Passing the Torch[ing Flag]

Memorial Day is a tough day for anyone who’s lost someone to war. I don’t know many people who aren’t touched in some way by the death of a friend/ loved one/ co-worker/ neighbor kid in battle. I know people, young people, who didn’t come home, I know people over there right now, and I know people that will be going back. It’s sad and senseless and most of us are trying to figure out how to properly grieve, let alone who to direct our anger toward.

Cindy Sheehan’s retirement is the top headline on CNN right now. And I totally understand why this is national news. Here you have this middle aged, middle income, middle-America kind of woman dropping her cozy life to become a figure head for all those bereaved mothers out there who lost a child to a senseless war. She was brave, she was inspiring, and she moved a lot of Americans with her vigil outside the Bush ranch in Texas. She became a symbol, a poster child if you will, for the anti-war movement, a movement I consider myself to be apart of.

So two years down the road, she’s announced she’s out. Can’t take it anymore, her son “died for nothing.” Sad. Really really sad.

As I read this article I’m starting to kinda see the progression from bereaved mother to anti-war activist and I feel very sorry for this woman. The anti-war movement did her wrong.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you before I begin this tirade that I work in politics for a living, democratic politics, and I know my way around a political machine. So when I say the anti-war movement did her wrong, I’m gonna be talking more about the mechanics than the spirit of which I totally agree.

I love a good protest, I really do. In college I marched downtown to oppose a misogynist running for office, I threw eggs at a cut out of Dick Cheney, and I participated in a “die in,” on the first day of the war back in 2003. I get it, I love it, and I believe it can be effective, if done correctly. The modern anti-war movement, though, is not effective. I wish it were, but it’s too disorganized.

In 2004 I participated in the “March for Women’s Lives” here in DC. It was a great week filled with Choice promoting activities and concerts and every time I got on the metro I gave a group of women directions to some landmark they were off to see before that evening’s big event. It was a great feeling of sisterhood and change making. The event was well organized; hundreds of thousands of women from across the nation gathered, and we sent a message. I felt apart of something.

The modern anti-war movement is a disaster, the complete opposite of effective and organized. I’ve been to some of the impromptu rallies, which while I feel warm and fuzzy are usually poorly attended and rarely do elected officials bat an eyelash at our presence. It’s sad, because the message is pretty simple and usually simple things should be easy to champion.

But activist are heading in the wrong direction. Storming the office of a Congressman screaming obscenities at their staff is highly ineffective. Organizing raid’s on the State of the Union Address and then creating a scene while being escorted out, is highly ineffective, and accusing both sides of the same thing wins you no allies inside the political machine.

I don’t want to demonize Cindy Sheehan or any other activist fighting for this cause. These people believe in something and fight for it on a daily basis which is more than most of us can say. I also can’t imagine what its like to lose a child, especially to such a pointless and nonsensical tragedy that this war is. But I also kinda feel like these whack-tivists misled Ms. Sheehan on how she could turn her grief into a movement and took advantage of her pain. Two years later we find Ms. Sheehan a tired, broken, thoroughly depressed woman who has not only lost her son, but her husband and her finances. At the end of the day she’s learned to not trust electeds of either party and believes that the system failed her, and worse yet, failed her son.

I feel bad for Cindy Sheehan, I really do. She dedicated two years of her life for a cause she believed in and she’s worse off than she was before. It’s hard to find your path in this world of politics. You’d like to think it’s fair and open but any seasoned, slightly cynical operative knows that it’s all about who you know and how you can manipulate them. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a little optimism streak in me that believes that everyday people can change the world. It’s worked in the past, and I think it can work in the future. But only if they people leading that movement know how to do it. Right now the leaders of the anti-war movement consist of a few famous people and mostly dirty hippies.

I decided a while ago that the only way to beat the system was to join it and I reluctantly hung up my protest bandanna (yeah, I had one, it was orange with the words “War Ends Nothing” written in sharpie on it) and shaved my legs again. And since then, I have enacted more change that I thought possible. I’m a player, with a cause. I have the ear of those in power and I champion the things I believe in. I still stop when I see a group gathering around a woman with a bull horn and smile. Cause in the end, it starts there, the activism. You don’t know who to talk to so you talk to anyone within ear shot, but eventually it has to progress into a movement of ideas, people, and politics, or else it ends there, on that soap box, with that burning flag as the back drop.

Good luck Ms. Sheehan. I hope you find some closure and happiness. The rest of us will keep trying.

Mother May I

Mother’s day is Sunday. In case you are a bad daughter/son you can still order flowers here and here. And if you can’t afford/ are too late to order flowers, at least pick up the phone and give her a call.

My mother has to work on Mother’s Day; she is a nurse practitioner working nights in a NICU and a hospital never closes and this year she has to work mother’s day. So instead of celebrating Sunday, my folks are coming up on Saturday and I’m taking her to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory (her pick) and shopping at Crate and Barrel (AKA: Mom’s crack). I wish I could do more, but I am still but a poor twenty-something living pay check to pay check. Maybe next year I can get her a trip to a spa, but for now pastries and throw pillows will have to do.

I wish I could say that my mother’s visit is what sparked this post, and I probably would have posted about the awesomeness that is my mother on Sunday, at the appropriate time, but an article on Cnn.com caught my eye.

Queen Nor of Jordan wrote a piece for CNN and I found it to be quite moving.

Nor represents to us something I think we all know, women are the peace keepers. Perhaps it’s inherent in our genes, a maternal instinct that makes us want to protect those around us. Perhaps it’s the way we are raised, encultrated to please and soothe, to find a non-confrontational solution to problems. Whatever the reason, women have been brokering peace for a millennia and I doubt we’ll stop anytime soon.

In her spirit of kinship and sister/motherhood I want to tell you a little about my mother.

I’m very proud of her. Unlike me, she didn’t have things come easy to her and she really had to fight to get her education. She worked when she graduated from high school, not able to afford college. She married young, supported my father while her earned three degrees and had two children. When I was in elementary school, she went back to get RN. She started working nights so that one parent would always be home. When I was in high school she decided to get her Bachelors, a life long goal that she would complete at the age of 44, two weeks before I graduated from high school. Still not satisfied, my mother went back to grad school in my senior year of college. This past December she graduated with a Master’s in Neonatal Nursing and just a month ago she passed her boards. She’s officially certified.

I’m so…incredibly …fucking proud of my mom. She sacrificed so much for her husband and children and more often than not put her own goals and dreams on the back burner to help us reach ours. I don’t know many women who can work 12 hour night shifts, prepare all the meals, get the house clean, and haul two kids around to football, ballet, music lessons, soccer, and sleepovers. My mother is miraculous and she is my greatest role model.

My greatest goal in life is to someday be half as amazing as she is.

Lova ya Mom!