…My ticket was in the 5th gallery, front row, fourth seat in. The person who in a few minutes was to arrest me, helped me to my seat.
I had just sat down and I was warm from climbing 3 flights of stairs back up from the bathroom so I unzipped my jacket. I turned to the right to take my left arm out, when the same officer saw my shirt and yelled; “Protester.” He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs. I said something like “I’m going, do you have to be so rough?” By the way, his name is Mike Weight.
The officer ran with me to the elevators yelling at everyone to move out of the way. When we got to the elevators, he cuffed me and took me outside to await a squad car. On the way out, someone behind me said, “That’s Cindy Sheehan.” At which point the officer who arrested me said: “Take these steps slowly.” I said, “You didn’t care about being careful when you were dragging me up the other steps.” He said, “That’s because you were protesting.” Wow, I get hauled out of the People’s House because I was, “Protesting.”
I was never told that I couldn’t wear that shirt into the Congress. I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things…I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later. I was immediately, and roughly (I have the bruises and muscle spasms to prove it) hauled off and arrested for “unlawful conduct.”
After I had my personal items inventoried and my fingers printed, a nice Sgt. came in and looked at my shirt and said, “2245, huh? I just got back from there.”
I told him that my son died there. That’s when the enormity of my loss hit me. I have lost my son. I have lost my First Amendment rights. I have lost the country that I love. Where did America go? I started crying in pain.
What did Casey die for? What did the 2244 other brave young Americans die for? What are tens of thousands of them over there in harm’s way for still? For this? I can’t even wear a shrit that has the number of troops on it that George Bush and his arrogant and ignorant policies are responsible for killing.
I wore the shirt to make a statement. The press knew I was going to be there and I thought every once in awhile they would show me and I would have the shirt on. I did not wear it to be disruptive, or I would have unzipped my jacket during George’s speech. If I had any idea what happens to people who wear shirts that make the neocons uncomfortable that I would be arrested…maybe I would have, but I didn’t.
There have already been many wild stories out there.
I have some lawyers looking into filing a First Amendment lawsuit against the government for what happened tonight. I will file it. It is time to take our freedoms and our country back.
I don’t want to live in a country that prohibits any person, whether he/she has paid the ulitmate price for that country, from wearing, saying, writing, or telephoning any negative statements about the government. That’s why I am going to take my freedoms and liberties back. That’s why I am not going to let Bushco take anything else away from me…or you.
I am so appreciative of the couple of hundred of protesters who came to the jail while I was locked up to show their support….we have so much potential for good…there is so much good in so many people.
2 thoughts on “The State of the Union for Dissenters”
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Kmareka.com 
In a just world, as a consequence of the egregious mistreatment of Cindy Sheehan, the Capitol Police–along with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Attorney General Gonzales, et al.–would be mandated to attend a remedial civics class to remind them of what rights are granted to we the people by the Constitution. Ideally, such should occur before these neo-fascists revise or suspend the rights presently scribed in this most hallowed of documents. (Can you tell that I am outraged?)
By the way, as I’m sure you all know, the Washington Police acknowledged that it was a mistake to arrest Cindy Sheehan, that she was not doing anything against the law. What she was doing was breaking through the zero tolerance for dissent bubble surrounding George Bush, and the Washington police have apparently been so sucked into this that they didn’t even notice that they weren’t upholding the law, but were instead enforcing a kind of totalitarianism. But of course we liberals are the fascists, right?
Glenn Greenwald points out the cosmic irony that the president should start the SOTU speech with a lecture to everyone on keeping political discourse civil, and, later in the speech, glory in the idea that we are going all over the world protecting minorities and bringing about freedom. And as he was speaking, the actions of his protectors were doing just the opposite: physically hurting someone because of their attempt at peaceful dissent, imprisoning someone whose son was killed in the cause of “liberating Iraq” because she dares to bring her grief into the public eye and dares to ask if her son’s death and the deaths of many others were justified.