A report from Cos on Cindy Sheehan’s visit to Cambridge this afternoon. Note that she’s still in town – as Cos notes at the end of the post, she’ll be at BU Law School this evening from 7 to 9 pm. –David
Camp Casey / Camp Alex made a stop in Cambridge today, on their national tour culminating in the march on Washington next Saturday. They held a rally at the Cambridge Common, birthplace of the US Army.
![[photo: Cindy Sheehan in Cambridge]](http://cos.polyamory.org/imghost/pol/sheehan-camb2c.jpg)
I went over shortly after speakers were supposed to start, at 3pm. City Councilors Denise Simmons and Marjorie Decker spoke, followed by several people from Gold Star Families and military families speak out. One of the highlights was a man whose name I missed, whose son died in Iraq while he was living in Florida. He talked about the stress of having his son out there, the experience of finding out on his 44th birthday that his son had died, and his breakdown and comeback (he apparently tried to kill himself by setting fire to an unoccupied marine van and getting inside it). I think he’s going to tell his story again at the DC march on the 24th.
One thing I thought a bit odd was when Marjorie Decker spoke and alluded to the Army’s controversial birthday celebration and recruiting fest earlier this year. Decker had protested that event but apparently also sought a speaking slot at it, and got some bad press in the Cambridge Chronicle over confusion about how and why the city council let it happen, so I thought she’d not want to bring attention to it. She did give a rousing anti-war speech, and handed Cindy Sheehan a gold "key to the city". I wonder why Mayor Sullivan was not there for that.
Part of the controversy over the Army’s June celebration came from the fact that the City of Cambridge penned the anti-war protesters into a "free speech zone". This week’s Cambridge Chronicle editorial focused on that protest and the right to free speech, and ended with this line: Maybe this time the city will be smart, and refrain from setting up an un-American "free speech zone." Indeed, the city did not do so. The Chronicle also asked how today’s crowd would "feel if a group of pro-war protestors stepped on their toes?" but this is not a city where pro-war protest is likely. The only protest I saw was when, partway through one of the speeches, a guy in his late teens or early 20s who was strolling through the park ran up to the edge of the crowd, screamed "four more years!", then rolled away across the grass to rejoin his friends. It was odd, but nobody reacted much.
Although this event was planned on just a few days notice and didn’t get nearly enough publicity, I estimated the crowd at about 500 at the peak, when Cindy Sheehan arrived at 4pm and spoke for about 15 minutes. Afterwards she mingled with the crowd, shook hands, and received many many individual thank you’s. After shaking her hand and taking her picture, I took the opportunity to hand out some Jesse Gordon anti-war flyers to people leaving the event.
Cindy and the Gold Star Families, Veterans for Peace, and allies, are speaking at Boston University Law School this evening, 7-9pm. Then they’re off down the coast towards DC, with stops in Providence, New Haven, NYC, Newark, and Balitmore along the way.
Saw at least 3 elected city councillors there (Decker, Simmons, Murphy) plus other candidates. Cambridge is awesome.
Huh, I missed Murphy. It makes sense that he’d be there, he strongly supports using the city’s voice to oppose the war in Iraq.Jesse Gordon was there too, of course, but he’s a candidate not an incumbent, so he didn’t get to speak :)(though Murphy didn’t speak either, did he?)
Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out of Massachusetts Cindy! Take all the transplants with you as well. Go U.S. troops! You have my support for your mission and don’t be discouraged by all the freaks back home here because as always, the silent majority supports you. We’re very proud of you and any sympathy for Cindy is now gone as she has desecrated our flag and country. Up the U.S. and down with communist and Islamic fundamentalist sympathizers in the People’s republic of cambridge. Can you please just secede?
