Hi everyone. We just got back to Austin from Crawford a little while ago. Hopefully Rick will have some pictures up soon. For now, let me tell you all about our day and meeting Cindy Sheehan
There is one traffic light in Crawford it seems. On one side is a big old place called The Yellow Rose of Texas. Out in front is a giant replica of the Ten Commandments, and it was here and across the street at a gas station where there were a few people who were counter demonstrating, if you want to call it that since there were only about four or five of them there. Just across the other side of the main street, tucked under some big trees is the Crawford Peace House. A small house with anti-war posters in the yard and in the windows and just full of amazing people. We didn’t stop there at first but went instead to the rally which was just down the street a little near the high school football field. When we got there, people where beginning to gather to hear the speakers. Cindy wasn’t there either, but we found out that she was out at the campsite. I assume she felt it was better to keep a lower profile and if this was the reason, I agree with it. Her being there would have given fuel to the few counter protesters who were there. There were a few more of them at the football field a few hundred yards down the road from the rally. There was one guy in a red chevy pickup with an American flag in the bed, driving up and down the road playing what I guess he considered patriotic country music and had “This is Bush Country” posted on the side of his truck. He looked pretty lonely to me. Ironically, when we got back to Austin we saw this same dude on the national news saying how it’s ok to do this stuff in San Francisco, but don’t bring this trash here to Texas. I’ll let you interpret what he meant by “trash”.
We stayed at the rally for almost an hour and listened to some of the first speakers, including Dante Zapalla from, I believe, Military Families for Peace, or Gold Star Families for Peace. You might remember him from the very end of the hearings held by John Conyers on the Downing Street Minutes. He stated at the end of the hearings that he had lost his brother in Iraq. We met and talked to many wonderful and interesting people from all over the place. I had a good long talk with a woman from the International Socialist Organization’s Austin branch. It was interesting to see and meet a people from all different organizations and political backrounds who were all there to support Cindy. Everyone was unified in this support, and I saw no signs of any groups trying to splinter off and get air time for themselves, as sometimes happens at these kinds of gatherings.
From there, we walked back to the Crawford Peace House and spent some time there cooling off (it was hot!) and meeting and talking with some of the founders and other volunteers there. We were welcomed by Hadi Jawad, co-founder of the Peace House and Lynn Gonzalez, a friend of Cindy’s from San Diego. I’ve met some nice people in my time, but Hadi takes the cake, hands down. He said, this house is your house, stay as long as you like and was nice enough to take the time to answer a few of my questions. When I asked about his relationship with the locals in general, he said it was pretty bad and since it was founded in 2003, there were times when they were actually feeling threatened. That’s a shame because I find it an amazing fact that they were there to support Cindy in her quest, and are there at all considering it’s Bush’s home town, though we all know that Bush is from Connecticut, but they don’t want him either.
Lynn Gonzalez is a very passionate and talkative woman who offered to take us out to Camp Casey. We were lucky that she was just getting ready to bring some food out to Cindy and offered to let us ride along. Just before we pulled away, a small older, grandmotherly looking woman named Mill from Dallas came up to the car and asked if we could bring some roses out that she had brought for Cindy. She declined to bring them out herself but just wanted to see to it that Cindy get the flowers. Apparently she came out from Dallas just for that. Amazing. Along the ride out to the camp we picked up three others who were walking along the hot road out to where Cindy was. They said that the police had told them they would have to walk, but we had no problem going through ourselves. Maybe this indicates that the police were stopping random people or even selecting people to stop. I don’t know. We had no problem.
Camp Casey is a rag tag collection of tents, camper vans, and cars squeezed up tight between the road and the fence. It is at the confluence of two country roads in the middle of pasture. In the middle of this intersection is a small triangle of grass between the roads. For some reason, whoever owns this little piece of scrub grass decided to post a no trespassing sign on it. This might sound like a small thing, but with the roads being so narrow and the fence very close to the road to begin with, it leaves precious littls space for Cindy and everyone else who is there to move around. Especially when there are cars and trucks going up and down the road. To me it seems like just another way to cause more inconvenience and stress to Cindy and her supporters out of spite and ignorance.
Here is the best part, from my perspective. When we pulled up to the camp, Lynn starts asking where Cindy is and I’m tapping on her shoulder telling her that Cindy is sitting in a chair just outside her drivers window. Now I’m no icon worshiper, but when I saw Cindy sitting almost right next to me outside the car, I felt like I was in the presence of someone extraordinary and heroic. I was fortunate enough to have been carrying the flowers from Mill from Dallas and walked up to Cindy and offered them to her for Mill and told her my name and that I was here from New York. She thanked me for the flowers and thanked me for being there. I said to her, no, thank you Cindy. That was it. That small moment with her was worth the long trip. She asked for people to come and I found a way to come. Mission accomplished so to speak. She asked me if I could put the flowers with the others by the crosses that I hadn’t noticed stretching down the road for a couple of hundred yards out from the camp.
We walked up the road along the camp as it is stretched
out along the fence, talking to different people, watching listening, and taking in the scene before us. Personally for me…I feel as if I have been to an historic place. A place where, as Cindy has said, the beginning of the end of the Iraq War was started. As time went by, more and more people started showing up. First on foot and then by car. Car after car after car, stretching down the road like a train for as far as the eye could see. In all directions there were more people appearing. By this time Cindy had moved down the road toward Crawford to greet and wave to the people who were coming in. She was surrounded by media and supporters as she did this. As people drove in and saw that Cindy was there greeting them, they would blow their horns and shout their support and the crowd on the side of the road would return the shout and applaud those coming in. It was a truly profound sight to see.
Not long after this, Ray McGovern was at a microphone giving instructions to the crowd to stay off the grass triangle lest they wished to be arrested. He said this with a bit of sarcasm and incredulousness at the absurdity of it. When he was done he introduced a woman who was there to play some acoustic music. I can’t remember her name now as I was still gazing around in wonder at the sight before me and taking in the feeling of disbelief that I felt that I was even really there :O) Whatever her name was, she was good and got the crowd in a good, peaceful and I would say, hopeful mood. Awesome :O)
It was at this time that we decided to get going back to Crawford. I would have loved to stay but was worried that I might have a problem getting back to Austin without Rick since I have to fly home tomorrow. Leaving was sad and hard. We never found Tracy and Brinn, and it turns out now that another blog friend of mine, Dredd from Bradblog was there too and I didn’t know it. I’m disappointed that I didn’t get the chance to meet them but I have a strong suspition that there will come another opportunity in the future to meet them. I now have a friend in Rick from the Peoples Republic of Austin, as he puts it :O) Brinn lives in Austin and Dredd lives somewhere near here, so I do believe I will be back someday.
As we were driving out in a shuttle bus owned by a local guy who volunteered to bring people back and forth, the road was just full of cars coming in to the camp. There were also a lot of police coming out by this time too and I assume they were there for crowd control as there were by this time, easily three to four hundred people and many more coming in by car. Do any of you remember the last scene from the movie “Pay It Forward” where there is a line of cars stretched out for miles down the road coming to pay respects to the boy who was killed in the movie? Well that’s what it looked like to me, only they were coming to pay respect to Casey and his Mother who has single handedly caused so many people to finally stop and think about what Bush is doing to our children and our country. And she is camped out in the Texas sun, beside a road in his own back yard.
Talk to Cindy George. She deserves that much at least.
Peace
