What can one person can do?
Most people I've spoken with in recent years feel they have no power, no ability to affect the dreadful course of events unfolding around them, especially world or national events. Cindy Sheehan shows what one person can do.
Whether you agree with her position on Bush and Iraq or not, there can be no doubting the magnitude of the effect that has followed her actions. By standing along a dusty road in Texas with a sign she has done more to successfully challenge the neo-con New World Order than the entire worldwide anti-war movement and the entire Democratic Party combined. If more people dared to individually stand up for what they believe in this way the police state would wither on the vine.
During a war normal life is suspended. We are in a war, but it's not the fake war on terror we see on Fox and CNN.
The real war is being made all over the Earth against average everyday people like Cindy Sheehan. Right now most of the casualties are overseas but the real focus is still right here in the US. Unless the American people can be subjugated, intimidated, disinformed and made willing to give up their rights those making this war will ultimately lose it.
The real war is a war against free speech, against the bill of rights, against freedom, against conscience and against human decency. It's a war against life, against nature and against the Earth itself. As Americans we are uniquely both the perpetrators and the victims of this war perpetrators because this is all being done in our names and victims because it is our freedom that is the ultimate target.
Deny the corporate police state what it wants and you will deny it power. To defeat such an enemy, we must use the weapons that are most effective, the weapons they most fear.
What are these weapons? Certainly not bombs or bullets or suicide attacks. They are the manufacturers, distributors and perpetrators of most of the violence we see in the world today. Using the techniques of advertising, propaganda and human psychology, they manipulate young Americans to go to war as readily as they brainwash young Muslims to become suicide bombers.
What they fear most are not weapons of mass destruction but sincere words. Cardboard signs. Acts of conscience. A refusal to go along with the propaganda of fear. A determination to not let them get away with it.
It all comes down to one person at a time non-violently standing up for what they believe in. Anyone can refuse to be intimidated into silence or passive acceptance. Sometimes, defending your country means fighting against it.
Like the power within a single atom, we all have this power right now freely at our disposal.
Freedom is the gift given to all Americans. Use it or lose it.
Robert Lederman
AP 8/14/05
Normal Life Over for Protesting Mother
By MARTHA MENDOZA, AP National Writer
VACAVILLE, Calif. - Before her son was killed in Iraq , before she began a peace vigil outside President Bush 's Texas ranch, before she became an icon of the anti-war movement and the face of grieving mothers, there was a time when Cindy Sheehan's life was, by all appearances, incredibly normal.
She grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles, and married her high school sweetheart, Patrick Sheehan. They had four babies, one almost every other year. They drove their growing clan in a huge, yellow station wagon nicknamed the "BananaMobile." She volunteered at a Vacaville church and later, as the children grew, she worked there.
Normal life ended for Cindy Sheehan in April 2004, when her oldest son Casey, 24, a father of twin girls, was killed in Iraq.
First, she says, "I was a Mom in deep shock and deep grief."
Then, two months later, came what she considered to be a disturbingly placid meeting with President Bush. While she found him to be a "man of faith," she also said later that he seemed "totally disconnected from humanity and reality." And when she later heard him speak of soldiers' deaths as "noble," Sheehan felt she had to do something.
"The shock has worn off and deep anger has set in," she said.
Sheehan co-founded an anti-war organization and began talking, demonstrating, speaking at a congressional hearing. She got a Web site, a public relations assistant (financed by an anti-war group), an entourage of peace activists and a speaking tour.
But while her message was strong and widely disseminated, she didn't become world famous until about a week ago when, after speaking at the annual Veterans For Peace national conference in Dallas, she took a bus to Crawford, Texas, site of Bush's ranch, to have a word with her president.
For the record, here's what she said she wants to tell him: "I would say, 'What is the noble cause my son died for?' And I would say if the cause is so noble has he encouraged his daughters to enlist? And I would be asking him to quit using Casey's sacrifice to justify continued killing, and to use Casey's sacrifice to promote peace."
Sheehan's peaceful vigil, her unstoppable anguish, her gentle way of speaking, have captured attention for an anti-war movement that until now hasn't had much of a leader. Over the past week she appeared on every major television and radio network and in newspapers around the world.
Critics have started calling her a pawn of the left-wing. Some conservative organizations, talk show hosts and even some of her own extended family accuse her of shifting her position and say she is lowering troop morale.
"To be perfectly honest, I think it is disgraceful," said bookkeeper Diana Kraft of Vacaville, whose son is in the Navy. "I don't know the loss she's feeling to lose a son because, thank goodness, I haven't had that, but we're in this war and we have to support the troops."
Other friends, neighbors and church members argue that she is a hero, and say they're proud of what she's doing.
Dozens of people have joined her and others have sent flowers and food. Other "Camp Casey" demonstrations and vigils are springing up around the country, with signs calling on Bush to "Talk To Cindy." Activists in San Francisco rallied on her behalf Friday; others planned to gather Monday in New York's Union Square.
Tensions flared Saturday at the protest site outside Bush's ranch, with one heated exchange between a Bush supporter and a veteran who opposes the war in Iraq. When the veteran shouted about his war experiences and yelled, "I earned the right to be here!" several of his fellow protesters pulled him away as he sobbed and his knees buckled.
Bush acknowledged Sheehan on Thursday, telling reporters at his ranch that "she has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America. She has a right to her position."
But Bush said Sheehan is wrong on Iraq: "I thought long and hard about her position. I've heard her position from others, which is: Get out of Iraq now. And it would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long run if we were to do so."
Sheehan, a lifelong Democrat, said that until her son died, she'd never spoken out about her views. She was too young during the Vietnam War — "I only saw it on the news and I thought it was horrible," she said. She didn't agree with the first Gulf War , but only talked about it with friends and classmates.
As a child in Bellflower, about 20 miles south of Los Angeles, Sheehan was opinionated, but not outspoken, says her sister, Dede Miller. She was enrolled in programs for gifted students.
She married her first serious boyfriend, Patrick, whom she met when she was 17. They soon had Casey, followed by Carly, Andy and Jane.
"She was an earth mother, a very devoted mom," said Miller.
In 1993, the family moved to Vacaville, midway between San Francisco and Sacramento, where Patrick worked as a sales representative.
The stress of Casey's death prompted Sheehan and her husband to separate, she said.
Sheehan has vowed to remain in Texas through Bush's August vacation, unless he meets with her.
"My whole family would rather I was home more than gone," she said. "Some people have tried to discourage me from doing what I'm doing but I can't be discouraged, I can't be stopped because I know what I'm doing is so important. It's a matter of life or death."
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America's Heroes!
Mother Cindy Sheehan & Son Casey
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/sheehan.htm
- Video: Mother of fallen soldier asks questions of President —John Byrne, Tue Aug 16 01:07
- Jefferson Would Have Stood With Cindy Sheehan —Thom Hartmann, Tue Aug 16 00:06
- Cindy's Victory —William Rivers Pitt, Mon Aug 15 13:53
- I am amazed that Cindy is still standing. —Scott Galindez, Mon Aug 15 22:30
- Cindy Sheehan's War, in a Ditch at the Side of the Road —Tom Engelhardt, Mon Aug 15 22:52
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