I’m a little spooked by this post by Cindy Sheehan. It’s mostly about her visit to New Orleans, and she says some pretty wacky things:The people in LA who were displaced have nice, if modest homes that are perfectly fine. I wonder why the government made them leave at great expense and uproot families who have been living in their communities for generations.Uh, Cindy? They made them leave because there was a HUGE HURRICANE COMING, and no one knew exactly where the damage would be worst. The criticism of local officials has been that they acted too slowly to require evacuation, not that they shouldn’t have evacuated at all. Plus, to describe the conditions of the desperately poor people in New Orleans and elsewhere as “nice, if modest homes” is not in touch with reality, and minimizes the plight of the poor in this country.The vast majority of people who were looting in New Orleans were doing so to feed their families or to get resources to get their families out of there.Well, actually, no. There was substantial looting of TVs and guns as well as food. Again, it’s foolish to minimize the reality of what happened there, and the terror that the law-abiding people of New Orleans were put through.George Bush needs to … pull our troops out of occupied New OrleansThat’s just stupid. The problem is not that we have troops there now. The problem is that we didn’t have them there soon enough.Silly comments like these only call into question the legitimacy of what Sheehan has been doing all along. She needs to regain her focus, talk about what she knows about rather than what she doesn’t know about, and not give fodder to the substantial right-wing machine that’s trying to smear her. She also needs not to scare off people otherwise inclined to support what she’s been doing with Camp Casey.
Having Cindy Dheehan being the spokesperson for the anti-war movement is the same mistake the Dems made in nominating John Kerry and also elected Howard Dean as party chair.They all suck!
David – I just read the post you linked to, and I’m confused by your comments. The quotations you selected seem to mean very different things in context, than your rejoinders imply. For example, this one:
The people in LA who were displaced have nice, if modest homes that are perfectly fine. I wonder why the government made them leave at great expense and uproot families who have been living in their communities for generations.
You say “They made them leave because there was a HUGE HURRICANE COMING, and no one knew exactly where the damage would be worst,” but she seems to be referring to this:
Even though Algiers came through Katrina relatively unscathed, our federal government tried to force (mostly successfully) the people out of the community. Malik Rahim, a new friend of ours and resident of Algiers, told us stories of the days after the hurricane. The government declared martial law, but there was no effective police presence to enforce it. Malik said the lawlessness was rampant. People were running out of food and water and they were being forced to go to the Superdome. They didn’t want to go to the Superdome, because their homes were pretty intact: they wanted to stay and have food and water brought to them.
In other words, people who were forced to evacuate after the hurricane, from an area that was relatively intact and habitable.Or this: George Bush needs to … pull our troops out of occupied New OrleansYou falsely make this out to be about whether the troops should have been sent in, and whether they were sent early enough. Cindy’s point isn’t about when they should have been sent, but about what they’re doing there currently:
I imagined before that if the military had to be used in a CONUS (Continental US) operations that they would be there to help the citizens: Clothe them, feed them, shelter them, and protect them. But what I saw was a city that is occupied. I saw soldiers walking around in patrols of 7 with their weapons slung on their backs. I wanted to ask one of them what it would take for one of them to shoot me. Sand bags were removed from private property to make machine gun nests.
You make it out to sound as if she would have opposed sending troops in to rescue people on week 1, but it sounds like she’d have been all for it, and in any case, she doesn’t address that. She doesn’t say “Bush should never have sent them here”. She says “they’re not feeding and clothing and taking care of people, they’re occupying, and it’s scary and intimidating.”It’s fine to agree or disagree with what she actually says, but confusing to pull out quotes and answer them in a way that implies she’s saying something entirely different.
Cos, you’re becomong a real pain the ass.Or as John Galway says arse.
Cos, I stand by what I originally said, as I think it is based on a reasonable reading of Sheehan’s piece. As for your comments: (1) they wanted to stay and have food and water brought to them. Isn’t this totally silly? When the infrastructure of a city has been largely destroyed, this notion that some people (who almost certainly have no functioning electricity or plumbing, even if their houses are still standing) would like to stick around and have overworked rescue personnel who have better things to do “bring food and water to them” seems laughable to me. (2) I wanted to ask one of them what it would take for one of them to shoot me. I just find this comment unbelievably offensive – even worse, really, that the “occupied N.O.” quote that I originally noted. These soldiers are there to try to save the city. Cindy Sheehan is on a fucking bus tour. I haven’t heard anything about deranged soldiers shooting civilians, and let’s face it, some fairly aggressive action was needed to restore law and order in the hurricane’s aftermath.Like I said, I stand by what I originally posted (did you read the comments at HuffPost? Several of them are from people affected by the hurricane who support her re Camp Casey but were outraged at what she said in that post). Cindy Sheehan needs not to talk about things she doesn’t know anything about. Like it or not, she is a public figure now, and by posting drivel like the HuffPost I linked to, she disserves not only herself but the larger cause for which she has, willingly or not, become a symbol.