Posted on 08/21/2005 10:39:30 AM PDT by Callahan
On Saturday the 20th, members of the International Socialist Orgnization (ISO) were thrown out of the new Camp Casey site by Crawford law enforcement personnel at the request of protest organizers...
Here's the deal from a DU eyewitness. The ISO set up a table under the new "Camp Two" tent (which is huge) and loaded it with copies of Socialist Worker and Howard Zinn books. They then started peddling their stuff and handing out flyers to advertise the socialist-leaning anti-war protest in DC on September 24. They were eager, if perhaps a little too aggressive in sales, and I was indeed considering buying one of the Zinn books anyway.
Before I could head back to the booth to actually puchase anything, one of the ISO volunteers jumped on a table and announced to everyone that they were being arrested. Sure enough, there were two or three policemen at the ISO table, and some organizers from Veterans for Peace had joined the growing fracas, with someone from ISO claiming that they were being expelled and/or arrested just for being socialists.
According to Veterans for Peace spokesmen, the folks from International Socialist Union had indeed gained an interview with Cindy Sheehan and permission to put her statements in Socialist Worker magazine, but Sheehan and the organizers asked the ISO not to set up a banner tent or engage in fundraising at Camp Casey. From what I gathered from the spokesmen, organizations such as CODEPINK and Intelligence Failure that do sell T-shirts and other products at Camp Casey have reached an agreement with Sheehan and the other primary organizers to contribute their profits to the overall effort, which encompasses Crawford Peace House, Gold Star Families for Peace, Veterans for Peace, etc. ISO, on the other hand, had reached no such agreement with the organizers, which meant that all of the money they raised from product sales would go straight into ISO's coffers.
The overall impression I got was that almost all free speech was allowed at Camp Casey, but with the growth of the protest movement at Crawford, there was an increasing need for organization and some need to focus the overall energy of the protest to keep Camp Casey from imploding during Cindy's absence. Camp Casey is not a democratically-run site out of sheer necessity; there has to be some control of the overall message coming out of Crawford. This means that you can wear whatever shirts you want (PETA, CODEPINK, Socialist Worker, Green Party, Amendment II Democrats, etc.) and even informally share your initiatives and platforms with other folks at the rally. But, as Cindy herself has learned, the mainstream news media is extremely sensitive to any message that comes out of Camp Casey, and as Cindy refocuses her plea to meet with Bush and explain the need to invade Iraq, so too the organizers see the need to prevent the message from diffusing under the weight of the special-interest cornucopia and turn Camp Casey into yet another exercise in herding cats. Apparently, the ISO tested the fences once too often, and for that they had to be thrown out.
I don't think anyone was arrested, but the situation had grown somewhat tense for a bit. Does anyone have any other updates or clarification on this incident?
She doesn't need any moonbats to assist her. She does well enough on her own. She and Hillary are alike in one way, though. It's all about her, as much as she and the press would like to make it about Casey, bless his soul.
Ahem!
;o)
You're right but the moonbats have kinda taken over her spot.
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