhood textbooks. He remembers especially two courses on Latin American history. In part one, “the Spanish are the bad guys you know,” says Underhill. “But in the second part I found out what the government of the USA did.” He learned what happened to Allende in Chile and the usual list of things like that. “It destroyed my vision of what I thought we were like.”

At about the same time, Underhill started going to weekly Peace and Justice vigils in Tucson. He recalls that the vigils were originally called to protest conditions that produced illegal immigrants from Central and South America, but the vigils adapted to changing issues. At the vigils he met some folks from Veterans for Peace. “One thing I have noticed,” says Underhill. “If you are in a group that is predominately pro-peace, ask how many have lived or worked outside the US. Four and Five Star package tours don’t count. My experience is that 70 percent will identify themselves as having lived abroad.”

Now we fast forward to Austin, where Underhill moved to “follow the money” which is his way of joking that his wife found work there, so he came with her. About three years ago, he watched a film about the USA invasion of Panama.

“In my mind the invasion of Panama involved a few helicopters. Our guys chased Noriega into a building and they played loud music until he came out. Then we hauled him off and threw him in prison forever. But I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.” In the film he saw a story of an illegal invasion in which thousands of civilians were killed, thousands more displaced, entire apartment complexes burned, all in the name of a “drug war.” For Underhill the film portrayed a military preparation for the invasion of Iraq, a proving ground for war technologies such as the newly made stealth bomber. And all of it neatly tucked behind glossy media management so that Americans could coast along on the lie.

“I saw that film three years ago,” says Underhill, “and I haven’t been off the cell phone since.” Which brings us back to the Dick Underhill who likes to do the things that others don’t. For the past three years, Underhill’s cell phone has been ringing with movement business. If a bus is coming to town on a national tour. If a speaker needs a place to stay. All those things that need doing, Underhill tries to get them done. And although Underhill is very active in the Austin chapter of VFP, he had nothing to do with a national office decision to bring the 20th annual VFP convention to Dallas. That decision had more to do with a need to rotate regions and, oh yes, the fact that George Bush lived here (“for tax purposes,” quips Underhill, “because Texas has no state income tax”) and kept a summer home nearby.

About 100 days before the convention was to open near Dallas, Underhill was asked to take over the work of coordinating all the details. How much time did he put into that job? “I worked as long as I could stay awake,” says Underhill. One detail, as we know, was to invite Cindy Sheehan to speak. “I had quite accidentally run across someone who recommended Cindy,” recalls Underhill. “So we tied that up, but no one knew about her plans to visit Crawford until the day before she arrived at the convention. As soon as I got her email about it, the first thing I did was to contact the Crawford Peace House and ask them to get ready.”

The Crawford Peace House was set up by a farsighted peace activist from Dallas named Johnny Wolf. He purchased the building in the Spring of 2003 for just this kind of eventuality. He knew the Crawford Ranch would draw activists, and he wanted a watering hole for them to stop at along the way. “We’re not going to let them turn the town into a three-ring circus,” said Crawford Mayor Robert Campbell to the Dallas Morning News when the news of the Crawford Peace House was announced. “If they want to protest, let them go to Washington.”

That was long before Cindy Sheehan made up her mind to find out where Crawford was so that she could confront the president of the USA at his summer home and tell him to stop using the deaths of soldiers like her son to justify further war in Iraq.

There were some folks who encouraged Underhill to move the entire VFP convention to Crawford at the last minute, but he reminded them that Crawford was not an easy place for lots of people to eat on short notice. “There’s only one blinking light in that town,” says Underhill, “and it’s about eight times brighter than the President.” So the VFP worked out a caravan that would be led by an Impeachment Tour Bus. A couple veterans stayed with Sheehan in Crawford, and you’ve probably heard what happened next.

What you don’t see so much in the tip of the tremendous iceberg that Cindy Sheehan has thrown in front of the President’s war cruiser is the long years of preparation, the weekly vigils in Tucson, the courses in history, the film festivals, the fund drives, the chores and newsletters that finally fuse enough people together that they can move in under Cindy Sheehan and make sure she stays afloat as long as it takes.

Even Underhill thought the scene looked pretty desolate when he passed through Crawford Sunday afternoon (was that just two days ago?) and saw this one lonely tent pitched against the Texas prairie. Although by that point Underhill knew that the Crawford Peace House had thrown open its doors and CodePink had mobilized its network, “It didn’t look too powerful.”

