This total also includes numerous media personnel like Amy Goodman, Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films and Democracy Now! producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous who was also arrested earlier in the week while covering one of the numerous protests and rally's.
Among those arrested were two Associated Press reporters covering the event. They were issued a citation and detained, along with a KARE-11 TV photographer and more than a dozen other members of the media. All were released later in the evening.
Amy Goodman and her producer and assistant are still being 'processed' as protesters, even though they have press credentials. They have been released from jail.
Funny how that works for the progressive press ain't it?
My knee jerk reaction is nope. The 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago was a watershed moment in our history and it appears the various law enforcement groups have taken steps to insure nothing even close to the melee in Chicago will occur in Denver. The Denver Police have issued a bulletin, according to RawStory, that alerts all officers what to be on the look-out for. It is a real hoot, check it out. Meanwhile the ACLU has been busting their asses trying to get the courts to support our rights to free speech and assembly, but they haven't made much headway.
Forty years ago Chicago itself was a battleground, a warzone as the police never issued the permits requested by the various anti-war groups. The police in Denver, the federal government and the DNC have already laid down the ground rules for protests and the courts have backed them up for the most part. The ACLU has tried on several occasions to get the rules changed to allow protestors to gain closer access to the Pepsi Center where most of the 'festivities' will be held..but to no avail. From the NYT article linked in this paragraph:
A federal judge in Denver ruled against the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit challenging the government’s security rules for the Democratic National Convention here later this month. The judge, Marcia S. Krieger of Federal District Court, agreed with the group that the security plans — including a fenced perimeter and a parade route away from the Pepsi Center where the convention will take place — did affect the ability of protest groups to engage in “expressive activities.” But Judge Krieger disagreed that the affect rose to the level of an infringement of free speech because other means of expression were available and because the Secret Service and Denver Police had shown that the restrictions were “content neutral,” and thus not intended to quash a particular opinion.
Its a damn shame the feds, the Dems and the Denver police are afraid of allowing people the right to express their personal grievances with the election process in general and their elected representatives regarding the war in Iraq in particular. The Denver Police have issued a 'flyer' that you can check out here (pdf) which tells people what will be tolerated and what will not. Not to be outdone, the Secret Service has declared both conventions to be...cough..National Special Security Events..and given both cities $50 million in federal funds for 'security'. Protesters will be in a huge pen in the Pepsi Center parking lot..like animals. For pictures of the area protesters will be confined to..clickhere.
The group Recreate 68, their logo graces this post, has plenty of plans for events during the convention. These include music and protests, street theater and major anti-war figures will be speaking at rallies. The following is from their website:
The Re-create 68 Alliance also announced that anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney and Green Party Vice Presidential candidate Rosa Clemente will be joining their historic line-up of speakers who include Ida Audeh, Kathleen Cleaver, Ward Churchill, Mark Cohen, Chairman Fred Hampton Jr., Larry Hales, Larry Holmes, Ron Kovic, Glenn Spagnuolo, Pamela Africa, King Downing, Jenny Esquiveo, Mumia Abu Jamal - Current Political Prisoner (Recorded from Death Row for the DNC), Gloria Estela La Riva, Ricardo Romero, Natsu Saito, Ann Erika White Bird, and others.
What a grand example of American's exercising their civil liberties, to be displayed to the world next week in Denver and to be repeated during the Republican convention in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, the first week in September.
Bullshit..its all bullshit designed to keep us from exercising our civil rights. Assholes..
Which of course pisses the ever-lovin hell outta moi. They replace it with soundbites about Hillary sniping at Obama and the reverse. This is a planned move I believe..call me crazy, but I do believe that. The anniversary is coming up for the start of the Iraq War and it's their attempt to marginalize all the protests and demonstrations that will occur on that day..you know the day right?
March 19th.
Anyway..I made this video below a while back. Crooks and Liars liked it so much they featured it in one of their Friday night video posts. Its Richard Thompson's Dad's Gonna Kill Me set to pictures. Dad is Baghdad of course. Its about what the war is doing to our soldiers..you know..killing and maiming them, turning them into card-carrying members of the PTSD club. It's about how this administration supports the troops. It's about three tours in hell and hoping your number doesn't fucking come up in this most ungodly of lotteries.
We can not forget.. We can not allow this war to be shoved to the back pages or become invisible. So please watch it and then sign up to write about this war on March 19th via the Blogswarm set up by blogger bud LibHomo. I heart him and his effort to keep this war front and center in our hearts and minds. If your really an activist, you will get off your ass that day and attend a march or rally near you..there are plenty of them planned. This spot will also direct you to actions happening near you. I know many of us, for whatever reason, are armchair activists. There is no shame in that. But that said..if your a true believer that this war is the biggest travesty created by the idiots known as BushCo, you will take part in a march or rally. On to the musical interlude..
Matt Taibbi is an angry young man. His articles always seem to be filled with rage.
