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WHAT I ADMIRE MOST ABOUT CINDY SHEEHAN, By Carolyn baker
May 30, 2007
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Corporate media-and even some alternative websites, are blaring with
headlines about Cindy Sheehan "quitting" the anti-war movement. It is
true that Sheehan has stepped down as the consummate symbol of the
ordinary, salt-of-the-earth American mother crusading against the
empire for the end of the war that brought about her son's meaningless
death. But it is not true that Cindy is "quitting." After years of
sacrifice, incomprehensible losses, and several hundred stages of
burnout, she has walked away from a role and the symbolism inherent
within it, but even more significantly in my opinion, and
reverberating through her article "Letter To The Democratic Congress,"
she has rejected the Democratic Party and its pretense of offering an
alternative to the politics of empire.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052907A.shtml

Last night I watched Keith Olbermann begin his "Countdown" show with
the story of Sheehan's "quitting" the anti-war movement, even
including some quotes from her, but mentioning nothing about her
leaving the Democratic Party. How could he do otherwise when he
devoted the next twenty minutes of the program to interviewing Al Gore
and communicating unmistakably to the viewers that the former
Vice-President is unequivocally our "savior"? What else could we
expect from corporate media?

Yesterday, I received emails which described Sheehan's departure as
"sad" and "unfortunate", suggesting that she had been "worn" down. I
understand the intent of these comments, but I emphatically disagree.
Could we all please look more deeply into Sheehan's decision?

What is it exactly that Cindy Sheehan walked away from? What did she
"quit"? Certainly, it was not her feelings and opinions about the
empire and its endless wars. What she resoundingly rejected was
"hope"-that cousin to denial that so many "progressives" want to hang
onto above and beyond all manifestations of reality to the contrary.
One reason we treasure her and the one quality that has endeared her
to us is her unmitigated courage and fortitude in standing toe-to-toe
with the empire. Yet, many of us fail to see the courage in her
decision to walk away from her most recent expressions of that courage
and demonstrate courage on a deeper level. It is one thing to confront
the empire with the Democratic Party and a throng of progressives
invested in the Party and the rigged electoral process standing behind
oneself in "support", and it is quite another to turn around and face
those so-called supporters and insist they are part of the problem.

What Cindy is saying is simply, "I no longer choose to embrace the
teddy-bear illusion that I live in a democratic republic in which the
rule of law and the Constitution prevail. I am no longer willing to
believe that a two-party system exists in this empire, and I refuse to
continue to `hope' that one wing of the one-party system will ever
significantly challenge or extricate itself from the other wing. I
will not live in denial, even if it brings me adulation, inspires
others to resist the empire, or nurtures within me a feeling of doing
the right thing. I will open my eyes, and my mouth, and I will buy OUT
of the current paradigm."

Many of you reading these words have made the same decision Cindy has
made, and many of you have also been called "quitters" or "purveyors
of doom and gloom." Others of you have not bought out of the illusion
that the federal government, the Democratic Party, or some political,
environmental, or spiritual movement can save the earth and its
inhabitants, and you are still "hoping." And of course, from the
earliest origins of the Judeo-Christian tradition to Barack Obama's
"The Audacity Of Hope", the culture is replete with moralizing
aphorisms that instruct us not to give up hope. Yet, as any recovering
addict will testify, it is only when we give up all hope that we can
awaken with clarity and a deeper consciousness to the reality of our
situation.

I do not mean to minimize the brutal losses beyond the pale that Cindy
Sheehan has incurred. No other word than "tragic" can be applied to
the loss of her son, the loss of her marriage, the enormous debt she
is now facing-including her own personal hospital bills for a heat
stroke, and the countless sacrifices she has made in order to speak
truth to power and awaken the entranced citizens and politicians of
empire. Has she been "worn down"? Unquestionably, and so have many of us
who would not have otherwise walked away from empire and its delusional
political process. American capitalist/consumerist/corporatist culture
is so toxic, so seductive, so addictive, so soporific that few of us
are capable of seeing through it without terrible, sometimes
traumatic, loss and persecution.

My heart aches for Cindy Sheehan, and at the same time, I celebrate
her historic and heroic announcement on Memorial Day, 2007. She has
been deeply wounded, but she has also been liberated. Not only has she
experienced on a cellular level that the emperor has no clothes, but
that the entire paradigm on which the empire is built is both vacuous
and lethal. Let us acknowledge that rather than "quitting", Cindy
Sheehan has begun a brand new chapter in her saga of resistance.

Carolyn Baker