When early reports said 50 people joined Cindy Sheehan at her protest near Bush’s Crawford ranch, my heart sank because, usually, body count marks success or failure for a protest.
I didn’t take into account the power of this protest by a singular grieving mother of a son killed in Iraqi fighting an unnecessary war that also — as she always remembers to note — kills countless Iraqi civilians.
I knew she’d succeeded when local TV news, far away in Seattle, ran her story. Google has tracked over 600 stories on Cindy’s vow “to camp out on the spot until Mr. Bush agrees to meet with her, even if it means spending all of August under a broiling sun by the dusty road.”
A reporter from The Associated Press had just finished interviewing her. CBS was taping a segment on her. She had already appeared on CNN, and was scheduled to appear live on ABC on Monday morning. Reporters from across the country were calling her cellphone.
“It’s just snowballed,” Ms. Sheehan said beside a small stand of trees and a patch of shade that contained a sleeping bag, some candles, a jar of nuts and a few other supplies. “We have opened up a debate in the country.” (NYT)
ABC’s The Note‘s balls up the NYT story this way:
The [NYT] attributes the media attention Cindy Sheehan has attracted to a “confluence” of forces: last week’s deaths of 20 Marines from a single battalion, slipping poll support, and a White House press corps camped in Crawford, Tex. without much to do.
Baloney, Note writers. You ignored us when millions and millions of us marched before the Iraq war. Don’t you dare try to minimize a protest of one who proves it’s not numbers — but a big heart and a heart-breaking story — that matter.
As philinmaine’s diary says, “Symbols change reality.” (Updates below the fold.)
Update [2005-8-8 10:48:47 by susanhu]: Crooks & Liars has video of Cindy Sheehan from her protest near Crawford. She’s interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s Late Edition.
And Howie Martin just sent this report:
CNN: “By popular demand ( many requests ) Cindy was on with Wolf and talked about her son, her first visit with President Bush, and her trek to Crawford in an effort to see President Bush again. She was highly critical of her first meeting with President Bush about her son’s death and talked a little bit about yesterday’s events. Crooks and Liars has the video.
New York Times (via Dem Bloggers): “President Bush draws antiwar protesters just about wherever he goes, but few generate the kind of attention that Cindy Sheehan has since she drove down the winding road toward his ranch here this weekend and sought to tell him face to face that he must pull all Americans troops out of Iraq now.
Ms. Sheehan’s son, Casey, was killed last year in Iraq, after which she became an antiwar activist. She says she and her family met with the president two months later at Fort Lewis in Washington State.But when she was blocked by the police a few miles from Mr. Bush’s 1,600-acre spread on Saturday, the 48-year-old Ms. Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., was transformed into a news media phenomenon, the new face of opposition to the Iraq conflict at a moment when public opinion is in flux and the politics of the war have grown more complicated for the president and the Republican Party.”
