geo2
05-09-2007, 10:42 PM
:) the goddess/Cindy talks about herself.....................................
***********clip/snip************************************
David Walsh spoke to Cindy Sheehan on August 31.
* * *
David Walsh: What had been your political experience, if any, before the Iraq war began and the death of your son in 2004?
Cindy Sheehan: I just voted. It was my son’s death that got me started. Even though I disagreed with the war, I didn’t do any activism or anything until Casey died.
DW: What was your attitude toward the war when it began?
CS: We disagreed with it, my entire family did, even Casey. But I wasn’t plugged in to any kind of mechanism for protesting or whatever, because my whole life revolved around my children and my job. I didn’t protest it until Casey died. Of course I regret that.
DW: What was your job at the time?
CS: When Casey died, I had just gotten a job working for the county of Napa [California] doing eligibility for Medicare. My main job after we moved to Vacaville [50 miles northeast of San Francisco] in 1993 was to be a youth minister, so I was a coordinator of youth ministry at St. Mary’s Church for eight years. It’s a Catholic Church.
DW: Can you speak about your experiences over the past three years, with the Democratic Party, the antiwar movement and the Left?
CS: I was involved in the antiwar movement about a year before I went to Crawford, Texas. In the 2004 campaign I campaigned against George W. Bush—I never campaigned for John Kerry, but I did campaign against George Bush. Then, after the elections, I founded Gold Star Families for Peace and just started being very busy going around the country, speaking. I started writing around that time.
On June 16, 2005, I was involved in the hearings that [Michigan Democratic Rep.] John Conyers held in the basement of the Capitol, hearings on the Downing Street minutes [minutes of the July 23, 2002 meeting of the UK Labour government, which discussed the build-up to war and suggested that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed” to justify a US invasion and the removal of Saddam Hussein].
[Ambassador] Joe Wilson testified about the yellow cake uranium [the alleged attempt, exposed as a fraud, by the Hussein regime to purchase yellow cake uranium from Niger]. [Former CIA analyst] Ray McGovern testified about the cooked intelligence part of it. I testified about the human cost of the lies and what happened. John Bonifaz testified about the Constitutional issues, he’s a Constitutional lawyer.
Shortly after that, about six weeks after that, I went to Crawford. Even though a lot of people in the activist community knew who I was, had read my writings and corresponded with me—I was very busy, three weeks out of the month I was speaking somewhere—on August 6 when I went to the Bush ranch, that was when I became internationally and nationally known for my work.
Before Camp Casey in Crawford, I was working in Congress, I was working with members of Congress like John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, Lynn Woolsey, Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Jim McGovern and Jim McDermott, so I had already been working with the progressive members of Congress, I already had a good relationship with Ron Paul from Texas. I had some experience on the Hill.
But after Camp Casey, that’s when it seemed the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including John Conyers, people like Charlie Rangel, they wanted me at their events, to promote their events, to get their pictures taken with me. I was very supportive of John Conyers when he introduced his articles of impeachment last year, when the Democrats were still in the minority. In his book, The Constitution in Crisis, he even talks about me.
So when the Democrats became the majority ... I knew we were still going to have to work really hard with Congress and in opposition to Congress, but I had hoped that we would be a little farther along than we were with the Republican Congress, so obviously that was very ... I don’t want to say ‘naïve,’ because I knew that things wouldn’t change just because the Democrats came to power, but I was hopeful.
I had three meetings with John Conyers before July 23, when we had the sit-in at his office about impeachment. And when Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table before they were even elected in November of ’06 I was really disheartened; when they voted to give George Bush more money for the war I was very disheartened. That’s when I decided to challenge Nancy Pelosi.
It was after I had retired in May and came back in July after George Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s sentence, and decided to support my friend Rev. Lennox Yearwood [an Air Force reservist] because he was going to be charged by the Air Force with being a threat to national security because of his antiwar activities, particularly related to working with me.
So I just had an idea during our cross-country Caravan for Humanity that if Nancy Pelosi didn’t put impeachment back on the table by the time I got to DC on the 23rd I would run against her. That’s where we are right now.
read the whole story at:
http://desertpeace.blogspot.com/2007/09/cindy-sheehan-speaks.html
***********clip/snip************************************
David Walsh spoke to Cindy Sheehan on August 31.
