NYPD Unplugs Cindy Sheehan
City's Finest pulls move even Bush wouldn't have tried
by Sarah Ferguson
September 19th, 2005 5:54 PM
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Cindy Sheehan speaking out in Union Square with Al Zappala, who also lost a
son in Iraq
photo: Sarah Ferguson
See also:
* The New Fight Against the War
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by Jarrett Murphy
Cindy Sheehan may be the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement. But that
didn't stop members of the New York Police Department from marching into the
crowd of about 150 people gathered in Union Square Monday to hear her speak
and yanking away the microphone.
The NYPD pulled the plug just as Sheehan was calling on the audience not to
lose heart in the fight to end the war in Iraq.
"We get up every morning, and every morning we see this enormous mountain in
front of us," said Sheehan, speaking on behalf of the other parents and
family members of fallen soldiers who have taken up the crusade to bring the
troops home.
"We can't go through it, we can't go under it, so we have to go over it,"
she continued, just as the cops rushed the makeshift podium.
Police dragged away Paul Zulkowitz, a.k.a. Zool, an organizer with "Camp
Casey NYC," the small encampment that he and other activists set up a month
ago in Union Square in solidarity with Sheehan's vigil outside President
Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. The New York branch existed much to the ire
of the city's Parks Department. Today, Zulkowitz was arrested for failing to
obtain a sound permit-a charge that normally warrants no more than a
summons.
Moments earlier, Zulkowitz had been chastising Parks officials for refusing
to grant a permit to the encampment, and accusing the police of trying to
harass the antiwar protest away. Contrasting the liberal Big Apple with the
hostile environs Sheehan faced in Crawford, Zulkowitz told the crowd: "You
would think that here in New York City, at Union Square-our Hyde Park-you
would think that we would little difficulty having a 24-hour vigil to oppose
the war. In fact, we've had two arrests and eight summonses and endless
harassment from the police for doing what we do."
As the activists hustled away Sheehan and the other family members on the
Bring Them Home Now <http://www.bringthemhomenowtour.org/> tour, an enraged
crowd of about 50 people stormed after the police, chanting, "Shame! Shame!"
Meanwhile Iraq war veteran and now peace activist Jeff Key played "God Bless
America" on his trumpet.
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"Since when can't you talk out here in Union Square?" demanded an Upper West
Side social worker who identified herself as Quha, who said she'd taken her
lunch break to hear Sheehan because she has a 20-year-old son who is
considering enlisting. "I've seen everyone and their mother come out and
speak nonsense out here in this park, and for them to shut down Cindy
Sheehan is just not right."
"They came in like gangbusters. It was really ridiculous," said Margaret
Rapp, a retired teacher from Inwood who added that she planned to file a
complaint after an officer forcibly shoved her in the chest. A mother of a
19-year-old, she said she'd come to hear Sheehan because she lost her
fiancee during the Vietnam War. "This is very close to home. There is a
chord that Cindy hits among people that have lost people in this war and
other wars, or who have draft age children like me. We're scared to death."
Inspector Michael McEnroy, commander of the 13th Precinct, insisted the
shutdown order had nothing to do with the content of Sheehan's speech, but
was instead about the "provocation" caused by Zulkowitz. "This has been
going on for much longer than today," McEnroy said, adding of Sheehan, "I
don't even know the woman." That last part prompted one pissed-off onlooker
to shoot back: "Haven't you watched the news or read a paper in the last
three months? "
Sheehan has been touring the country for the last month with members of Gold
Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak out, and Iraq Veterans
Against the War. They will be speaking tonight at 6:30 at St. John the
Divine (Amsterdam Avenue at 112th Street), part of the lead up to Saturday's
big anti-war march <http://www.unitedforpeace.org/> in Washington, D.C.
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