A Sad Week for Patriots

by Danny Fisher

For those of us who know that dissent and protest are patriotic and necessary forms of expression–especially in these times–it has been a sad and frustrating week.


On Monday, the Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr., peace activist, organizer, and CEO of the Hip-Hop Caucaus was attacked and injured by six police officers intent on keeping him out of the Cannon Caucus Room on Capitol Hill, where General David Petreaus was offering testimony to a joint hearing for the House Arms Services Committee and Foreign Relations Committee on the war in Iraq.
    Capitol Hill Police “football tackled” [Rev. Yearwood] who was in line to enter hearing room for General Petreus’ testimony on Capitol Hill.

    [...]

    After waiting in line throughout the morning for the hearing that was scheduled to start at 12:30pm, Rev. Yearwood was stopped from entering the room, while others behind him were allowed to enter. He told the officers blocking his ability to enter the room, that he was waiting in line with everyone else and had the right to enter as well. When they threatened him with arrest he responded with “I will not be arrested today.” According to witnesses, six capitol police, without warning, “football tackled” him. He was carried off in a wheel chair by DC Fire and Emergency to George Washington Hospital.

You can watch video of the attack on and arrest of Rev. Yearwood here. I find it a very disturbing video. I can’t see any justification for what happens. Yearwood is insistent with the police officers, demanding to know why he has been singled out and what charge they would arrest him on, but he’s neither violent nor unruly. The attack comes after what looks like Yearwood shuffling around to avoid the grabbing of the officers at his arms and shoulders–something he clearly gave them no cause to do. It’s a shocking and unacceptable scene.

As it turns out, Rev. Yearwood sustained a broken leg as a result of the officers’ zealous use of force.

In total, eight other people were arrested with Rev. Yearwood, including Cindy Sheehan and Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin (who can both be heard shouting in the video of the attack and arrest).

The police claim that Rev. Yearwood stepped out of line for an interview with a Portland-based news outlet, but Yearwood insists that everything had been cleared with the officer assigned to the line so that he wouldn’t lose his place.

Rev. Yearwood summed up the whole experience this way:

    The officers decided I was not going to get in Gen. Petreaus’ hearing when they saw my button, which says “I LOVE THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ.”


Earlier that same day, the devastating news broke that two of the seven active duty U.S. soldiers in Iraq who wrote a recent New York Times editorial critical of the war were killed in action.
    Sgt. Omar Mora and Sgt. Yance T. Gray died Monday in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad, two of seven U.S. troops killed in the incident which was reported just as Gen. David Petraeus was about to report to Congress on progress in the “surge.” The names have just been released.

    Gen. Petraeus was questioned about the message of the op-ed in testimony before a Senate committee [on September 11th of this week].

    The controversial Times column on Aug. 19 was called “The War As We Saw It,” and expressed skepticism about American gains in Iraq. “To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched,” the group wrote.

    It closed: “We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.”

Staff Sergeant Jeremy Murphy, one of the other authors of the Times piece, was shot in the head while the article was being written. He is currently being treated at a military hospital in the United States and is expected to live.


May none of the heartache, loss, and struggle have been in vain.