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11/26/2005:

"'Always There': The Voice of a Gold Star Mother"

Laura Bush was at the Colonial Fire Hall in Hamilton, N.J., telling about 700 pre-selected ticket-holding Bush faithful why they needed to vote for her husband.

The First Lady went through the usual litany of what she believed were her husband’s accomplishments, frequently invoking the memory of 9/11. And then she told the crowd why the nation needed to support her husband’s war. “It’s for our country, it’s for our children and our grandchildren, that we do the hard work of confronting terror and promoting democracy,” said the First Lady.

That’s when Sue Niederer, a 55-year-old teacher and Realtor, standing at the back of the hall, just couldn’t take it any more. “If the Iraq war is so necessary,” she called out, “why don’t your children serve?” That’s when the Secret Service came by, when Republican volunteers pushed and shoved her, and raised Bush campaign signs around her to block her from talking and to prevent the media from turning their cameras to her. A few in the crowd had tried to come to her defense, one person shouting out, “She has a right to speak. She’s a mother.” But, the “right to speak” was drowned out, as were Niederer’s own comments, by the partisan chant, “Four More Years! Four more years!”—just in case Niederer or anyone else had anything to say that the crowd thought might be high treason.

Until she spoke out, exercising what she believed were her First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, most had not seen her shirt. Shortly before she spoke out, she put on a T-shirt with a picture of her 24-year-old son, and the words, “President Bush, You Killed My Son.”
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