Sheehan, Cindy

Cindy Lee Miller Sheehan (born in Inglewood, California, in 1957) is an antiwar activist best known for her critique of the United States government's occupation of Iraq. Her son, 24-year-old Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, a mechanic, was killed in an ambush outside Baghdad on April 4, 2004. Spurred by the grief of her son's death, Sheehan cofounded an antiwar group called Gold Star Families for Peace, named after the medal given to the families of dead soldiers.

She attracted international media attention in August 2005 by setting up an encampment outside of President George W. Bush's vacation home in Crawford, Texas, demanding a second face-to-face meeting with the president to contest his decision to invade Iraq and to argue for immediate troop withdrawal. In particular, she was interested in challenging Bush's repeated rhetoric that U.S. troops were fighting and dying for a “noble cause.” Following a Veterans for Peace convention in Dallas, Sheehan and others from antiwar veteran groups and organizations such as Military Families Speak Out aimed to hold vigil until the President would meet with them. From August 6–31, 2005, Sheehan and others camped out down the road from the President's Prairie Chapel Ranch. The site became known as Camp Casey in honor of Sheehan's dead son, and served as a central conduit for creative protest and political action. Much of the daily activities at Camp Casey were recorded on e-mails, Web logs, and interviews with the media. Members from Code Pink, an international women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, joined and supported Sheehan. The timing of this nonviolent direct action coincided with a turn of the American national opinion away from its initial support of the invasion of Iraq. The peace encampment packed up when Bush's five-week vacation abruptly ended due to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in the southern United States.

Antiwar supporters embarked on a three-week bus tour rallying people against the war in Iraq, ending in Washington, D.C., for a march and rally on September 24, 2005. Sheehan has written three books and several articles, and has been a keynote speaker at numerous rallies, conferences, and organizations around the world. In 2008, Sheehan ran as an independent candidate against U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in response to the Democratic Party's refusal to introduce articles of impeachment against President Bush for his role in the Iraq War.