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Guilty for Peace
In Search of Peace
With Cindy Sheehan
As just about everyone knows, on August 6th, 2005, I set up camp in the bar
ditches along Prairie Chapel Road near George’s home in Crawford, Texas,
after the president refused to meet with me to answer my question: What
Noble Cause?
Along Prairie Chapel Road, two other roads come out and form a triangular
piece of land where the Sheriff’s allowed us to camp on the easements (10
feet in along all three sides) until Thursday, Aug. 11th when one of the
neighbors suddenly “remembered” that she owned that land, so we campers were
delegated exclusively to the bar ditches…where my tent was all along. On the
2nd weekend of our stay, another neighbor fired his shot gun in Camp Casey’s
general direction and his cousin donated an acre of land for us to use that
summer which became Camp Casey II. Many Camp Casey I activists refused to
leave Camp I because they felt very emotionally attached to it...the
location was, after all, where it all started and grew.
I was grateful for the donation of land because hundreds of people from all
over the nation were coming on a daily basis, and I had no idea where we
were going to put them. Cars and tents lined the roads and every inch of
space was occupied, but I also felt very attached to the place where I sat
in a lawn chair the first night with six other people, and pitched my tent
the 2nd night in the ditch. I often visit Crawford since I now own property
there and we are improving it, and whenever I visit, I often go to Camp
Casey I to just soak up the positive energy and relive the best, yet most
stressful, summer of my life.
After we left Crawford on Aug. 31st, 2005 (a few hours after George finally
left to do damage control on the nightmare in the Gulf States), the
McClellan County Supervisors passed an order that there would be no
“camping, sleeping, parking, or eating” in the ditches along Prairie Chapel
Road, which became known as the “Cindy Sheehan Ordinances.” We Camp
Caseyites felt at the time, and we still do, that these ordinances were
enacted to suppress and inhibit our free exercise of our first amendment
rights. The ordinances are not in affect anywhere else in the county.
So, being the way we are, we decided to challenge the ordinances, and the
day before Thanksgiving of 2005, 12 peace activists decided to pitch tents
and they were promptly arrested. By Easter of 2006, not one of the original
12 had been charged with anything, so 14 Camp Caseyites decided to camp and
be arrested. They were all arrested for violating the ordinances, but two of
the “Prairie Dogs (as they call themselves), Hiram Myers (retired attorney
from Oklahoma) and Em Hardy (psychologist from Dallas/Ft. Worth) were
charged with “obstructing a roadway.” We are challenging the ordinances so
we can test their constitutionality in a court of law, but the District
Attorney of McClellan County won’t charge any of the 26 people who have been
arrested with the ordinances so we cannot.
As a witness, I couldn’t stay in the courtroom for the trial, but I was
there for the jury selection. 50 jurors were impaneled so 6 could be chosen
since the Judge Mike Galloway (who was very fair) felt that this would be a
controversial case and it would be hard to find 6 impartial jurors. During
the selection process, I was stunned by some of the responses of the jurors
to the questions…yes stunned even though the trial was taking place in Waco,
Tx., which is the county seat. My estimation of Texans had risen immensely
since I have been spending so much time there---Texans are mostly who
support Camp Casey---but the panel to select the 6 jurors that would hear
the case has me worried again!
The prosecutor asked the entire panel if any of them thought that there
should be a “time and a place” for exercising one’s right to free speech and
approximately 35 of them raised their hands! None of them seemed familiar
with the concept of “civil disobedience” and very few of them seemed to
understand the fact that the two defendants weren’t being tried for what
they were arrested for. I was so troubled that Em and Hiram were going to be
judged by a group that was so clearly partial. One African American woman
even told our amazing attorney, David Broiles, that she didn’t believe in
civil disobedience---this coming from a woman who has benefited so much from
c.d. that others have committed to earn her so many civil rights and the
right to vote, for that matter. Many times the civil rights’ activists of
the past were horrible and abusively treated so she could sit there in the
jury box.
Our side put on an airtight case showing that none of the 14 arrested were
in the roadway---they were in tents in the ditch. We had pictures and video
and the state’s witnesses could not say that any of the protestors were in
the ditch. However, Em and Hiram were found guilty and the prosecutor
recommended jail time and probation! Judge Gassaway that recommendation was
unreasonable, so he fined Em and Hiram 150.00 and court costs.
The money is not the point though. I was told that in her closing remarks,
the Assistant D.A. virtually told the jurors to send the message that we are
not welcomed to come to Crawford and protest and to find the defendants
guilty to send a message: Which is what happened from the jurors who swore
that they would look at the evidence and dispassionately make a verdict
based on the facts. How can people be found guilty of obstructing a roadway
when they weren’t even in the road? What they were really found guilty of
was daring to question the Emperor of Prairie Chapel Road and a war that is
killing our soldiers by people who think that the American military presence
in Iraq is not “welcome.” They were found guilty of protecting everyone’s
First Amendment Freedoms, even the jurors who don’t believe in true freedom
of speech---they only believe in those freedoms if the time is right and the
place is right, and if the speaker agrees with them.
I haven’t heard what Em and Hiram are going to do now, but I hope they
decide to appeal. They were denied the right to a trial by a “jury of their
peers,” and there was no way that they were going to get a fair trial in
Waco.
You can bet that this Easter when we gather back in Crawford to confront the
insaniacs that are running our country and that we are going to set up our
tents at Camp I and hope that the D.A. has the guts to charge us with
disobeying their unconstitutional ordinances so that we can test those
orders.
I don’t know when people are going to realize that we are not going away
until the war does, or George does. Preferably both, and soon!
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