* * *
David Walsh: What had been your political experience, if any, before the Iraq war began and the death of your son in 2004?
Cindy Sheehan: I just voted. It was my son’s death that got me started. Even though I disagreed with the war, I didn’t do any activism or anything until Casey died.
DW: What was your attitude toward the war when it began?
CS: We disagreed with it, my entire family did, even Casey. But I wasn’t plugged in to any kind of mechanism for protesting or whatever, because my whole life revolved around my children and my job. I didn’t protest it until Casey died. Of course I regret that.
DW: What was your job at the time?
CS: When Casey died, I had just gotten a job working for the county of Napa [California] doing eligibility for Medicare. My main job after we moved to Vacaville [50 miles northeast of San Francisco] in 1993 was to be a youth minister, so I was a coordinator of youth ministry at St. Mary’s Church for eight years. It’s a Catholic Church.
DW: Can you speak about your experiences over the past three years, with the Democratic Party, the antiwar movement and the Left?
CS: I was involved in the antiwar movement about a year before I went to Crawford, Texas. In the 2004 campaign I campaigned against George W. Bush—I never campaigned for John Kerry, but I did campaign against George Bush. Then, after the elections, I founded Gold Star Families for Peace and just started being very busy going around the country, speaking. I started writing around that time.
On June 16, 2005, I was involved in the hearings that [Michigan Democratic Rep.] John Conyers held in the basement of the Capitol, hearings on the Downing Street minutes [minutes of the July 23, 2002 meeting of the UK Labour government, which discussed the build-up to war and suggested that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed” to justify a US invasion and the removal of Saddam Hussein].
[Ambassador] Joe Wilson testified about the yellow cake uranium [the alleged attempt, exposed as a fraud, by the Hussein regime to purchase yellow cake uranium from Niger]. [Former CIA analyst] Ray McGovern testified about the cooked intelligence part of it. I testified about the human cost of the lies and what happened. John Bonifaz testified about the Constitutional issues, he’s a Constitutional lawyer.
Shortly after that, about six weeks after that, I went to Crawford. Even though a lot of people in the activist community knew who I was, had read my writings and corresponded with me—I was very busy, three weeks out of the month I was speaking somewhere—on August 6 when I went to the Bush ranch, that was when I became internationally and nationally known for my work.
Before Camp Casey in Crawford, I was working in Congress, I was working with members of Congress like John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, Lynn Woolsey, Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Jim McGovern and Jim McDermott, so I had already been working with the progressive members of Congress, I already had a good relationship with Ron Paul from Texas. I had some experience on the Hill.
But after Camp Casey, that’s when it seemed the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including John Conyers, people like Charlie Rangel, they wanted me at their events, to promote their events, to get their pictures taken with me. I was very supportive of John Conyers when he introduced his articles of impeachment last year, when the Democrats were still in the minority. In his book, The Constitution in Crisis, he even talks about me.
So when the Democrats became the majority ... I knew we were still going to have to work really hard with Congress and in opposition to Congress, but I had hoped that we would be a little farther along than we were with the Republican Congress, so obviously that was very ... I don’t want to say ‘naïve,’ because I knew that things wouldn’t change just because the Democrats came to power, but I was hopeful.
I had three meetings with John Conyers before July 23, when we had the sit-in at his office about impeachment. And when Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table before they were even elected in November of ’06 I was really disheartened; when they voted to give George Bush more money for the war I was very disheartened. That’s when I decided to challenge Nancy Pelosi.
It was after I had retired in May and came back in July after George Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s sentence, and decided to support my friend Rev. Lennox Yearwood [an Air Force reservist] because he was going to be charged by the Air Force with being a threat to national security because of his antiwar activities, particularly related to working with me.
So I just had an idea during our cross-country Caravan for Humanity that if Nancy Pelosi didn’t put impeachment back on the table by the time I got to DC on the 23rd I would run against her. That’s where we are right now.
read the whole story at:
http://desertpeace.blogspot.com/2007/09/cindy-sheehan-speaks.html