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Cindy's strength is in her quiet voice. Camp Casey is the place for her kind of activism, and she is being heard around the world. She is The Mother Who Has Lost Her Son. She stays on message: "For what noble cause did my son die?" And she has the Repubs shitting bricks.
The rest of us have marched, shouted, chanted, and ranted -- and where has it gotten us? We've been herded into No-Free-Speech Zones. We've been arrested. We've been ignored and misrepresented by the MSM and our elected representatives.
We've done a lot of hard work, we really have. Many new activist organizations have been formed. We've been exercising our First Amendment rights like mad. We've accomplished a lot, though we have mountains left to do.
But if all of us shouters and ranters go down to Crawford to "help" Cindy, the phenomenon that is Cindy will vanish like a puff of smoke. I have been to so many rallies it makes my head spin, and one thing is sure: we can't stay on message to save our lives.
(WARNING: guaranteed to offend just about everyone!) My god, if it's not the Palestinians it's Native Americans, and if it's not Free Leonard Peltier it's Yucca Mountain's radioactive waste, and if it's not the the redwoods it's the whales, and if it's not reproductive choice it's separation of church and state....
These are all important issues. I know that very well, because if there's anything at all that I hold dear that Bushco has NOT somehow trampled on, I don't know what it is. Their perfidy is overwhelming, okay?
But we go to have a rally and every single constituency jumps up and down at once and the upshot is that we are only talking to ourselves. The MSM sends cameras and gets close-ups of that small percentage of us that looks unhinged -- and then tells their audience we're all wild-eyed radical hippies and hate America. Well Bush makes me wild-eyed, but that's not the point.
Cindy Sheehan has the country's attention because she is Every Mom. She is one voice with one message, and it is a heartbreaking question that does not need to be shouted. It is a heartbreaking question that reverberates around the nation and around the world.
Bush has been vacationing in Crawford for 5 years. Protestors presumably could have gone out there at any time in the past, but I don't recall anyone actually doing so. My guess is that it has always looked like an unattractive way to spend August. My guess also is that if any group or groups were to head toward the ranch shouting and carrying on like we do at rallies, they would have been pretty quickly removed by the Secret Service and the MSM would all agree it was a Credible Threat to the Prez.
Cindy and the peaceful people who have joined her do not look threatening to anyone except the Bushies, who are running scared. If for any reason she were to be arrested now, it would make the Bushies look very bad, even worse than they already do for ignoring her.
We'll have our chance for noisy rallies in September, in Washington DC. In that place, I'm afraid Cindy Sheehan's voice will be lost in the noise, but it will be a different occasion.
Hekate
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