Houston Chronicle: He's The Last Cowboy At Camp Casey

[Hissyspit]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/mason/5061101.html

Aug. 16, 2007, 9:18PM
He's the last cowboy at Camp Casey

By JULIE MASON
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

CRAWFORD — As most Americans question the war in Iraq, Camp Casey, once the thriving symbol of the nation's peace movement, has dwindled to two inhabitants — and one of them is a dog.

Carl Rising-Moore, 61, and Sunny, a friendly former stray, are the lone holdouts at an encampment that once hosted busloads of protesters drawn by the site's proximity to President Bush's ranch near Crawford and his captive phalanx of national media. "This is it," Rising-Moore said this week, sitting in a patch of shade on the parched, 5-acre site. "I'm a real cowboy."

- snip -

Still, it's a stunning diminution from the days when Joan Baez played for hundreds on the grass in Crawford, and Sheehan, trailed by television cameras, was attended by an entourage from the anti-war group Code Pink. Celebrities visited Camp Casey. Anti-war demonstrators drew frequent counterprotests from pro-military groups. Now, all of them are gone.

Is this the last, dry gasp of the popular peace movement? And how does it square with polls showing a majority of Americans oppose the war and believe invading Iraq was a mistake?

Disregard any paradox, said Zoltan Grossman, a prominent national peace activist and organizer in Puget Sound, Wash. The peace movement is elsewhere, he said.

According to Grossman, a geography professor at Evergreen State College, the peace movement — without a national figurehead or central clearinghouse — is most active at the grass-roots level. He said the polls reflect a greater awareness about the war — even when those numbers don't translate into bigger marches on Washington, D.C.

-snip -

Check out photos of Camp Casey online at: blogs.chron.com/beltwayconfidential