Delivering a Message to the White House

We went to deliver our petition on the Iraq documents to the White House this morning – a group of supporters joined staff to show the White House that more than 60,000 Americans demand answers on how we ended up in this war. In addition to delivering the petition, our group handed out flyers in the area around the White House and at the nearby subway stations.

This was a tough morning to come out – it was 19 degrees out when we started walking to the White House. We were resilient, and knew it was worth it to try and get this message to the President. We approached the gates as a group, and one of our volunteers stepped right up to the buzzer for the guard station. The guards were very polite and professional, and explained that they would not accept any packages at the gates. They said we could make arrangements with someone in the White House to receive the package, or send it through the mail – both options that sounded like dead ends to us. We decided we would mail in the petition, while we continue to collect signatures and come up with other ways to get our message to the White House. We also continued to hand out information to the people passing by us outside the White House. We will not stop pursuing this until the truth is told – Senator Kennedy is working on legislation to get the President to hand over the relevant Presidential Daily Briefs to the Senate Intelligence Committee so that they can give a full report of how the Administration made the decision to go to war and how the war is being managed.

While we did not get the outcome we wanted in the delivery of the petition, we did take another step to raise awareness of the duplicity of this White House. We will continue to fight for the truth – and with your help, we will get it! More and more Americans are realizing that the President’s strategy has everything to do with “spin” and avoiding the truth on the ground and nothing to do with reality. The President owes the American people more than empty assurances and canned speeches that avoid the facts Americans would like to know. More than 60,000 of you came together to support the truth, and together we can continue to spread our message around the country – on this and so many other important issues. To those of you who signed the petition – thank you! We may have hit a speed bump today, but it will not stop us! And to those of you who braved the cold to join us at the White House – thank you for your hard work and willingness to stand up in the face of intimidation. Standing up to this Administration is no small feat, and to do it on the front lawn of the White House is even more intimidating. We will continue to raise our voices on issues that matter and make a difference!

–Crystal Patterson