Well hell, so do most of mine. Probably why I read his stuff. His most recent writeup for RS really rips the Congressional Critters we elected in 06 a new one. He also takes to task many of the anti-war activists..most of whom I know of and get daily or weekly emails from on 'action' items for progressives from. This little snippet from page two is a real gem:
Rather than use the vast power they had to end the war, Democrats devoted their energy to making sure that "anti-war activism" became synonymous with "electing Democrats." Capitalizing on America's desire to end the war, they hijacked the anti-war movement itself, filling the ranks of peace groups with loyal party hacks. Anti-war organizations essentially became a political tool for the Democrats — one operated from inside the Beltway and devoted primarily to targeting Republicans.
This supposedly grass-roots "anti-war coalition" met regularly on K Street, the very capital of top-down Beltway politics. At the forefront of the groups are Thomas Matzzie and Brad Woodhouse of Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq, the leader of the anti-war lobby. Along with other K Street crusaders, the two have received iconic treatment from The Washington Post and The New York Times, both of which depicted the anti-war warriors as young idealist-progressives in shirtsleeves, riding a mirthful spirit into political combat — changing the world is fun!
But what exactly are these young idealists campaigning for? At its most recent meeting, the group eerily echoed the Reid-Pelosi "squeezed for time" mantra: Retreat from any attempt to end the war and focus on electing Democrats. "There was a lot of agreement that we can draw distinctions between anti-war Democrats and pro-war Republicans," a spokeswoman for Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq announced.
Just made my friggin Saturday to read that entire piece. If you don't mind getting pissed off, its a great read.
It was called Moratorium Day and although the crowd at the largest march, held in DC, was low-balled at 250,000, it was more like half a million according to some estimates. The protest held a month earlier was larger but the message was still the same..people from all walks of life and all ages protested the war, the draft and Nixon. Individuals like Dr. Benjamin Spock came out against the war and spoke at many of the protests.
"What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents to bring up children healthy and happy, to have them killed in such numbers for a cause that is ignoble?" -Dr. Benjamin Spock, pediatrician, author, antiwar activist
"The Establishment... has led us into the stupidest and cruelest war in all history. That war is a moral and political disaster -- a terrible cancer eating away at the soul of our nation." -George McGovern
The antiwar movement reached its zenith under President Richard M. .Nixon. In October 1969, more than 2 million people participated in Vietnam Moratorium protests across the country. The following month, over 500,000 demonstrated in Washington and 150,000 in San Francisco. Militant protest, mainly youthful, continued to spread, leading many Americans to wonder whether the war was worth a split society. And other forms of antiwar activity persisted. The Nixon administration took a host of measures to blunt the movement, mainly mobilizing supporters, smearing the movement, tracking it, withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam, instituting a draft lottery, and eventually ending draft calls.
An interesting perspective on the Mobilization movement, dubbed the New Mobe can be found here. Its from the Harvard Crimson, a college newspaper that has continuously printed daily since 1873. Its about the day before, and how the students in charge attempted to plan the logistics for the expected 250,000 protesters. A snippet:
Today, stink bombs are no more a problem than housing, feeding, and marching 250,000 people this weekend. With a casualness that closely resembles disorganization. New Mobe volunteer workers are treating that as no problem at all.
Six Kent State students walk into the office explaining that they have food for 10,000 people coming in this afternoon and that they need a place to put it. A skinny blonde, who assumed control of the "logistics" office early Thursday, looks on the map, reads off the street address of a reception center, then picks up a ringing phone.
Ah, the good ol' days..coalitions were fractured just as they are today, but everyone agreed that the war must end.
Six months later, 4 students were killed at Kent State by the National Guard.
On Saturday, Oct. 27, anti-war protesters in Philadelphia formed a human chain from the Veteran's Hospital in West Philadelphia all the way into Center City, and then proceeded to march down to the the Liberty Bell and Constitution Center. Initiated by United for Peace and Justice, eleven different cities around the nation, including Philadelphia, mobilized Saturday against the war. Read Rich Gardner's photoessay from the day.
Local media estimated the crowd at over 10,000 in a protest highlighted by a mass die-in during which protestors laid down on Market Street, San Francisco's principal throughfare. The protest received page B1 coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle (Thousands "die" in anti-war protest on Market St. in SF).
As an antiwar rally waged behind her on swampy Boston Common yesterday, Linda Tobin and her two children crouched over a pair of dusty black boots, one of 156 pairs representing each New England casualty of the Iraq war. Despite the rain, over 10,000 people gathered on the Common to listen to speakers, including historian Howard Zinn and Councilor Felix Arroyo, and march to Copley Square and back.
My wife and I attended the Orlando, Florida rally and march today and we're overjoyed to report that the wet weather did not dampen the spirit of the enthusiastic crowd. We listened to a number of speakers for a few hours before we hit the street to protest the war in Iraq. We sang pacifist songs and chanted antiwar slogans as we marched through the rain drenched streets of downtown Orlando. Our crowd was estimated by the local media at over 2000 people. Picture gallery here.
