Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox

Dear Friends, On August 3, 2005, fourteen Marines from a reserve unit in Ohio were killed in Iraq--then president, George Bush, said that they, and all of the war dead, died for a "Noble Caus e." I was sitting in my home in Vacaville, California watching the press conference where George said this, and when none of the reporters present asked him exactly what that "Noble Cause" was, I decided to go to Crawford and ask him myself. I sent out an email stating my intention to go to Crawford, and a few hours later I received an email from one of the founders of the Crawford Peace House, Hadi Jawad, telling me that the Peace House would be at my disposal for that action. Well, that action turned into a movement. And even though on August 3rd, I had never even heard of the Crawford Peace House, the owner, Johnny Wolf, and its staff became an integral and indispensable part of the Camp Casey protests. During the protests, the Crawfor

http://www.islamtimes.org/vdcg339x.ak9xy4j5ra.html Six years ago, I woke up on Palm Sunday listening to the birds sing and already feeling that it was going to turn out to be a warm one. I got up and was surprised that the constant anguish that I had been feeling for two weeks since my oldest son, Casey, was deployed to Iraq wasn’t that bad. I chalked it up to the beautiful spring day and the fact that my other children were safe and sound in their beds. I went about my day doing laundry, shopping, going to brunch with my best friend at the time, and getting things ready for my impending workweek as a benefit’s analyst for the County of Napa. It was also the first Sunday in over two decades that our family didn’t go to mass on a Palm Sunday. Our separation from the church had already begun. That idyllic day began to shatter to pieces at dinner time when I was watching the news with my husband, Casey’s father, and we saw a humvee burning and learned that eight soldiers had

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” Henry David Thoreau A week ago today, I was literally cooling my jets in a freezing cold DC jail for protesting the continuation of the illegal and immoral wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For an offense (crossing a police line) that doesn’t even have any jail time associated with the penalty, if convicted, I stayed in jail for 50 hours. I was arrested with seven others and six of us had the similar fate of spending an unreasonable amount of time in jail for standing up for peace and justice. After spending two nights in jail, we were taken to the court building where we spent another eight hours in a holding cell in leg shackles. When we were finally summoned to the traffic courtroom our wrists were shackled to chains wrapped around our waists. During our unfortunate incarceration, two male members of the group had to go to the hospital for numbness in their hands and fingers because of the tightn

March 28, 2010 To Whom it May Concern: On Saturday, March 20th (before we were arrested for protesting the wars), my good friends, Mathis Chiroux from Iraq Veterans Against the War and Elaine Brower from Military Families Speak Out, burned an American flag on the stage at the protest rally in Lafayette Park. Not only do I support this action along First Amendment lines, I also believe that the American flag represents nothing good right now. Mathis is a war resister and Elaine's own son had three tours in Iraq. Now, both Mathis and Elaine, spend their lives trying to right the wrongs this nation has perpetrated against others in the name of imperial greed and power. To me, the American flag represents the flag draped coffin that was my son, Casey's, last container home from Iraq when he was killed on April 04, 2004 in a war that has been proven to have been based on lies and one which has killed over one-million people in the seven years it has been immorally and i

www.CindySheehansSoapbox.com Today, Cindy chats with Temir Porras who is the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs for Venezuela. Mr. Porras is in charge of the Middle East and Asia. Cindy and Mr. Porras talk about the difference in Foreign Policy between The Empire and Venezuela. This is a very interesting and informative show. It will be up at the website at 2pm Pacific. ***************************** Todos Somos Americanos If you ordered the DVD of our trip, we are shooting for a June 1st premiere date. If you haven't pre-ordered it yet, there is still plenty of time. Click on the image to pre-order. to unsubscribe from this list, please send and email to: CindysSoapbox@gmail.com with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line.

--> LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW HERE Transcript of Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Interview with President Hugo Chavez Transcribed by Regina Freitag Original Translation by Eva Golinger Interviewer: Cindy Sheehan Cindy Sheehan: Welcome to this video and audio audition of Cindy Sheehan’s SoapBox. Presidente Chavez, thank you for being on the show, thank you for this interview and thank you for allowing me to bring the truth about Venezuela and about you and about your revolution to the people of the United States. Before the revolution, Venezuela was a nation that was ruled and used up by the oligarchy, the elite. How did your revolution begin, how did it manage to remain relatively peaceful? Hugo Chavez: Thank you Cindy, for this interview, for your efforts, that are so honorable and notable, to try to find out our truth and to contribute to its diffusion. And we wish you much luck in your struggles, which are ours as well, against war, for peace, for

Well, our great experiment didn’t go as well as we planned here in DC. My vision was a Peace Camp that would serve the needs of the campers as far as housing and food were concerned (that part worked) and the campers would then commit aggressive acts of civil resistance (that part didn’t) in the nation’s capital to shut down the violent military-corporate empire that we live in. In the opinion of members of Peace of the Action, living here in the US gives us special responsibilities for stopping it. Anyway, we had hundreds of people come through camp over the week that we were allowed to keep it up. Dozens were college students that worked very hard while they were here and we were sorry to see them go back to their schools after break. The thing that we were hoping that would happen and never did—was that hundreds of people would stay and help us claim the camp as a permanent presence on the mall. It’s true that the Park Police thwarted us and watched (and

