Lunch with Cindy

I left work for a bit today and heard Cindy Sheehan speak.

She is so low-key -- she talks slowly and seems relaxed. Yet behind that there's a Blackberry, a couple people always at her side, and the expanding budget and might of Gold Star Families for Peace. She asks, though, if it is not reasonable for someone who travels around the country speaking and writing books not to have someone be funding her costs. Other people give talks and write things for their jobs, and they get paid (and even get health care, I'd add).

She talked about her days before Camp Casey. Regarding claims that she has "always" been a peace activist, she says, essentially, "so what?" -- why should that diminish her voice or authority? And she says that she certainly was a peace advocate before she became famous -- but people wouldn't listen to her. Now all of a sudden she has some access; why did people refuse to even listen to her before?

Cindy got meetings with most of the members of congress that she wanted to; only a few in the Republican leadership turned her down. She said most meetings were incredibly frusturating; the Republicans and a majority of the Democrats were saying similar things. She was pretty unhappy with Kerry and also Clinton, who apparently told her at the end of their meeting something about how the war needed to continue so that the efforts of her son would not be in vain.

She said of the senators that Dick Durbin was the one who was the best. She also complimented the anti-war statements of Feingold, though she hadn't met with him. She said that she didn't want anyone to vote for pro-war Democrats again. Period.

Cindy seems so chill, yet sometimes she keeps her message tight, even to a lefty crowd. When asked what specifically she meant by pulling out the troops now, she said that she meant some troops should start to be removed immediately, and that the process should then procede as quickly as possible. It seemed dissapointingly vague.

She said the next step was an international women's meeting (I don't remember the name of the group) to plan strategy. She was into the notion that if the congress doesn't end the war, it's the people's job to do it. I won't hold my breath for a vast unseating of incumbents in 2006, but we'll see. She's also meeting with governors to work on bringing National Guard troops home, and there are some more civil disobedience plans in the work, though nothing overly new and exciting.

I didn't leave extremely inspired (nor uninspired), but I was very happy to have been able to see and hear the legend that is Cindy Sheehan.