Via the

Associated Press

Sheehan Arrested During Anti-War
Protest

 By JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press

Cindy Sheehan, the California woman who has used her son’s death in Iraq
to spur the anti-war movement, was arrested Monday while protesting outside
the White House.

Sheehan and several dozen other protesters sat down on the sidewalk after
marching along the pedestrian walkway on Pennsylvania Avenue. Police warned
them three times that they were breaking the law by failing to move along,
then began making arrests.

Sheehan, 48, was the first taken into custody. She stood up and was led
to a police vehicle while protesters chanted, “The whole world is watching.”

Sheehan’s 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in an ambush in Sadr City,
Iraq, last year. She attracted worldwide attention last month with her
26-day vigil outside President Bush’s Texas ranch.

Sheehan was among several hundred demonstrators who marched around the
White House on Monday and then stopped in front and began singing and
chanting “Stop the war now!”

The demonstration is part of a broader anti-war effort on Capitol Hill
organized by United for Peace and Justice, an umbrella group.
Representatives from anti-war groups were meeting Monday with members of
Congress to urge them to work to end the war and bring home the troops.

The protest following a massive demonstration Saturday on the National
Mall that drew a crowd of 100,000 or more, the largest such gathering in the
capital since the war began in March 2003.

On Sunday, a rally supporting the war drew roughly 500 participants.
Speakers included veterans of World War II and the war in Iraq, as well as
family members of soldiers killed in Iraq.

“I would like to say to Cindy Sheehan and her supporters don’t be a group
of unthinking lemmings. It’s not pretty,” said Mitzy Kenny of Ridgeley,
W.Va., whose husband died in Iraq last year. The anti-war demonstrations
“can affect the war in a really negative way. It gives the enemy hope.”