« Arrggh... | Main | Truth = What You Feel Like Believing »
September 02, 2005
Who Is Lisa Fithian?
One of the main organizers behind Cindy Sheehan's antiwar circus, that's who. NROnline's Byron York profiles Fithian, who has been part of the Crawford protest from the beginning:
To anyone familiar with the world of professional protesting — protests against globalism, capitalism, war, police tactics, and dozens of other causes — the presence of Fithian is a sign of how far Cindy Sheehan has strayed from the roots of her "one mom" crusade against George W. Bush. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is a sign that the "one mom" crusade was never just one mom. Fithian is a legendary organizer who operates in the world of anti-globalism anarchists, antiwar protesters, and union activists; an advocate of aggressive "direct action" demonstrations, she protested the first Gulf war, played an important role in the violent shutdown of Seattle during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting, was a key planner in protests at the Republican and Democratic national conventions in 2000 and 2004 [...]
York notes the The New York Times Magazine profiled Fithian back in November of 2003 as she helped organize protests at a free trade conference in Miami. Fithian's specialty is action: she prefers bolt cutters over placards.
Asked for a fuller explanation of her role in the protests, Fithian said, "When people ask me, 'What do you do?' I say I create crisis, because crisis is that edge where change is possible."
According to York, Fithian was with Sheehan at a Dallas meeting of the antiwar group Veterans for Peace, where the decision was made that Sheehan would go to Crawford. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall of that meeting; with experienced professionals like Fithian there, somehow I doubt that Mother Sheehan led the meeting.
So much for the "lone mother against the administration" meme.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.thebernoullieffect.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/320
