Minneapolis / St. Paul News Blog

The Bring Them Home Now Tour, launched August 31st in Crawford, Texas, stops in Minneapolis on Saturday, though you wouldn't know it from the pro-peace tour's website. Either by error, lack of organization, or both, no information about the Twin Cities stop is listed. However, the tour's publicist confirms that an anti-war rally is scheduled for Saturday at noon on the steps of the Capitol in St. Paul. Six speakers, including Iraq vets, parents of the fallen, and anti-war activists, are scheduled to attend. (There is no word, however, if Sen. Becky Lourey will be taking part in the protest.) Given that Bush's current approval rating is on the skids in Minnesota (sliding to 41 percent last month), it would seem the anti-war tour would be met with wide-open arms in dark-blue Minneapolis. So why so quiet?

Perhaps the Bring Them Home Now Tour is still reeling from Cindy Sheehan's head-scratching interview with Neal Conan on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" earlier this week. (Click here to listen.) She has, after all, emerged as the proxy spokesperson for the anti-war movement, mostly through the right singling her out as a lone voice of the left, continually holding her up to the light to reveal all of her flaws and cracks. But whatever she's saying or isn't saying, and no matter really if she's saying it like a "flighty head case" or a mother still grieving the loss of her son, she has contributed to and shed light on a growing grassroots movement, one that has always been about more than a single person. This tour includes members of Gold Star Families for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans for Peace, some of whom have been speaking out against the war since it began. The tour makes its final stop in Washington, DC on September 21, followed by the United for Peace and Justice Mobilization September 24th-26th.