“But you know what?” says Underhill, pausing for a while at home between his support trips to Crawford. “I think this has shaken the whole globe. I have a friend in Germany and he says it’s on television there. This has blown wide open.” Tuesday morning campers watched ABC camera crews hang through the rain to get dawn shots for the evening news. Something about Cindy Sheehan is bringing out the poetry in everyone’s imagination.

“And you know if we had anybody else out there, nobody would care,” he says. “This is all about Cindy.” And Cindy is all about Casey (May 29 1979-April 4 2004). Not in his name, Mr. President. Not. In. His. Name.

Austin activist Kim McIntosh was at Camp Casey Saturday and Monday. She talked about it a little today via phone. Monday morning was very peaceful, “nothing much happened.” The camp population averaged 10-20 at a time as people rotated between camp and the Crawford Peace House. “There were reporters there the whole time,” says McIntosh. “When I left there were three reporters standing there.”

“It’s mostly veterans and CodePink,” says McIntosh, who is CodePink herself. The two women from L.A. (see story below) who arrived Sunday night are part of a CodePink delegation that will be rotating people into Camp Casey for the foreseeable future. Fort Worth also had a CodePink rep.

On Monday Kim joined four other Austin CodePinkers on the car trip to Crawford, taking supplies, banners, some water, and, of course, pink umbrellas with peace signs on them to shade the camp from sun and war. “We also made a big pink sheet with a peace sign on it that we could spread on the ground so it could be seen from overhead.”

She has read and viewed some media accounts of Saturday’s protest, and they seem pretty accurate, except she thinks they don’t quite convey the perception of the campers that the Secret Service was intimidating. Although she wasn’t there, she heard that their tires squealed to a stop and they got out of the car saying: “You’re not going to treat the Iraq vets the way you treated the VietNam vets are you?” But, as McIntosh says, the VietNam vets were standing with Sheehan.

Two things McIntosh says about television reports. They sometimes fail to mention that Sheehan’s request to see the President is motivated by recent pronouncements that the war is a ‘noble cause’–”that’s what spurred her,” says McIntosh. And they sometimes exploit Sheehan’s more emotional moments. “Sure, she cries now and then,” says McIntosh. “But they make her look vulnerable when she’s really not at all.”

This morning McIntosh heard a quote from Sheehan on Air America Radio that she really liked. This is what she heard: “I have more courage in my little finger than George Bush has in his whole body, and my son Casey had more courage in his whole body than the entire administration. If he thinks he’s going to intimidate me he’s wrong.”–gm

By Greg Moses

IndyMedia Austin / Peace Journalism / Bella Ciao / ZNet / CommonDreams / UrukNet / InformationClearingHouse / OpEdNews / AlbionMonitor / PoliticalSwitchboard

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 Iraq last April.

“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 Iraq is wrong. She is strong and powerful enough to take a stand. When I see it, it just strikes a chord. She’s speaking truth to power. That’s it. David and Goliath.”

Robert hands the phone to spouse Abbe Waldman DeLozier as their car glides up and down the gentle hills of Central Texas. It is just past dark Monday night, but Abbe is lit up with fresh memories of an evening with Sheehan and the brave band of pilgrims who have come from unexpected places. “Hawaii,” says Robert from his seat as Abbe holds the phone.

“Yes, Hawaii, that was one of the places,” says Abbe. “And California. Two young ladies from L.A., another from Pennsylvania.” In all there were about 15 people who gathered at dusk to pow wow some strategy. “They say there are more people in the morning,” says Abbe. This afternoon, an anonymous donor ordered up two or three party trays of sandwiches from the Subway Sandwich Shop in McGregor and had them sent out to feed Sheehan’s camp. Folks are sending flowers and money, too.

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 California who had never done any media work before, copied down the messages, put them on a list, and began returning the calls.

“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 Oregon, Abbe suddenly found herself on the air live during a show in progress with Mike Hoffman, co-founder of Iraq Vets Against the War (IVAW). She said “Hi Mike” but didn’t have much time to chat with a war resister who she had once helped with media relations back in the bad old days when the work was very difficult indeed, not like this where you end up accidentally live on the air, both of you in Oregon!

Abbe doesn’t know much more about the pow wow. 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 field 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.”

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