Mike Ferner

September 28, 2005
by Mike Ferner

Washington, D.C. — In a pre-dawn civil disobedience action Monday morning, forty-one War Resisters League members and others sat down and were arrested at a pedestrian entrance to the Pentagon, slowing foot traffic at that location and prompting officials to close the U.S. military headquarters’ sole stop on Washington’s Metroline for a period.

Protesters — including Elizabeth McAllister and her daughter Frieda Berrigan, Susan Crane, Ken Crowley, and others with a long history of peace activism and arrests for civil disobedience — leafleted or sat down to block people from entering Entrance Three of the sprawling U.S. military command.

September 20, 2005
by Mike Ferner

All last week I had a rare opportunity – to join several impressive speakers on the “Bring Them Home Now” tour’s northern route. Al Zappala, whose son was killed in Iraq last year; Tammara Rosenleaf, whose husband is due to deploy to Iraq this fall; Stacy Bannerman, whose husband has already served a tour in Iraq; Carlos Arredondo, whose son was killed during a second tour in Iraq; Elliott Adams, former Army paratrooper in Viet Nam; and two Iraq war veterans: former Marine, Michael Hoffman, and Cody Camacho, former Army Specialist.

At each stop I was with them: Detroit, Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, Albany, Amherst, and Boston, we explained what motivated us to be on the tour. We condemned the war and ongoing occupation. We urged people to attend the massive demonstrations planned for September 24-26 in Washington, D.C.

August 18 2005
by Mike Ferner

“Some people are trying to paint her as one crazy woman against the war, and she’s not. A lot of people feel like her and want to know what the noble cause is,” said Karen Meredith, referring to Cindy Sheehan.

Meredith should know. Her son, Ken Ballard, was killed in Iraq. And she’s going to Crawford, Texas this weekend.

August 12, 2005
by Mike Ferner

“That lying bastard, George Bush, is taking a five week vacation in time of war,” Cindy Sheehan told 200 cheering members of Veterans For Peace at their annual convention in Dallas last Friday evening. She then announced she would go to Bush’s vacation home in nearby Crawford, Texas and camp out until he “tells me why my son died in Iraq. I’ve got the whole month of August off, and so does he.”

Sheehan left the VFP meeting on Saturday morning and is now in Crawford with a couple dozen veterans and local peace activists, waiting for Bush to talk with her. She said in Dallas that if he sends anyone else to see her, as happened when national security adviser Steve Hadley and deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin did later that day, she would demand that “You get that maniac out here to talk with me in person.”

May 25, 2005

Surely we must revolutionize how we produce and consume energy, developing energy-efficient buildings, mass transit, and renewables. But deep down we know we must do more. We must figure out why we don’t govern ourselves, what we must do to change, and how to win the power needed to democratically run our government and our economy.