The marches took place on Saturday in Chicago, Jonesborough, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Seattle. Twenty four other peace demonstrations were held in solidarity across the United States on Saturday calling to END THE WAR NOW with mass demonstrations across Canada, Italy, London, Denmark and the Netherlands.
For more pictures and writeup's by each city, UFPJ's site has each one and links to their videos and picture galleries. The Antiwar citizens were well-represented across the nation and several other countries..check it out.
Edit: Robert at Left of Centrist has two great videos up here and here of the Chicago march which he attended.
Saturday was the latest March on DC, which ended at the Capitol with a Vietnam era strategy called a "Die In". From WaPo:
Protesters and counter-protesters started to gather by 8:30 a.m. for the first major anti-war protest in Washington since January, which is expected to be followed by a week of civil disobedience in the area intended to shift the anti-war movement to a more confrontational phase.
The event today is organized by the ANSWER Coalition, which stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. It formally began at noon at Lafayette Park, on the north side of the White House, with speeches from at least two dozen speakers ranging from former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Ralph Nader to Washington Wizards player Etan Thomas and Michael Berg, whose son Nicolas was a contractor killed in Iraq.
"The majority of the people in this country and in Iraq are working people, and working people want this war to end,'' Fred Mason, president of the Maryland and District AFL-CIO, told the crowd amid chants of "Money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation."
The march symbolizes plenty to those of us against this unlawful war. That ANSWER plans to do something every day this week is important. That they plan a new phase of protesting which includes being arrested shows their commitment to the cause. AP has a writeup here and ABC has one here. The NYT even has coverage here.
Now, some Richard Thompson-Dad's gonna kill me..his ode to the soldiers in Baghdad
This surely put a smile on MY face don't ya know? From the NYT:
The District of Columbia has agreed to pay $1 million to about 120 protesters who were improperly rounded up by police during demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The settlement Wednesday is the largest payout to date by the city for police actions during the Sept. 27, 2002, protests.
Charles Ramsey, who was police chief at the time, initially defended the arrests but later acknowledged they were improper. Police failed to order the crowds to disperse or warn that they faced arrest.
A larger class-action lawsuit is pending, covering more than 400 people who say they were illegally arrested at Pershing Park near the White House. The city previously agreed to pay more than $640,000 to settle lawsuits filed by 14 other demonstrators who said they were illegally rounded up by police.
And no matter how you feel about her personally, we all are worse off in our fight to end this miserable warmongering. Below are her finals words to us. I hope she finds peace within herself now that she isn't giving her heart and soul to the anti-war movement. My dear friend Robert who has spent time with Cindy at the Crawford "Camp Casey" compound has a moving tribute to her here. Bless you Cindy for giving up your comfortable life to make us all aware. I will treasure your words dear lady..and pray I never have to suffer the loss of my niece who is fighting in Afghanistan as I type this.
"Good Riddance Attention Whore" by CindySheehan Mon May 28, 2007 at 09:57:01 AM PDT
I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called "Face" of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such "liberal blogs" as the Democratic Underground. Being called an "attention whore" and being told "good riddance" are some of the more milder rebukes.
* CindySheehan's diary :: :: *
I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.
The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our "two-party" system?
However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."
I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt "two" party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?
I have also reached the conclusion that if I am doing what I am doing because I am an "attention whore" then I really need to be committed. I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither. If an individual wants both, then normally he/she is not willing to do more than walk in a protest march or sit behind his/her computer criticizing others. I have spent every available cent I got from the money a "grateful" country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then. I have sacrificed a 29 year marriage and have traveled for extended periods of time away from Casey’s brother and sisters and my health has suffered and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in collection because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country from slaughtering innocent human beings. I have been called every despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life threatened many times.
The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.
I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won’t work with that group; he won’t attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions.
Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction and the people of Iraq have been doomed to death and fates worse than death by people worried more about elections than people. However, in five, ten, or fifteen years, our troops will come limping home in another abject defeat and ten or twenty years from then, our children’s children will be seeing their loved ones die for no reason, because their grandparents also bought into this corrupt system. George Bush will never be impeached because if the Democrats dig too deeply, they may unearth a few skeletons in their own graves and the system will perpetuate itself in perpetuity.
I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost. I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble.
Camp Casey has served its purpose. It’s for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford , Texas ? I will consider any reasonable offer. I hear George Bush will be moving out soon, too...which makes the property even more valuable.
This is my resignation letter as the "face" of the American anti-war movement. This is not my "Checkers" moment, because I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A, but I am finished working in, or outside of this system. This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it. I am getting out before it totally consumes me or anymore people that I love and the rest of my resources.
Good-bye America ...you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.
I have purchased a domain name. I have been meticulously working on a new site,Leftwing Nutjob. Please change your bookmarks people..this puppy will no longer be updated as of July 1st 2011.
