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 News from Around the Americas | February 2006 
US Lawmaker Decries Arrest of Antiwar Activist Cindy Sheehan
 AFP
| | Anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan is escorted by security personnel into the House chamber for the State of the Union address, January 31, 2006. (Jason Reed/Reuters) |
The US lawmaker who invited prominent peace protester Cindy Sheehan to attend President George W. Bush's State of the Union speech slammed the activist's removal from the event and arrest for wearing a tee shirt with an antiwar message.
"Since when is free speech conditional on whether you agree with the President?" said Representative Lynn Woolsey in a statement, one day after Sheehan - a prominent activist whose soldier son was killed in Iraq - was removed from the House chamber.
"Cindy Sheehan, who gave her own flesh and blood for this disastrous war, did not violate any rules of the House of Representatives. She merely wore a shirt that highlighted the human cost of the Iraq war and expressed a view different than that of the President," the Democrat said.
"Free speech and the First Amendment exist to protect dissenting statements like Ms. Sheehan's last night."
Sheehan had come to Washington to take part in a protest outside the Capitol building while the president delivered his address, but went inside after Woolsey provided the ticket.
The California lawmaker, an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, continued: "Stifling the truth will not blind Americans to the immorality of sending young Americans to die in an unnecessary war, against a nation that posed no threat to our security."
"We must not be afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes. It's time to bring our troops home."
Congressional police, who said Tuesday that it was against House rules to wear clothing with political slogans, also removed the wife of a prominent Republican lawmaker, Representative Bill Young.
Young took to the floor of the House Wednesday to complain that his wife Beverly had been ordered to leave the same chamber in the middle of Bush's speech for wearing a tee shirt in support of US troops.
"She had on this shirt, a very conservative shirt - long sleeves, high neck - but it says 'support our troops,'" Young said of his wife.
"When they got into the corridor, they explained to her that she was a demonstrator, and that she was a protester."
"Shame, shame!" he told fellow lawmakers. |
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