On the 7 th commemoration of the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq, there was a rally and march in DC sponsored by the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition that was attended by about eight thousand people. For quite awhile, I have been having problems with marches on Saturday, anyway. It seems like we march past empty buildings and shake our fists at them and promise that if those empty buildings don’t change their ways, we will be back next year to do the same thing. The arrests are symbolic and don’t shut down anything, except in the case of large arrests, where the police stations are busy for a few hours. As far as I know, there were no large civil disobediences scheduled for last Saturday’s rally, but some coffins were built on the sidewalk in front of the White House and four protesters decided to lie down near them and not move. Two of these protesters were good friends of mine: Elaine Brower of Military Families Speak Out and Matthis Chiroux of Iraq Vets Again

CONTACTS: Joshua Smith: 817 751 5890 (National Operation’s Director, Peace of the Action) Or Cindy Sheehan: 707 301 6177 March 20 th , 2010 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE On Monday, March 15 th , Camp OUT NOW, a Peace Camp erected by US Citizens on the lawn of the Washington Monument, was denied by the National Park Service its legal rights (based on National Park Service regulation 7.96) to erect temporary tents. According to case law, tents are able to be erected as long as there is no sleeping—the Park Service forced the campers to take down the tents Monday afternoon immediately after they were set-up. “On the 7 th anniversary of an illegal war that has killed over a million people and in the shadow of the government that commits crimes on a daily basis, we will claim our legal rights to establishment an anti-war camp, and we expect to do so unmolested by law enforcement,” said Cindy Sheehan, National Director of Peace of the Action. Peace of the A

Cindy on Democracy, Now!

Camp OUT NOW is gaining momentum and we are welcoming new people to Camp everyday! WATCH THESE VIDEOS OF OUR FIRST PRESS CONFERENCE BRIAN BECKER KEVIN ZEESE ANN WRIGHT RAY MCGOVERN CINDY SHEEHAN READ THIS PRESS: Activist Cindy Sheehan revives anti-war efforts STOP KILLING CIVILIANS Cindy Sheehan plans tent-city protest Cindy Sheehan camps out on National Mall ****************************** ******** WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF CASH AS MORE PEOPLE COME TO PROTEST WITH US--- PLEASE DONATE TO KEEP THE CAMP RUNNING! ****************************

Almost everywhere I go to speak, during the Q and A portion, someone asks me where are “The Youth?” Well, I have good news for all these people who have been lamenting over the lack of young people in our Peace Movement: they are out here at Camp OUT NOW on the lawn of the Washington Monument. We set up our Peace Camp today (Obama flew over us in his helicopter twice) with very little glitches, except a few involving our permit and the Park Police. For the very first, very cold day, we had a solid 50 people, and the best news is, 25 of them are college students, and one of my organizers is a senior at Catholic University. Today as I observed the young people interacting with each other and the other activists, I felt such energy and a renewed sense of real hope. For some people, the struggle for peace has lasted decades, even for me. I have been working so hard for almost six years now. Besides a lot of peace energy being co-opted and diffused by t

“ Change doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington .” Barack Obama Last summer, we here in the news-o-tainment capital of the world, were distracted with the shiny spectacle of the “Beer Affair.” You remember that one, right? In July, in Cambridge, Mass—police in something that was a racially charged misunderstanding—confronted a college professor named Henry Louis Gates in his own home. Then, our president—a legend in his own mind—said that the PD and police officer, Sgt. James Crowley, “acted stupidly.” They did "act stupidly," but, of course, that's all beside the point. There was a lot of unnecessary hoopla over the entire incident and after the dust settled, Obama had invited both men to the White House to settle all differences and hurt feelings in the time-honored, manly way—over beer. I like to call this little incident: “Duff-Man Diplomacy.” We even found out which beer each man was drinking—I am not

http://thehill.com/capital-living/cover-stories/86083-giving-peace-another-chance

http://www.islamtimes.org/vdcjtie8.uqevaz29fu.html By: Cindy Sheehan Recently, I was given the honor of going to Venezuela to interview its President, Hugo Chavez, and I also had some extraordinary experiences and interviews along the way. I was able to travel to Uruguay with Chavez and his team to attend the inauguration activities of President Jose Mujica. I traveled with and got to know some amazing revolutionaries and dedicated public servants. Trust me, these people work hard and they are extremely dedicated to the revolution and devoted to President Hugo Chavez. We were constantly on the move and things changed by the minute. Spending two days traveling with this crew was exhilarating but also extremely fatiguing—I can’t even imagine doing it everyday! Anyway, one of the people we traveled with was Temir Porras, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs in charge of Asia and the Middle East. I asked Temir if he would sit down with us for an interview. When I made the request

“We are not anti-American, we are anti-Imperialism” Cindy Sheehan My request to interview President Hugo Chavez Frias of Venezuela was finally granted on March 2nd while we were down in Montevideo, Uruguay with President Chavez for the inauguration of the new left-ish president and freedom fighter, Jose Mujica. The reasons I went down to Venezuela with my team of two cameramen were two-fold. First of all, I just got tired of all the misinformation that is spread in the US about President Chavez and the people’s Bolivarian Revolution. In only one example, the National Endowment for Democracy (another Orwellian named agency that receives federal money to supplant democracy) spends millions of dollars every year in Venezuela trying to destabilize Chavez’s democratically elected government. The other reason we went to Venezuela was to be inspired and energized by the revolution and try to inspire and energize others in the states to rise up against the oppressive ruling class here and take