My wife and I are members of Military Families Speakout and publish the MFSO Pacific Northwest website. She is currently in Crawford with Cindy Sheehan.
I called WeBeBlue just now. Things are quiet down there (its moving toward midnight CST) and she's exhausted.
I asked her, "Tell me what you want to say to all those who are waiting to hear your words."
Here goes:
***
The day started out with a multi-media press conference in Crawford with Cindy the primary speaker and focus. It was not unlike watching the Presidential Press Secretary, McLellan, in front of an audience - except this audience was not full of people tired of lies and misinformation.
After Cindy's time, individual members from MFSO and Gold Star Families were given a minute or two to introduce themselves and share brief bios. Some of those were mutual members, having actually lost a loved one and therefore members of Gold Star and MFSO.
The press event went well. I think we were heard as a collective of mutally supporting advocates.
Then followed a time for Questions and Answers for everybody else (since Cindy took questions earlier.)
Cindy then commenced individual interviews with some of the media while the rest of them came and interviewed the rest of us intividually.
Today I also did live radio interviews with a radio station in Connecticut, then with a radio station in Seattle (thinks it was Dave Ross), and Komo 4 radio.
(She also told me that she has done so many interviews and spoken to so many media members on her cell phone that she lost track a long time ago. The Seattle PI included 3 paragraphs about her in today's article about Cindy and Seattle Channel 7 (CBS) included Lietta on its noon and 5:00 pm news so we expect it to be on the 11:00 news tonight.)
I am impressed with the Peace House (in Crawford proper). So many people are arriving and congregating at the Peace House that the police had to finally require that visitors park in the nearby high school parking lot and a nearby park with a large lot. The Peace House is the staging for shuttle transportation out to the site and back since parking at the site is becoming a growing problem. Cars must be totally off the road so the ditches alongside the road are full of cars.
The Peace House is a story all it's own, historically having survived in red state Texas on a shoestring, the owner from time to time pumping his own money to keep it going. When Cindy arrived the Peace House had lost its electricity and phone service due to unpaid bills. The new arrivals solved that problem immediately with cash, food, water and other donations intended to support the group out by the ranch.
The Peace House has done a marvelous job evolving and adapting to the crowds and the needs at the site as well. In some ways, they have to be somewhat selective in that some donation items have been replicated so much that they have something more than a surplus problem. So they try to communicate in advance the sort of donated things they will need.
For instance, Cindy received flowers sent apparently through the efforts of an L.A. radio station. Eventually what happened was not a trickle of floral color, but an avalanche of flowers - so many that we ran out of places to put them within the area of the site. What a love offering that was!
By now they are also offering "rally" items such as $10 T-shirts saying "George, Meet with Cindy!"
The Peace House shuttle keeps the site supplied with food which boils down to mostly sandwiches, snacks and finger foods. I haven't had a sit-down meal since I got here.
Numbers of people here: At any given time there's a crowd whose numbers are augmented significantly by media folks. And the almost hourly growth in numbers is apparent which gives some concern about the size of the site and what that might mean in terms of prompting the feds or the staties to greater concerns about crowd control.
And the Texans I've met ... lots of Texans are coming to show that Texans care about what Cindy is doing. Texas is not all Bush Country and not all of Texas is red! One saw that I'm having an allergic reaction to whatever is in the air or on the ground and has promised to bring me Benadryl tomorrow. I'm counting on him.
We are very much aware of the rapidly growing support nationwide via our electronic
out here at the site but we are also given much information from that which is shared at the Peace House. I met the Georgia truck driver who was in the news - the one who's a vet and who re-routed his trip through Crawford so he could meet us and share his support. Had a good discussion with him.
I also met WIll Pitt of Truthout and he's everything I had imagined when I first discovered Truthout a year or so ago.
Tell everybody to make their voices strong. Tell the military families that it's okay to love their children as much as they love their country and that it's not wrong to demand safe keeping for both!
Greetings especially to Military Families Speak Out Pacific Northwest members!!
***
The rest of what we said is too mushy and none of your dang business!
Arthur Ruger
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