There's a new piece by Bob Fitrakis at Online Journal, Cindy Sheehan takes on the ‘Robber Class’:
The United States has produced several mythic historical figures -- Paul Bunyan, John Henry and the like -- but our actual prophetic peace activists are actually far more interesting. People like Eugene Victor Debs, Emma Goldman, and in our present day, Cindy Sheehan.
It's about Sheehan's new online book Myth America: 10 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution and an interview Fitrakis conducted of Sheehan.
In the interview, Sheehan made these provocative comments:
"The peace movement has been co-opted by the Democratic Party," Sheehan said, while on her way to a national gathering of peace activists in Pittsburgh on July 10. She ran a congressional campaign in the Democratic primary last year against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and raised the issue of Pelosi being aware of the practices of torture and waterboarding.
Sheehan favors the appointment of an independent special prosecutor to look into the issues of torture and war crimes in Iraq. She is well aware that if you begin digging up facts concerning the practices of the Bush administration following 911, you’re going to "pull up some Democratic skeletons as well."
Sheehan's call for resistance to the "robber class" is echoed by Glenn Greenwald today: The events preceding Goldman Sachs' new "blowout profits":
It's worth recalling this bit of central truth, blurted out in April by the number two Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Dick Durbin:
And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.
That was nice and blunt. That same week, it was announced that the newly-hired top lobbyist for Goldman Sachs, Michael Paese, was -- immediately prior to his hiring -- the top staffer to Rep. Barney Frank on the House Financial Services Committee chaired by Frank. If one's goal were to make all of this as blatant as possible, what else could one do besides what's being done?
In her run last November against Speaker Pelosi for Pelosi's House seat, Sheehan held Pelosi below 75% of the vote for the first time in ages:
With all precincts reporting, preliminary election results showed House Speaker Pelosi with 72 percent of the vote. Sheehan, who appeared on the ballot as an independent, garnered 17 percent support.
Republican Dana Walsh received 9 percent of the vote and Libertarian Philip Berg received 2 percent.