An Activist History of Easter in Texas:
Camp Casey and the LBJ Ranch
http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/alice-embree-easter-weekend-at-ranch.html
By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog
10 April 2009
[Three years ago, Austin activist and Rag Blog contributor Alice
Embree spent Easter weekend at Camp Casey near George Bush's ranch in
Crawford, Texas. She describes this experience and reflects on an
earlier Easter vigil at another presidential ranch in 1965. The Rag
Blog is publishing her remembrance this Easter weekend.
Embree, who was a founder of The Rag -- Austin's legendary
underground newspaper from the 60s and 70s that served as inspiration
for The Rag Blog -- originally posted this article on April 24, 2006
to The Rag's website.]
President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, was a retreat until last
August when Cindy Sheehan brought the war protest there. The
President stayed away this Easter weekend as peace activists
converged from around the country.
On Good Friday morning, we gather on the small triangle of dirt where
Cindy Sheehan asked the world why her son Casey died "For What
Noble Cause?" We then march single file past the point where the
Secret Service usually blocks the road, past the entrance to Bush's
ranch with its ironic "Dead End" sign, past the Secret Service
enclave, the peaceful pastures, the wildflowers, the calves and
spirited horses, arriving finally at our destination, Camp Casey Two.
Fourteen people lead the march with large wooden crosses. Sheehan
carries one of them. We stop 14 times. Each time a station of the
cross is observed: Jesus falls, Jesus speaks to his mother, Jesus
dies. The deaths in Iraq seem as close as the spring breeze.
Camp Casey Two is on a small patch of land, leased from a cousin of
the disgruntled Crawford neighbor who shot his gun off last August. A
field of white crosses is there, some with boots beside them, some
with names on them. In a large tent, we are greeted as family and
directed to a long table of food.
The faces of soldiers are on the walls, pictures of those who have
died in this mistaken war. Photos of flag draped coffins are there
the ones the U.S. media doesn't show. A large banner has a color
picture of Sheehan's son and the words, "In Loving Memory of Army
Specialist Casey A. Sheehan."
At Camp Casey, the war is personal.
Forty-one years ago, on another Easter weekend, in front of another
Texas president's ranch, I was part of a vigil to end another
horrific war. It was April 17, 1965. Students for a Democratic
Society had organized an antiwar march in Washington, D.C. Those of
us in SDS at the University of Texas didn't go to Washington. We went
instead to Ranch Road 1 outside Johnson City, Texas, where President
Lyndon Johnson had come for the Easter weekend. I was nineteen. For
my generation, the Vietnam War was personal. The draft made it so.
My friends made life decisions about whether to serve or to avoid
service by conscientious objection, marrying or going to Canada. The
war escalated with its terrible toll of casualties. We watched with
tears in our eyes as the body counts were reported on the nightly
news, as Buddhist monks set themselves on fire in protest, as the
defoliants fell over Vietnam's tree canopy, as the napalm stuck to
the skin of civilians, as the cluster bombs exploded in the villages.
We saw in the faces of many vets what would later be called Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). We saw the flag draped coffins return.
Better minds than mine have surely thought about how this war in Iraq
is different, have wondered why the opposition in the opinion polls
isn't also in the streets. The antiwar movement I was part of in the
sixties was fueled by youth. At that vigil in 1965, we were all
young. Our parent's generation told us, "You don't understand. You
haven't lived through a war." But the draft made the war inescapable
for my generation.
My peers were awakened and emboldened by the civil rights movement.
We learned direct action from the lunch counter sit-ins that brought
down segregation. We learned moral courage from the people who braved
water cannons to claim the right to vote. The country's soul was
stirred, roused from its post-WWII doze by the civil rights struggle.
Perhaps as a nation we weren't as afflicted with attention deficit
disorder then. There were only three major TV networks. We didn't
surf endless channels. We didn't watch sound-bite news on 24-hour
channels, while competing news scrolled across the bottom of the
screen. We gathered in the student union to watch the nightly news.
