Cindy Sheehan Goes to Washington

San Francisco
July 23, 2008

Cindy Sheehan Goes to Washington
Cindy Sheehan

There is nothing unusual about the fact that I am heading to Washington, DC today. Indeed, since my son was killed in Iraq on April 04, 2004, I have been to our nation's capitol dozens of times.

The first time I went to DC was exactly six months after Casey was killed. We went for an anti-war march from Arlington Cemetery to the White House, in October. I remember on that trip sitting on the path in front of the Vietnam wall, with my friend Bill Mitchell, whose son Michael was killed on the same day as Casey in Sadr City, Baghdad. We were sobbing as we placed pictures of our sons at the base of the wall to join thousands of other troops who have been sacrificed by the Military Industrial Complex in idiotic wars for profit and corporate empire building.

Since that day in October 2004, I have traveled to DC for lobbying, protests, hearings, meetings, State of the Union addresses, and I have been arrested about 10 times there and have spent hours handcuffed to walls in its jails and am on a first name basis with many officers.

A year ago today, The Camp Casey Peace Institute's Journey for Humanity was in Washington, DC. We led an unpermitted march from Arlington Cemetery to John Conyers' office on Capitol Hill (quite a long march in the DC heat and humidity). Our focus was on impeachment. John Conyers was then and still is the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee that would oversee any kind of accountability for any member of the administrative branch.

After speedily going through security, 400 of us lined the corridors of the Rayburn office building and 3 of us met with Conyers: Myself, Rev. Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus and Ray McGovern, retired CIA agent (who also sat on the Downing Street Hearing panel with me in June 2005). We got absolutely nowhere with Conyers, so 49 of us were arrested in his office. But before we were hauled off in handcuffs, I announced my candidacy against Nancy Pelosi in California's 8th district in San Francisco to a phalanx of press lurking in the hallway.

Now, John Conyers has been given the very tentative greenish light to have a hearing on Rep. Dennis Kucinich's latest impeachment resolution. If only Pelosi had allowed impeachment hearing to begin a year ago, or even when the Democrats attained majorities in both houses of Congress in 2006. Where would our nation/world be now and what has happened since?

Since Pelosi has assumed the gavel of her speakership, the world has literally gone to pot. Here on the home front, we have suffered the losses of hundreds of US troops with her fiduciary approval of George's failed war on terror. Oil prices are skyrocketing and with the rising price of fuel, so go the rising prices of everything. Her solution to the financial crisis is to send we peons a few hundred dollars of "stimulus" so we can fill our gas tanks a few times and buy a few bags of groceries. While the banks get fully rescued, there is no such lifeline for Americans.

A Congress that would aspire to a higher approval rating than 9% would have stormed in and begun the process of holding war criminals accountable, cut funding for the occupations and restored habeas corpus and repealed the Military Commission and Patriot Acts. Pelosi's 110th Congress not only did not do these things, but they have approved a Homegrown Terrorism Act and demolished our 4th amendment rights to be protected form unlawful search and seizure.

I will be at Conyers' hearings on Friday. These hearings should be impeachment hearings and not vague executive "abuse" hearings. I will be there reflecting on the fact, if Pelosi had allowed these proceedings to go forward a year, or even longer ago, I would not be firmly ensconced in San Francisco challenging her for her seat.

Now that our campaign is really picking up momentum and excitement in San Francisco, the hearings that should have been, will be. Along with the thousands of activists who have been working diligently for impeachment for years, we can claim a victory for the people!