Saluting Cindy Sheehan
Rothschild, Matthew
Saluting Cindy Sheehan Editor's Note Matthew Rothschild When Cindy Sheehan submitted her "resignation letter" as head of the peace movement, I was happy for her but saddened for the rest of us....
...And I can sense the exhaustion in her letter...
...She's an extraordinarily decent, selfless, and courageous person...
...One of the ways we've been able to keep going for ninety-eight years is through the generosity of donors who provide for The Progressive in their wills...
...She said she was tired of the infighting and the ego-tripping within the peace movement...
...This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it," she wrote...
...I wish Cindy Sheehan relaxation and love and laughter in her days ahead...
...Going full speed, she threw herself into the effort to impeach Bush and Cheney, and she attacked Democrats who fronted for this war...
...Most of us need our down time, diversions, balance, and hobbies...
...And I look forward to joining hands with her again somewhere down the road...
...So I'm glad, for her sake, that she is going home to regroup and recoup...
...I am getting out before it totally consumes me or any more people that I love...
...I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain what I have lost," she said...
...More than anyone else I can think of, Cindy Sheehan enabled millions of Americans to see this hideous war for what it is...
...I'm not as despairing as Sheehan is...
...She has sacrificed immensely to try to end this war...
...It means the world to us...
...Howard Zinn teaches us that even the seemingly most unbendable marble can crumble at surprising moments, if we keep pushing...
...Now she needs a break, and who can blame her for that...
...I really appreciate your consideration...
...Here that means chief business officer, since we're nonprofit and don't have an owner...
...I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A," she wrote...
...Their apologists then hurled at her the "same slurs that the right used," she noted...
...But I certainly understand how she could arrive at her conclusion...
...If you've ever considered doing so or if you'd like to do so now, I've included a return envelope along with additional information on page 25...
...And she added: "George Bush will never be impeached...
...To be "single-minded," as Cindy Sheehan herself found out, is unsustainable for mere mortals...
...Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives," she wrote...
...Along the way, she was called every ugly name on the Net, which traffics in misogynistic crudities and computer screen snipers...
...Yet I don't think we've seen the last of her...
...I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable, and rigidly mendacious marble...
...I certainly hope not...
...Forgive me as I put on my other hat as publisher...
...She was disgusted, understandably, with the Democrats, and thoroughly dejected about the possibility of ending this war and rescuing this country...
Vol. 71 • July 2007 • No. 7
