I’ve been thinking about Cindy Sheehan ever since her arrest last week at the State of the Union. I have seen Sheehan speak twice, once at a peace rally at St. John the Divine and once at event sponsored by Brooklyn Parents for Peace. The rally at the cathedral particularly struck me. Outside on the steps, I had to wade through the apocalyptic-newsletter-mongers (like the guy hawking “Soldiers of Satan,” a pamphlet which featured on its cover a curmudgeonly Dick Cheney backgrounded by flames.) But once inside I thought to myself, we might have a real anti-war movement on our hands.

This was a stop on the Bring Them Home Now tour, leading up to a large anti-war rally in Washington last September. It seemed like the perfect confluence of individuals: parents who have lost children in the war, spouses whose husbands/wives are in Iraq now, Iraq war vets and Vietnam vets. Everyone spoke rationally, passionately, and simply, outlining their own experiences and how those experiences have led to their current positions on the war.

Sheehan was, in my opinion, an extremely effective speaker. She uses a laid back, yet slightly exasperated, “Now I’ve seen it all” mom tone that comes off as very authentically her. She can move fluidly from an emotional poem written by her daughter to sarcastic remarks about New York’s senators. Unlike her counterparts on the steps, when Sheehan talks about her vision of dark clouds swirling around the White House, you don’t dismiss her as crazy and apocalyptic. Rather, you feel (or I felt at the time) that she should be allowed her metaphors of desperation.

The T-shirt incident at the Capitol seems classically Sheehan. She wears to the State of the Union an anti-war T-shirt highlighting the number of U.S. soldiers who have died. She gets arrested. In interviews after her arrest, she has had to modify her T-shirt because more soldiers have died in the time period between her arrest and the interviews. The message is so simple. (here’s her take on the incident, btw)

But Sheehan has made some inexplicable moves (the visit with Hugo Chavez), particularly considering the reports about her possible run against Sen. Dianne Feinstein. In partnering with Chavez, with his call to “bring down the U.S. empire,” Sheehan seems to be showing that her anger with Bush has now superseded her desire to change American sentiment toward the war.

I am reminded of a friend who told me about her experiences protesting the Vietnam War at the University of Minnesota (where I went to school and she worked). When the protesters took to the streets and shut down the campus, she remembered how spontaneous it all felt, that once it started, you couldn’t remain outside of the march – you had to join the community in its response.

We have to tiptoe around our anti-war sentiments these days. We have to find a balance between supporting the troops and wanting to end the war. The anti-war movement as a whole seems unable to find its voice, seems somehow outdated, seems mired by the weight of a thousand particular agendas. As I’ve thought about my response to the cathedral rally, I realize that I’ve felt like I don’t have the right to protest the war: I haven’t lost someone there, I haven’t been there. But when I saw these parents, spouses and vets speaking out against the war, I began to feel that if they were saying it, it might be ok for me to say it too.

So I think I understand now why I placed so much hope on Sheehan’s shoulders. I thought that her message would shake us out of the apathy or the sort of social disfranchisement that I imagine others might share with me. She would be the one to evoke the spontaneous response, the compelling feeling that brought you out to the streets despite your misgivings or fears. (This spontaneous response had already begun at Camp Casey when hundreds of people turned up to support her protest at President Bush’s Texas ranch).

So if she keeps on with her T-shirt protests, and Crawford, TX protests, and possible Senate runs, and simple, eloquent speeches to people across the country, I think she might be able to realize this hope of mine: to be the clarion call within the community, the voice that compels the community to respond. If she keeps up her friendship with Chavez, however, I fear that she will have stepped too far outside that community, she will be associated with wanting to bring the community down, instead of reforming it from within.

As a post-script, here is Susan Paynter's Seattle Post-Intelligencer article on Sheehan losing ground.

Feb. 9 update: Sheehan will not be challenging Feinstein