Cindy Sheehan Arrested Outside White House
(AP)
According to organizers, 61 people in total were arrested at the protest, which was also in service of efforts to "Close Guantanamo and Bagram, Surge Spending on Housing and Jobs."
Organizers said hundreds participated in the protest, which included poetry, song, and puppet heads of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice dressed in prison stripes.
While some protesters chained themselves to the White House fence, others lay on the ground, pretending to be dead, CNN reports. Organizers requested a meeting with President Obama to discuss their beliefs.
Sheehan and some of the other protesters apparently meant to evoke Guantanamo prisoners with their clothing. "On their backs, they wore the names of Guantanamo detainees cleared for release who remain detained under the Obama administration despite the White House’s heralded decision to shutter the prison," organizers said.
Sheehan's son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004. She became one of the major faces of the antiwar movement during the Bush administration.
The groups involved in the protest were the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, the War Resisters League, Witness Against Torture, Code Pink, Peace Action, World Can’t Wait, Veterans for Peace and Voices for Creative Nonviolence.
According to organizers, members of Veterans for Peace carried three coffins, covered in American, Iraqi and Afghani flags, to represent those killed in war.
Asked about the protest at his daily briefing Monday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said he hadn't heard about it. He addressed the concepts of protests more generally.
"I think the president has long believed that whether your opinion is on one side of the issue or the other, that this is the -- the greatness of our country is that you get to amplify that opinion," he said.
Park police officials said all of those arrested had been cited and released.
