Posted on 03/28/2005 12:05:51 PM PST by Brilliant
PINELLAS PARK, Fla., March 28 - The legal battle over the life of Terri Schiavo may have ended, but a thick, fervent crowd remains in the makeshift encampment outside the Woodside Hospice House here.
In numbers, they were not as great on Easter as they were on the previous three days, when the legal and public relations battle came to its bitter climax. But like soup simmered for hours, what remains is a concentrated stock of the angriest and most devoted, the prayerful and the publicity hungry.
"No, we're not going to go home," said Bill Tierney, a young daughter at his side. "Terri is not dead until she's dead."
Ms. Schiavo's father, Robert Schindler, said he had visited his daughter today and that she was very weak but still responding.
"She is still showing facial expressions," Mr. Schindler told reporters. "I hug her and I kiss her, and she is reacting to that and she is trying to talk. But she is very, very subdued. She's failing but she is still with us, and she is showing a determination to live that is incredible," he said, speaking outside the hospice.
Mr. Tierney, a former military intelligence officer in Iraq who works as a translator and investigator for private companies, cried as he talked about watching the Schiavo spectacle on television and feeling the utter need to be at the hospice.
Like many of the protesters, Mr. Tierney said he had experienced proof in his own life that God is real. He held out his left hand showing the traces of scars from injuries he suffered in a gas explosion in 1987.
"You can hardly see it anymore," he said, the tears cascading down his sun-darkened cheeks. "And I was burned all the way from my waist up. By the laws of physics, I should be dead. So I've seen miracles."Who are these people who have spent so much of their time and their passion on behalf of Terri Schiavo? They seemed to come most often from two frequently overlapping groups: those who are religiously devout, a group about evenly split between conservative Catholics and evangelical Protestants, and those eager to champion the cause of the disabled.
At one point, about eight people in wheelchairs, members of Not Dead Yet, a disability rights organization focused exclusively on end-of-life issues, blocked an entrance to the hospice when they lay across the driveway chanting "We're not dead yet!"
There were no arrests, but five other protesters were taken into custody when ministers tried to cross a police line and to take Easter communion to Ms. Schiavo.
Carol Cleigh, a member of Not Dead Yet, said her group's message was that society needed to alter its attitude that a life of severe disability is not worth living.
"I'm very happy," said Ms. Cleigh, who has been in a wheelchair since she suffered brain trauma in a traffic accident in 1989. "I have a wonderful life."
There were, to be sure, the simply curious, wishing to get a glimpse of the circuslike scene.
Only about two dozen people turned up for a dawn Easter service outside the hospice. But by early afternoon, as the muggy heat intensified, the crowd had swelled to over 100, still far fewer than in previous days, but louder, angrier, more demonstrative.
An emotional cluster of worshipers applauded the news late Sunday afternoon that Ms. Schiavo had received communion -- a few drops of wine on her tongue -- and been given Catholic last rites for a second time.
Interviews with more than three dozen protesters found people who had come came from across the country, though most lived within an hour's drive of the hospice. The farther they had traveled, the more likely they were to express a deep religious need to be here. Tales of personal miracles, like Mr. Tierney's, were not uncommon.
The street the hospice is on is one of countless dead ends in the Florida coastal sprawl, a narrow strip of concrete leading off a broad thoroughfare lined by convenience stores, strip malls and fast-food franchises. On the corner is a bank. Beyond that, a few small office buildings, the hospice, then a school, a trailer park and a riot of foliage.
Even without the crowds, it would have been a tight squeeze for two vehicles to pass on the speckled strip of concrete. Outside the hospice complex, barriers of orange plastic had been erected to keep the protesters on the grass and to maintain a walking path nearest the hospice.
All day long, protesters walked back and forth. One man periodically blew a ram's horn. Another chanted. A young woman stopped every few feet to offer a prayer to the hospice, at one point cupping her hands gently around a quivering butterfly.
About a half-dozen tents and shade shelters were scattered around. Others slept on the open, uneven ground.
