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 News from Around the Americas | September 2005 
Anti-War Campaigner Sheehan Arrested Outside White House
 AFP
| | Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan is arrested by United States Park police outside the White House on Monday in Washington. (Photo: Evan Vucci) |
Washington - Police detained anti-Iraq war campaigner Cindy Sheehan and scores of other activists outside the White House, as the administration insisted that mounting protests would not sway President George W. Bush.
Sheehan, the mother of a soldier who was killed in Iraq last year, was led away in plastic handcuffs as she stood among about 150 people who had been warned they would be arrested.
About 500 demonstrators had gathered on the sidewalk near the main entrance to the presidential mansion. Each carried a board bearing the name of an American soldier killed in Iraq.
More than 300 moved away after after police warned that arrests would follow. As Sheehan and the others were slowly led away to waiting buses and police trucks, activists behind police lines shouted: "The whole world is watching". Five women went topless carrying boards proclaiming "war is indecent".
Police said Sheehan, who made her name by starting a peace camp outside of Bush's Texas ranch, and the others were arrested for staging a demonstration in a restricted zone without a permit.
"A majority of them wanted to be arrested," a spokesman told AFP. "They will be processed and received a court date," he told AFP.
Forty-one other people were detained for blocking entrances to the Pentagon headquarters of the Defence Department, a military spokesman said.
The demonstrations followed an anti-war rally in Washington on Saturday, which attracted more than 100,000 people condemning the US military presence in Iraq. Sheehan and prominent anti-war campaigner, George Galloway, a member of the British parliament, addressed the rally, condemning Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
But the White House shrugged off the demonstrations, saying opponents were free to speak out but would not change the president's views.
Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan, when asked what effect Saturday's crowds had on Bush, replied: "I don't know of any it had on him ... We continued with our schedule."
Bush, who had left Washington on Friday to visit areas battered by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, believes "people have the right to express their views," McClellan told reporters.
"The president just strongly disagrees with those who say we need to withdraw from the Middle East. That would be the wrong approach, that would make us less safe and less secure," he added.
"This is a global war that we're engaged in. I know that there are some that would argue that we should withdraw from Afghanistan and that we should withdraw from Iraq and we should withdraw from the Middle East," said McClellan.
But the September 11, 2001 attacks "showed us in a very vivid way that we are engaged in a global war, and we must take the fight to the enemy so that we're fighting them there, not here," said McClellan.
Cindy Sheehan Arrested at White House
TO Staff - t r u t h o u t
Cindy Sheehan, along with several well-known figures, has been arrested at the front gates of the White House in Washington DC. Sheehan had attempted once again to gain an audience with George W. Bush; again she was refused. Sheehan and her supporters then proceeded to sit down and pray at a restricted point in front of the White House. She and many others have been arrested.
Those who have been arrested with her include Cindy's sister Dee Dee, former state department official Ann Wright, Michael Berg, the father of slain US contractor Nick Berg, Media Benjamin of Code Pink and many veterans and their family members.
More to come.
Sheehan Arrested During Anti-War Protest
Ryan G. Murphy and Emma Vaughn - The Los Angeles Times
Washington - Cindy Sheehan, whose protest camp outside President Bush's vacation home in Texas became a focal point of the antiwar movement this summer, was arrested today outside the White House at the head of a civil disobedience campaign intended to dramatize the opposition to the war in Iraq.
On the third day of demonstrations that brought tens of thousands of opponents to the war to Washington on Saturday, a much smaller group sat down in front of the executive mansion, after being refused an opportunity to meet with a White House staff member.
Before Sheehan, 48, was arrested, she took a picture of her son, Casey, who was killed in an ambush last year in the Sadr City section of Baghdad, from around her neck and tied it with a pink ribbon to the tall, wrought iron fence that surrounds the White House.
As police moved in on the protesters, the demonstrators sang Amazing Grace, This Little Light of Mine, and other songs.
U.S. Park Police spokesman Sgt. Scott R. Fear said, it's a peaceful demonstration. We are going to take our time arresting them. The demonstrators were given three warnings, after which they were arrested for demonstrating without a permit.
On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, other opponents of the war sought to lobby members of Congress to withhold funding for the military operations.
Mimi Kennedy, an actress who is chairing Progressive Democrats of America, and several others under the banner of Code Pink and United for Peace and Justice, spent the day seeking to argue their case before Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and other Democrats. |
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