Report from Camp Casey. Day 11. - Democratic Underground

brainshrub

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Sun Aug-28-05 05:38 PM
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Report from Camp Casey. Day 11.

Edited on Sun Aug-28-05 06:12 PM by brainshrub

The Bush supporters were out in force yesterday. I didn't spend much time observing the pro-war sheep, but I do have some observations:

1) There were approximately 2000 Bush supporters in Crawford on Saturday. I was surprised at how few people showed up! The majority of them where gone by the time the sun went down.

WTF? I thought they supported the president? Today there can't be more than 150 Bush supporters left at Camp Qualls or opposite Cindy's ditch.

For their gun-toting, meat-eating, war-mongering, beer-bellied, flag-waving, bible-thumping behavior... they don't have the stamina of one mom armed only with her sons empty combat boots.

2000 is about the same number of people we had in the Camp Casey Two tent on Saturday. There were another 500 pro-peace Americans at the ditch and Crawford Peace House.

You wouldn't know this from the Associated Press, who reported "a few hundred" Cindy supporters. Perhaps the Associated Press has a systemic drug problem within it's staff? The only way a journalist could mistake thousands of people for hundreds is if he is stoned.

Just in case you are curious, as of today, there are about 1200 pro-peace Americans here. I can say this with 100% certainty because I have an amazing super-power that most AP reporters don't have. This power is called: "eye-sight". With this incredible gift of "eye-sight", I am able to approximate how many people are at an event.

2) The Bushistas were given pre-manufactured "Support Our Troops" (SOT) placards. I suspect the conservative think-tanks finally woke up to the way they have lost the words "patriotism" and "Support our troops." It seemed that every man, woman, child and pet had a SOT poster. They were obviously over-compensating for something.

I don't know how many SOT posters it takes to resurrect a soldier from the dead, but I'm sure the boys on the front-line will be proud to carry one of these plastic signs once they get back from Iraq. That is, if they don't get their arms blown off first.

Real patriots are people who don't want to see American soldiers killed for a pack of lies. Bush-supporters professions of support are as thin as the plastic posters they carry.

###

For the first time in the eleven days I've been here, the weather is actually bearable. Overcast, but non-threatening, clouds have kept the brunt of the sun off our backs. I may actually go to bed tonight smelling vaguely human.

###

I want to introduce two new friends I've made who don't get much media coverage, but their efforts have made a world of difference to people here at Camp Casey.

James: The official Camp Casey network guy. A former programmer, he quit his job so he could be stand with Cindy full-time and make sure the internet is up and running properly. If it wasn't for him, there would be no pod-casting, email or blogging to the outside world from Camp Casey.
Furthermore, James donated equipment is boosting cell-phone signals so that people can have half-decent conversations for radio & media interviews.

Rebekah: The primary weekday kitchen manager for Camp Casey II. (Not to be confused with Rebbecca Mac Niece, the videographer I've been helping.) Rebekah is a semi-employed caterer who can take command of an ad-hoc field kitchen filled with volunteers and make it purr like a kitten.

Yesterday James, Rebekah and I were taking some time off behind the kitchen talking about what we were going to do after this action ends. There are many people here having this conversation right now. It's a bit like the conversations I used to have with my friends in my last year of High School.

James has been offered a job to with a charity that will teach the rural poor how to use computers for activism... at a whopping salary of a $100 a week.

Rebekah will probably be homeless by the time she gets back to her apartment in Wendel, Massachusetts. Her bio-fuel car is falling apart, and I doubt it will make it out of Texas. (Note: She told me she just got it fixed today, but I still doubt it will make the 2000+ mile trek to the Northeast.)

As for me, Ivo said he might have a job for me helping churches with their software applications and Charley's wife is going to hire me for SEO work.

The tragedy of our lives is that the work that we feel most passionate about pays squat.

www.brainshrub.com