People held up signs, taped them to the orange barriers, tied them to trees and poles. Their targets were constant: Judge George W. Greer, who ordered the feeding tube removed; Gov. Jeb Bush, who rallied around the cause of Ms. Schiavo's parents but now says he has done all he can; the local police guarding the hospice; and, of course, the stricken woman's husband, Michael Schiavo. The signs included these sentiments: "Hey Judge, Who Made You God?" "Hospice or Auschwitz?" "Murder is Legal in America." "Murderers!" "You Wouldn't Let a Dog Die of Thirst." "Next They Come For You: America = Nazis." "Has Anyone Seen Jeb?"
Governor Bush has spent the last few days out of view, observing the holiday. But he interrupted his brief vacation on Sunday to again try to explain that he had exhausted every means of helping Ms. Schiavo.
"I cannot violate a court order," the governor said on CNN. "I don't have powers from the United States Constitution, or, for that matter, from the Florida Constitution, that would allow me to intervene after a decision has been made."
The vigil zone for protesters is on the same side of the street as the hospice, on the grassy verge between the center's perimeter and the road. The tent city of television cameras, their mobile antennas reaching higher than the palms, is across the street, cradling around the parking lot of a small office building in which Ms. Schiavo's parents and siblings have watched the unfolding scene.
Mr. Schindler and Ms. Schiavo's mother, Mary Schindler, passed word to the crowd late Saturday that they wanted everyone to remain calm and to cease acts of civil disobedience. Still, there were frequent flare-ups on Sunday with protesters who were unwilling to tone down the rancor.
At one point, Mr. Schindler could not get into the hospice because the police had it locked down, nervous about a protester who had unexpectedly crossed their lines and about four particularly angry men who were shouting "fascists" and "Gestapo." That prompted Bobby Schindler, Ms. Schiavo's brother, to cross the street to try to calm the demonstrators.
"You are not speaking for my family," Mr. Schindler said. "We are not going to solve the problem today by getting arrested."
Initially, the men seemed confused. Then they reacted defiantly. But after a few more minutes of shouting, they cooled and melted back into the crowd.
"We've always known that the closer we get to Terri expiring, the more emotional it's going to get out here," said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition.
One of the angry protesters, Robert More, was sitting a few hours later at a folding table, collecting signatures for a network of government watchdogs he was hoping to organize. He was affiliated with several survivalist groups, he said, and wanted to help instruct people on how to live in the wilderness.
"Today, it's Terri they're coming after, but later, it will be all of us," Mr. More said. "We have to be prepared."
Many who showed up on Sunday arrived, like Mr. More, with their own set of political grievances.
Two women from New York City arrived late in the afternoon with blank sheets of poster board that they intended to emblazon with the messages "Leave the Dark Ages in History" and "We Need Morality, But Not 'Traditional' Morality."
One of the women, Sunsara Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, said she and her colleague, Debra Sweet, an abortion rights activist, intended to spend two days at the site, to make sure "the other side" is heard.
"What we intend to say is that we don't want to live in a theocracy," Ms. Taylor said. "We don't want to creep towards Christian fascism in this country."
Ms. Sweet said she recognized several people from protests outside abortion clinics around the country. "This is their whole life," she said.
Mary K. Porta, who has been an almost constant presence at the protests, said she was trying to respect the family's wishes to keep the atmosphere calm and prayerful.
"We're being told by the pastors to tone it down and to say only positive things," Ms. Porta said. "But I don't know. I think there is a place for anger, for righteous anger, and this is one of them."
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
This is the first I have heard of the Not Dead Yet, but I am qualified for membership and glad to know that they are there.
"One of the women, Sunsara Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, said she and her colleague, Debra Sweet, an abortion rights activist, intended to spend two days at the site, to make sure "the other side" is heard... Ms. Sweet said she recognized several people from protests outside abortion clinics around the country. "This is their whole life," she said."
What a rip. So this communist activist recognizes someone from the prolife side and says scornfully, That's their whole life?
So what was she doing at abortion clinic protests? Maybe her whole life is agitating for death - and communism.
Bulimia is a mental illness.
