Cindy Sheehan: Fighting For Peace

Camping out in front of Bush's Texas ranch (2005).

Do I see myself as a Rosa Parks? I see myself as Cindy Sheehan. I’ve never called myself the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement, but it doesn’t upset me that other people have.

Cindy Sheehan , on the campaign trail

Date Posted: 05/15/08

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After George Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s sentence, I knew I had to do something. I think George Bush and his office was complicit in what Scooter Libby was convicted of, and I believe that is treason. Nobody did anything about it so I decided to challenge the Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi: if she didn’t put impeachment back on the table for George Bush and Dick Cheney, I would run against her. And that’s what I’m doing.

In 1955, Rosa Parks sat down in a bus and refused to move. She sparked a civil rights movement by that action. In 2005, I sat down in Crawford, Texas in front of George Bush’s ranch and energized the anti-war movement.

Do I see myself as a Rosa Parks? I see myself as Cindy Sheehan. I’ve never called myself the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement, but it doesn’t upset me that other people have.

In the life I lived before my son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004, I was a mother with four children. I sometimes worked two or three jobs to help our family makes ends meet so we could have health insurance and a roof over our heads. Everything I did was for my children – I was a Catholic youth minister and president of the Band Booster club where I worked on a weekly basis so my two younger kids could have band. Even though I was a democrat and I voted all the time and made sure I was up to speed on the issues we were voting on, politics and activism certainly were not major concerns in my life.

The reasons for going to war in Iraq were lies and deceptions. We never should have gone there in the first place. Things have just getting so much worse in Iraq and my heart is breaking for those people who have to live under this terror – and for our country; for my family, and the families of the tens of thousands of people who have been killed, wounded, or mentally, emotionally or psychologically damaged by this war. Before it gets too far, we really have to stop.