Viet Nam War veteran, VVAW member and Blues singer Watermelon Slim chains himself to protest the wars.
I participated in Thursday’s action at the White House. I did not risk arrest, but I witnessed and provided support to those who did. There were few cameras, mostly documentarians and alternative media. But our spirits were high. We knew that our actions were followed by those who push for more war. We knew that every action we took and take large or small resonates with others across the country through our formal and informal networks. We know that our actions help nourish a spirit of resistance. It provides energy to keep up the struggle against injustice, indifference and war. We were not deterred by the cold, the wind, the snow or the police. We will not be deterred by the lack of media. We will continue to push. We shall continue to resist. We Will Not Be Silent.
Michael T. McPhearson: Captain, US Army, Desert Shield/Storm
Saturday 18 December 2010
by: Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening | Op-Ed
There was a black-out and a white-out Thursday and Friday as over a hundred US veterans opposed to US wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world, and their civilian supporters, chained and tied themselves to the White House fence during an early snowstorm to say enough is enough.
Washington Police arrested 135 of the protesters, in what is being called the largest mass detention in recent years. Among those arrested were Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who used to provide the president’s daily briefings, Daniel Ellsberg, who released the government’s Pentagon Papers during the Nixon administration, and Chris Hedges, former war correspondent for the New York Times.
No major US news media reported on the demonstration or the arrests. It was blacked out of the New York Times, blacked out of the Philadelphia Inquirer, blacked out in the Los Angeles Times, blacked out of the Wall Street Journal, and even blacked out of the capital’s local daily, the Washington Post, which apparently didn’t even think it was a local story worth publishing.
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