Update: Phone calls with Lietta.
When she first arrived there, Lietta's first impressions included remarks about the repeated appearance and "drive- bys" of the secret service,
"You could always tell which cars, usually driving fast, were Secret Service. They're the ones with the tinted windows."
The firm but friendly authority and respect demonstrated by the local police. She has yet to speak one word against how they have struggled to maintain order while enforcing the law which seems to mostly have to do with local private property owners' right, crowd control and occasional elements of "national security" actions at the behest of the feds.
For example, when Bush drove by to his barbeque date, the Sheehaners were required to stay inside a boundary marked by yellow tape, (in my mind I saw the crime scene tapes like on TV). When I called it a corral, she hastened to disagree, telling me that it was neither tiny nor confining, but a way of keeping tabs on everyone. As soon as the royal coach had passed, they were given some sort of "all clear" and allowed outside the boundary.
The fire ants have been a problem and Lietta's plague. Having suffered from numerous bites, she was finally put into a motel last night to give her some relief. Although not stampeded by her bites, she may go see a doctor there and asked this morning for her med insurance info from me. I read somewhere else that Cindy slept one night in a trailer because her particular tent was infested with the critters.
The number of supporters at the site has ballooned enormously and the newest on-line photos from an assortment of sites showed that country road full of vehicles arriving and parked all along both sides "in the ditch."
Another video I watched on-line last night shows the crowd appearing to be at least as large as the entire Rolling Thunder Festival at Magnuson Park in Seattle where Mike's (MVP) gang and Doug and Linda set up a marvelous MFSO Booth right next to theirs with an incredible large black and white ”George! Talk to Cindy!" banner coupled with a slightly smaller blue and white “MFSO Pacific Northwest" banner that dominated the festival site.
Per Lietta, as the number of arriving people has increased, more and more opportunities for rallies and public statements occur. Yesterday, at a rally in Crawford itself, Lietta talked of people lining the streets when Cindy and supporters arrived for a rally at the local high school. After Cindy made a major statement which Lietta felt "throws down the gauntlet more," others spoke (including L).
There was an opposition group in Crawford making noise and shouting but they were not as many. The other interesting thing was her observation that the behavior of the anti-Cindy protestors was loud and disrespectful. I asked her if she was telling me that they were acting like junior high schoolers opposing the adults and she laughed and said, "Well ....."
Lietta also talked about how it appeared that the number of pro-Bush supporters seems to owe its size to incentive-recruiting: getting them to show up for a "reward" like a barbeque, beer. Etc ... she wasn't sure about it.
Regarding the pro-Bushers, Lietta felt that "pro-Bush" was not as accurate as anti-Cindy in that the most apparent purpose was not to support or defend Bush's war, but a platitude thing that seemed a shallow appeal to support the president. In that regard, she declared that many among our group felt that in their actions they were showing total disrespect for the actual military victims of the war in shouting "We Don't Care, We Don't Care, We don't care" ... which, when interpreted as their open gesture of support of Bush equates to "and HE doesn't care either!"
Lietta described as wrenching, for many - especially Iraq and Viet Nam Era veterans to see that kind of behavior from adults smiling, marching back and forth waving tiny flags and acting in an openly belligerent manner - a total contrast to the sobriety and seriousness of the single issue at hand. "In harms' way" becomes totally disregarded in the interest of a false loyalty or ideological viewpoint that shoves aside our natural spiritual inclination to value the life of each human being.
In reality, the insincerity of Bush is reflected in the insincerity of those supporting him, whether waving little flags, laughing and yelling at Camp Casey or broadcasting distorted blather on national TV.
I've updated her on how Washington State seems to have adopted Lietta Ruger as its current Washingtonian at the front. Friday' Seattle PI (Lifestyle) article (by Ms. Paynter) entitled "Northwest Woman joins the Texas Peace Corps" thrilled her. Remember, she hasn't seen any of this as she has no on-line or media access.
I said in an earlier update that filling in for her online has taught me that I will NEVER wonder what she does all day. But this week I have seen the sheer mountain of news about Cindy and her supporters including numerous references to MFSO and its supportive role as well as not infrequent mention of Lietta by local news and all the bloggers who know of her.
Yesterday at Rolling Thunder I spent time with 2 bloggers including the founder of Pacific Northwest Portal (which is a syndicated blogging group with a powerful regional as well as national reading audience), Andrew Villanueve:
http://www.nwprogressive.org/portal/and Brian Moran who publishes Washblog:
http://washblog.typepad.com/main/Brian has previously requested that Lietta write posts to his site as a quest contributor because of their values.
She is in some ways astounded by the breadth of public awareness that is flowing out of this Crawford Moment and at the same time not surprised by the manifest awareness of those of us who pay attention to these sorts of things.
In closing, I'll tell you that she still has not eaten a "sit down" meal (something she says she'll no longer take for granted) and is still running up our cell phone bill (grin) taking some of the overflow calls, the numbers of which are far too many for Cindy to handle herself. Our own Lisa Gill is heavily involved in this overflow as she has been tasked with managing responses to Cindy's emails which, per Lisa, average about a 1,000 per day. Washington, one of the bluer of the blue states, is a significant player in this drama people and folks like Lisa, Georgia and Lietta are only part of that activity.
Monday, an MFSO caravan leaves for Crawford - the same day Lietta flies home. It's the old story about the uprising of the rebel alliance. "One leaves and ten takes her place." Go you guys!
In addition, like many others in Crawford who have drawn the attention of their home states, more and more local media from those home states are calling for updates and observations from their "hometown kids".
They realize that major pronouncements from Cindy will be publicized nationally by several sources, but that a response for their own local audiences has more impact from stories about local citizens who have joined the Texas Peace Corp headquartered at the crossroads of a farm-to-market road and the rest of the world somewhere outside Crawford, Texas.
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