Dallas Peace Center - 19th Annual Peacemaker Awards Dinner (PIX)

[derby378]

The Dallas Peace Center held its 19th Annual Peacemaker Awards Dinner at the Renaissance Hotel in Dallas on Thursday, December 1, complete with a fair-trade market and a dance after the presentations.

DU was represented at the dinner by the Friends of DemocraticUnderground.Com table, sponsored by Sherry and David Bollenbacher of the Dallas Peace Center, to whom much respect and admiration is due. DUers (past and present) in attendance were anarchy1999, derby378, ginbarn, and snooper2. Gary Page, who is running for U.S. Congress, also shared our table as well.

The DPC's Phoenix Award went to Cindy Sheehan, shown here signing her new book for ginbarn:



The Peacemaker Awards this year went to Hadi Jawad (left) and Johnny Wolf of the Crawford Peace House:



More pics and commentary to come soon - I promise! Check out the GD forum later on for more on Cindy's appearance, too.

[sonias]

1. Derby those are great pix!

Good job. Nice to see Cindy, Jawad and Johnny Wolf.

Congratulations to the Crawford Peace House - the little peace house that shook the world.

Sonia

[derby378]

2. Partial transcript of Cindy's acceptance speech

When Casey was killed on April 4 {2004}, I thought all my hope was gone. You know, I just was existing. You know, the sun would come up in the morning, and I'd get up, and I would just exist through a long, horrible day of sadness and just not thinking that I was gonna have any more joy or hope in my future.



But you all changed that for me in August, because you proved that you cared about my family and my sacrifice, and Casey, and the rest of the soldiers like Beatrice's nephew, Daniel – that you really cared, and you cared about the ones who were in harm’s way, and the Iraqi people. And millions of Americans supported Camp Casey, and over 12,000 of you actually came out there over the summer. So you gave us back our hope.



Last Saturday was the first time I danced since Casey died, and I felt so good, and I'm surprised that it wasn’t splashed all over the Matt Drudge: "Oh, yeah, look at the 'grieving mother.'" But, you know, we do have hope now, and that gives us joy, because we know we're taking our country back, and we know we're bringing our troops home. And it's been so amazing – it all makes your head spin, what’s been happening since August. It's just – people are finally standing up. Journalists are standing up, politicians are standing up, other people are standing up, and they’re saying, "It's okay. It's okay to speak out against the lies and the deception that led us to war. It's okay to say this war was a mistake. It's okay to say 'Bring the troops home.'" And we did that in August. We made it okay. We made it okay to do that.

[babylonsister]

5. Thanks for sharing, derby378. The pics are great, as

was Cindy's speech. I'm glad she's finding some peace!:)

[snooper2]

3. nice pictures...

Good to see ya again as well, lots of fun!

[derby378]

4. Thanks!

Good to see you again, too.