Was Terri of "sound mind" at the time she allegedly said, "No tubes for me"?
People have to be "of sound mind" to write a will.
Here's another quote from the NYT, not in the article:
"Crowd Remains Outside Hospice; Terri Schiavo's family, including her father and brother, have asked supporters to remain calm."
Gee, I wonder why they did that? I'll tell you why. It's because the authorities asked them to, and they know that if they don't play ball with the authorities, then they won't themselves be welcome very long. The truth is that the Schinders are on Terri's side, but their concern is limited to Terri. They are not there defending a broader principle, as are the protesters. The authorities, though, are obviously concerned about their ability to control these protesters, or they would not be trotting the Schindlers out there to calm down the crowd.
But, in an earlier article, they were bragging that they were "ready" for thousands.
They were trying to scare them away. They obviously did not count on folks violating the order, either. They assumed they'd be good little protesters with signs--not glasses of water.
"Of course, this article was written to denigrate their efforts,"
I don't know, the article seem pretty even-handed to me. Other than the four loud men, it doesn't feature some of the more angry or bizarre people I've read about elsewhere.
This morning Matt Lauer was on (it was a bit after 7:00am, before I had switched the channel to FOX)and interviewing some ass named Savidge about the Schiavo murder-in-progress. And this ass named Savidge actually said that the ass named Mike Schiavo had insisted all along that Terri Schiavo had wanted to be euthanized. Is this true? I thought I had read that immediately following the accident, and before the ass named Mike Schiavo could collect on the malpractice money, he said NOTHING about euthanizing Terri. Am I wrong on this?
So it's okay for the liberal, anti-war, tree-hugging hippies to protest wars that they know they can't stop, but it's not okay for other people to protest something that really is a humanitarian crisis? I'll admit that neither group will change anything, but, they(the media) have protrayed those protestors in front of the hospice in the worst way.
I don't agree that they can't change anything. If enough people make a big enough pest of themselves, things will change.
Because it is her whole life, and like the self absorbed twit that she is, thinks this is all about her.
Possibly. ;)
I saw this f***ing commie c**t on Fox yesterday holding up a sign. That fact that she didn't get her ass kicked is proof that our side actually does protest peacefully. We all know what would have happened if it were the other way around.
They are letting an American citizen be starved to death and they are too weak to even try to help her.
The Bushes are rich people and do not need the money so why do they want to be our leaders when they are so weak?
The lesson in all this is not to trust your fate to the legal system, medical system, political system -- and certainly not the media, if one wants a rational outcome. It means a need for greater self-sufficiency and self-reliance, which begins of course, by making better discriminations and decisions.
Generally, it is not a good idea to marry the first and only person one ever dates. And then when the marriage goes bad, it's not a waste of the years put into it, to get out of it, at whatever cost, or it could cost you your life. There are no guarantees of a happy outcome -- no matter what the demagogues promise. We all take our best shot and make the best from what we know.
Let her will to live, inspire us to make the most of our own lives.
And what does it say about Ms. Sweets life that she was also at the abortion clinics?
With all due respect Mr. Governor, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by intervening in this appalling and shameful FLORIDA decision to murder an innocent woman by starvation.
I'm surprised Jeb took it as far as he did. He did not have a good hand to play.
The Schindlers took the case all the way up the appellate chain, and lost. The State legislature passed a bill that was certain to get thrown out on appeal, and it was. Then the US Congress passed a law that was certain to accomplish nothing, and it did.
Jeb delayed this for 2 years. The State legislature had a chance to keep her alive for another few weeks by passing another statute, but it decided not to do so.
When you've got a Constitutional struggle between two of the branches of government, it is usually the third that decides which side wins. Here, there was a struggle between the Executive and the Courts. The legislature elected to side with the Courts by voting down the last piece of proposed legislation. If Bush couldn't even count on the legislature to back him up, then there is no point in proceeding. Bush is not a dictator. He has power but not absolute power. He did everything he could have done without going to jail.
Your ire might more appropriately be directed against the RINOs in the legislature, who had a chance to give Bush more power on this dispute, but decided not to.
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