9/21/2005
Cindy Sheehan’s anti- war movement comes to Baltimore.

The woman whose personal grief has turned into a major anti war movement spoke at Johns Hopkins University last night.
Cindy Sheehan, who camped outside of the president’s vacation home during the summer, has in recent days taken the movement on the road, stopping in over 51 cities in the past 21 days.
Camp Casey (named after her son who was killed in Iraq) has traveled around the country, letting anyone who would listen, that our country should not be at war.
Over 500 people jammed into the Shriver hall on johns Hopkins campus, to listen to not only Ms. Sheehan, but others who has lost a loved one in this war. There were also veterans from the Iraqi war.
Each person told of the horror of dealing with the death of a family member and how they are dealing with it.
The Iraqi veterans told of signing up under false pretense from the recruiters.
The one thing I noticed was the lack of people of color at the event. Even though blacks and other people of color are becoming more and more the bulk of the deaths and wounded in this war, and most of the men and women in uniform are from middle and low income families, we seem to be absent from the outrage that seem to come from the anti war movement.
Last night as I listened to each family tell their story, I couldn’t help but to think of the many African –Americans not only in our country but our city, didn’t Baltimore just lose two of our brightest and bravest to the horrors of war? We in the black community should be asking questions, just like Ms. Sheehan and the others that were at last night’s event.
But we sit silent, I ask, how long? How long do we sit silently by as we continue to used and lied to by our government officials, by the recruiters, by the very people who don’t care if we live or die (just ask New Orleans) .
We cant continue to sit on our hands as the poor and people of color continue to be stripped of our dignity and our future while our cities continue to crumble, our education continue to be inadequate, our elderly cries continue to be heard on deaf ears.
In our city we have a slogan that says “Believe” as I look around at the city in which I live, in the country in which I live, I ask, what should I BELIEVE IN