Together, we heard the body counts and saw the flag draped coffins
return. We were together. We didn't search for Internet news in isolation.
Now, I see that same sense of community in the Camp Casey tent. The
Iraq vets describe it as finally coming home. Here they find each
other and share their pain and anger. It is a place dominated by
those most affected by the war. It is led by Gold Star Families for
Peace, the families of Iraq military who have died. Other groups
Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Vets Against the War, Vietnam
Veterans Against the War, and Veterans for Peace are also represented.
In the car on the way to Camp Casey One, Tina tells her story. Her
son was a first gunner at Fallujah. He was ordered to fire at a group
of insurgents and then to recover weapons from the dead. She says
that as he turned the bodies over, he found women and children. There
was just one weapon among them all. He came back unable to look at
his mother and sister. He would call Tina with a gun in his mouth to
say he didn't deserve to live. She brought him with her to an antiwar
march from Mobile to New Orleans. He found other veterans like
himself. Tina says it was healing for their entire family. Later, she
tells her story from the stage for the first time.
At Camp Casey, the pain is palpable. Voices break. Tears fall.
Families embrace each other. An Argentine man who came to this
country escaping a right wing dictatorship talks about his son who
died in service to his adopted country. One of the Gold Star mothers
says, "It's personal for us. But it isn't personal for anyone else."
That is the truth I brought home from Camp Casey.
Rev. Dr. Joseph E. Lowery arrives at Camp Casey as part of a March to
Redeem the Soul of America. Rev. Lowery spoke at Coretta Scott King's
funeral and was a founder of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. He is 84. Rev. Lowery
reminds us that Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out against the war in
Vietnam on April 4, 1967, that he was shot to death on a Memphis
balcony on April 4, 1968, and that Casey Sheehan died in Iraq on
April 4, 2004. He draws the parallel of simple acts of courage of
Rosa Parks sitting down on a Montgomery bus, of Cindy Sheehan sitting
down on a Texas ranch road. His message is the Easter message of
resurrection and hope. He tells us that we are in a sacred place, a
place where the soul of America can be healed.
I show Sheehan pictures of the 1965 vigil at LBJ's ranch from Robert
Pardun's book, Prairie Radical. I tell Daniel Ellsberg about the
vigil as well. On Good Friday, he got arrested for sitting in the
ditch. He remembers that Paul Potter spoke to 50,000 people at that
first major mobilization against the war on April 17, 1965.
Ellsberg's strongest memory, recounted in his memoir, Secrets, is
that he asked his wife on their first date that weekend, 41 years ago.
At Camp Casey, we get a piece of tape with the number of dead to put
on our shirt. Everyone wears 2,360 on the first day. The six is
marked out on the second day. Ten more U.S. soldiers are dead. By
Monday, at the University of Texas rally, the number is 2,376.
Beatriz, a member of the Gold Star Families for Peace, has come from
Dallas to speak at the UT forum. Her nephew died in Iraq before his
infant daughter was born. Beatriz is angry and eloquent. She says she
wants Bush to have three terms the third term in prison. She tells
me that she was a Republican and a supporter of Bush until the war
came home to her in a body bag.
The movement to prevent the war in Iraq was large and spirited before
March of 2003. Now, it seems gut punched as the war grinds on,
demoralized by Bush's "victory" in the 2004 election. I remember in
1965, only a handful of students demonstrated on Ranch Road 1. It
took years of organizing and linking struggles. It was too many years
before the war's end in 1975. Too many more names on the Vietnam
Memorial. Too much more devastation and death for a small country to bear.
The UT crowd marches to the nearby military recruitment center. We
chant: "Recruiters Lie; Soldiers Die." CodePink's Pink Police put
yellow crime scene tape across the door. An angry gray-haired woman marches up.
"You can't do that," she says.
"It's a crime scene," I answer.
"I lived through Vietnam," she says, expecting that response to dismiss me.
"So did I," I tell her.
.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Sixties-L" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
