One of my fellow members on the Steering Committee for
Sept. 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows is in Crawford with Cindy at CAMP CASEY.
More below the fold
Talat Hamdani, a Pakistani-American high school English teacher, lost her son, Salman on 9/11 at the WTC. Salam was a 22-year-old, part-time ambulance driver, police cadet and incoming medical student. Because of his Muslim name, the New York Post recklessly accused him of being involved in the 9/11 attacks because he went missing that day. Six months later, on March 20, 2002, his remains were positively identified at the site of the World Trade Center. It's believed that he heard about the attack on his way to work, and rushed over to see if he could help.
Talat will be with Cindy all week. She is there representing Peaceful Tomorrows. As a group, we worked hard to try and stop the Bush Administration from exploiting the deaths of our loved ones to start a war totally unrelated to 9/11. We support Cindy in her, and other military families' efforts to end the war.
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Email from Talat (in Crawford):
Hello :
It is a wonderful experience to be here at Crawford. History in the making.
What an amazing woman! She is so focused and humble. I gave her a pearl bracelet from Mecca and she gave me a peace necklace.
Today was a full day on the field. I gave three interviews, and have one at
9;15 p.m. All the mainstream tv channels were there, and I was there also, amongst the crowd, holding the banners. CNN did a live shot at 7:30 p.m. The morning starts with a press conference at 10:30 a.m. Americans are coming from all over America to show their support, some with toddlers and young children. They have 1000 crosses symbolizing the dead soldiers, which were run over by someone over night! So we fixed those. 30 dozen roses were delivered to the Peace House and we put them in bottles by the names of the brave soldiers. There are many organizations here. The private citizens just come for a couple of hours to show their support. Many people came for just a day and are staying over for the week.
There are about a 100 people at Camp Casey at any given time. I will be back tomorrow in the morning and give my daily report later in the day. I do hear Camp Casey events are mushrooming across the country.
Peace.
-talat