Cindy Sheehan [link to campaign website] took the stage this past weekend at SPSCC's Minneart Center for the Arts. Those in the audience were treated to a speech about Sheehan's campaign. Some of the topics were war, foreign policy, economics, history, health-care, class division, labor, political activism, issues specific to her district, and military.

Cindy was joined on-stage by Gary Murrell [link to campaign website], who is a Green Party candidate for Washington State's 6th Congressional District. He is challenging the re-election of Congressman Norm Dicks, a 30 year veteran of the Congress. The audience was also treated to a presentation by Linda Boyd, director of Washington for Impeachment [.org]. Linda Boyd has been instrumental in lobbying for the passage of impeachment memorials in the Washington State legislature that would call on national representatives to begin investigations into impeachable offenses as they have (allegedly) been committed by members of the Bush Administration. She continues a very active promotion of impeachment, based on apparent high crimes and/or misdemeanors having been committed by members of the Bush Administration.

Cindy was in Washington State this whole past weekend. She traveled to Vashon Island and Seattle as well as Olympia, where she presented a series of speeches and provided several interviews to media. Her visit was organized and coordinated by the Progressive Action Committee, a political action committee based out of Vashon Island. So Olympia was fortunate to have been included on the docket for Sheehan's visit.

Cindy's Congressional candidacy was born out of frustration and grievance. Her campaign is one, largely, of protest. The current corruption, especially amongst members of the Bush Administration have driven this humble mother (she is often dubbed "Peace Mom") from the quiet regions of the American Suburbs. Sheehan blames President George Bush, and other members of the Bush Administration for the death of her son, Casey Sheehan. Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq while serving in the US Army. Sheehan became a vocal critic of the war and of the Bush Administration generally, after the death of her son. She questions, for example, Bush Administration collusion with the energy industry prompting an invasion, especially given the lack of a credible threat posed by Iraq, and also especially given the fact that so many prominent Bush Administration officials are former energy industry executives.

Sheehan, and to be fair the other speakers as well, provided a well-reasoned critique of the mainstream news media for allowing the Bush Administration to get away with lies upon lies - so many lies, and so much deception!

Sheehan advocated a wholly new approach to policy, foreign and domestic. She believes that the world can benefit from peace. And to create a peaceful world, we must create a peace economy. Essentially, the idea is to take the profit out of violence, war and militarism; and contrarily, we can make peace profitable. Sheehan spoke of investments in renewable energy, in green technology, and in the labor that will be required for environmental and ecological restoration. One of the ideas that she promoted was to nationalize the oil industry and thereby purge it of the seemingly compulsive rush to violence and militarism as a basis for securing the precious petroleum commodity. In a nationalized petroleum system, the rush toward conquest would hopefully be tempered by the transparent and direct involvement of citizens via the processes inherent to representative government.

Finally, I have a personal comment to add:

Ultimately, if Sheehan and enough like-minded representatives make the US House of Representatives their place of employment and service, these reformations and transformations have real potential.

Major change is needed. Things could get worse, or they could get better. It just depends on what people (people like you and me and Cindy Sheehan) do about it.