Elaine here and I'm late with posting, believe me, I know. Due to the late hour, I'm going to move quickly. Here's an item I hope you're already aware of.
Anti-War Camp in Crawford Texas Vandalized (Democracy Now!)
In Crawford Texas, Cindy Sheehan has announced her 11-day-old anti-war vigil will move locations - in order to get closer to president Bush's vacation ranch. A local Crawford resident has offered her to set up Camp Casey on his property. Sheehan has vowed to remain in Crawford until the president meets with her. Last year Sheehan's oldest son Casey died in Iraq. He was 24 years old. The right-wing attack on Sheehan is intensifying. Last week Fox News host Bill O'Reilly described Sheehan's actions as treasonous. On Monday night a Texas man drove his pickup truck through the vigil site running over hundreds of white wooden crosses and American flags that had been put up to honor soldiers killed in Iraq. The man -- Larry Northern - was arrested and charged with criminal mischief. Sheehan vowed there would be no retaliation. "We're all here for peace, and we're not going to lower ourselves down to the level of the violence," Sheehan said. "And we're going to let them get us off our mission either. This isn't only about my son. This is about all of the 1,800, over 1,800 people who have been killed in this mistake of a war. This is about the 130,000 who are still over there for no reason. This is about the millions of Iraqis in harm's way for no reason. We want this to end." Meanwhile support for the anti-war protest in Crawford is growing. Tonight MoveOn is helping to organize more than 1,000 candlelight vigils around the United States to support Sheehan.
I saw a new name at The Common Ills today, Rita King, and visited Ruminating on America where I found something I wanted to note.
"Sister Lelia Mattingly is currently serving a six-month prison term for civil disobedience after crossing the line at a protest" (Rita J. King)
For decades, Maryknoll Sister Lelia Mattingly followed a bloody trail across Latin America. Her journey eventually took her across the protest line at a military base in Georgia, and now it will take her to prison in Connecticut.
The Catholic nun, who has spent the last several years at Maryknoll in Ossining, will begin her six-month stint at the Danbury federal prison this Tuesday, the penalty for a repeat charge of civil disobedience for crossing the line onto a military base during a protest.
In November 2004, Mattingly, 64, and 16,000 others participated in the “largest anti-war protest since Vietnam” at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA) at the Fort Benning military base in Georgia.
Fifteen activists were arrested, including two minors and a blind man who, along with Mattingly, climbed over razor wire to access the military base after hiking through the woods.
Once on the base, Mattingly and her two partners created a makeshift cemetery with crosses painted with the names of two Maryknoll Sisters, another Catholic nun and a lay missioner who had been raped and murdered in 1980 in El Salvador by soldiers, months after the Archbishop Oscar Romero was murdered while saying mass. SOA graduates, Mattingly said, were responsible for these slayings.
After Mattingly and her two companions prayed over the crosses planted on the military base, they approached guards and were arrested soon after, led off in plastic cuffs to be processed and charged.
In today's America, we imprison nuns. I'll apologize for the delay in posting. Tomorrow night's will hopefully go up at a reasonable time.
"Peace Quotes" (Peace Center):
A spiritual person tries less to be godly than to be deeply human.
Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Jr.
