Cindy Sheehan is delivering a fresh message on how to make peace.
The internationally known activist, called a “progressive hero” by some and “nuts” by others, will make her first trip to the North Olympic Peninsula on Sunday.
She’s still on a long, hot road, after seizing the world’s attention by camping in a ditch outside then-President George W. Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch in August 2005.
Sheehan was protesting the war in Iraq and demanding that Bush personally explain why her oldest child, Casey, had been killed there on April 4, 2004.
Bush declined to meet with her and the hundreds of other antiwar activists who joined her at Camp Casey.
But when she arrives Sunday — to speak first at the Olympic Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 71 Howe Road just east of Port Angeles, at 10:30 a.m., and then at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Hall, 2333 San Juan Ave., Port Townsend, at 4 p.m. — Sheehan won’t be railing against one president or another.
That was apparent from an interview with Sheehan from her home in San Francisco last week.
Not about the past
The Peace Mom, as her supporters call her, spoke in an unexpectedly girlish voice about her hopes for the country.
She didn’t talk about the past, eventful as it has been — travels around the world, publication of three books, Not One More Mother’s Child, Dear President Bush and Peace Mom: A Mother’s Journey Through Heartache to Activism and her 2005 nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Nor did she mention her run last year for Congress against Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who is now Speaker of the House.
Today, Sheehan is moving on.
“What I did [in 2005] cost me a lot. It really was not successful. My whole thing was to bring the troops out of the Middle East,” she told the Peninsula Daily News.
“I do have a lot of people who trust me and respect me, and some are really surprised that this is my message: It’s time to refocus.”
So Sheehan is traveling again this summer, promoting her new Internet booklet, Myth America: 10 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution.
Her appearances here are sponsored by the North Olympic Peninsula Veterans for Peace, the Peace and Justice Council of Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and the Port Townsend Peace Movement.
David Jenkins, secretary of Veterans for Peace, said Sheehan is charging no speaking fees, but donations toward his organization are welcome.
In her talks, Sheehan promises a positive thrust: She will encourage her audiences to “re-create our own healthy system” by looking to our neighbors.
“Our energies need to be spent locally,” Sheehan said.
Undercut robber class
The power elite, whom she calls the “robber class” can be undercut by local communities, she believes.
It starts with members of the “robbed class” — essentially the working class — talking to one another about how to build a different future.
“It’s what I call re-creating community so we can thrive,” she said, “and not so the war profiteers can thrive on us.”
In conversation, Sheehan spoke of neither Bush nor President Barack Obama and made no references to troop withdrawal from Iraq, buildup in Afghanistan, bailouts on Wall Street and Detroit.
“The problems we face in this country and world are not the fault of one person, and one person cannot solve them.
“The diversion of putting all of your hatred or all of your hope in one basket takes the responsibility off of ourselves,” she said.
“And we can’t for a minute absolve ourselves for getting where we are today” or for working together toward a new direction.
“It’s about reclaiming our power. This revolution,” she added, “is not bloody or violent. It’s undermining of the robber-class system, not confronting it.”
Sheehan goes into greater detail on this in Myth America, which is available for a $10 donation on her Web site, www.CindySheehansSoapbox.com. The site also features her blog and links to her online radio program and writings from earlier this decade.
Howard Zinn, in his introduction to Sheehan’s book Dear President Bush, describes how she was “frozen with anguish, despair and a sense of meaninglessness” after her son’s death.
But then Sheehan’s daughter Carly wrote a poem about her family. The words galvanized Sheehan and propelled the Peace Mom up her path.
“The Sheehans’ story reminds us of an age-old truth,” Zinn writes, “that in the struggle for a better world everything we do matters . . . Some paint, some teach . . . some just bring it up at the dinner table . . . working together, ordinary people can become extraordinarily strong.”
“The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large.”
Sheehan, like Zinn, is an optimist.
“What gives me hope,” she said, “is how we the people have so much power. We really are a sleeping giant, and we need to be reawakened.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.
