Cindy Sheehan
Photo by Luke Thomas
October 14, 2008
The past few weeks have been a little strange at Cindy for Congress and, I guess the things that have been happening could just be coincidences, or a run of bad luck, but the climate for the possibility of campaign hanky-panky certainly exists.
Campaigns have been compromised since the beginning of campaign history, but these days with legal warrantless wiretapping and political party conventions sponsored by AT&T and the constant call of “all hail to my political party” and obeisance to the banksters above what’s good for our nation, maybe what’s been happening on my campaign isn’t coincidental or “Mercury retrograde,” or whatever.
Starting with the necessity of “changing a light bulb” (bugging my phone) in my hotel phone at the DNC (brought to you by AT&T) while I was out of the room, Cindy for Congress has had an increasing number of attacks. Two weeks ago, we were begged by organizers of a “radical” music festival called “We the People(Sheeple)” forbade me from speaking after having begged me to be there. An article in LA Beat said that the Mayor of Los Angele, Antonio Villaraigoso was involved in the decision to silence my voice. Not only did we go down to L.A. at our own expense, but also we took an entire day of valuable campaign time to do so.
The past week, though, has been incredibly trying. First of all we had to file a restraining order against a former volunteer whom, with hindsight, we now know was probably spying on us for the Pelosi camp. After we let this person go, his emails to us became increasingly hostile and threatening. After that happened, the tail lights in our campaign-mobile were busted out (the campaign mobile that has Cindy for Congress signs all over it and pictures of it were in an AP story.
Towards the end of the week, four young men walked into our office and they were acting quite suspiciously as they pretended to be registering to vote. One of our interns was helping them when I heard her yell: “No! Stop!” I heard an awful noise and ran out of my office to see the young men run off. They had grabbed one of our computers (leaving a jar of donations on the front desk) and beat our intern over the head when she tried to stop them. Our front windows are almost totally covered with signs and posters and it would be hard to see what we have from the street…we did, thankfully, recover the computer which has sensitive material on it and we are even more thankful that Somer is okay. (She’s tough like her boss).
After several days of harassment, I got home late one night to discover a jury summons in my mailbox. I have been summoned to jury duty the week of, you guessed it, the elections!
The final (and in my opinion worse) weird thing happened on Saturday night. We had scheduled a group of “robo” calls to go out today (Monday, Oct 13). At 10:30 Saturday night, we started getting phone calls and emails blasting us for sending out the calls at 10:30 on a Saturday night, which is not only illegal, but extremely annoying. The company had approached us to donate 10,000 calls to us and then was charging us a small fee for the rest of the calls. 38,000 early/absentee voters received this call and my office has been overwhelmed with angry voters who won’t be voting for me now and some of the good will that we have been building here in San Francisco for the last year went down the drain in just a few minutes. Was it just a “glitch” in the system, as the owner of the robo-call company claims, or overt sabotage of the campaign? Isn’t it sad that we have to be paranoid about all of this? To be sure, our office is in a rough part of town, but the frequency of the harassment is certainly intensifying.
The stakes are high and I have a feeling “they” won’t stop at anything to assure that the tyranny of incumbency continues.
Cindy Sheehan
Cindy Sheehan is the Nobel peace prize nominated mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan who was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, April 4, 2004. She has been on an international quest for peace and accountability since then. She has written three books and numerous published articles. Cindy is currently running as a "Decline to State" independent candidate in the 8th District of California against Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
The Hunger Site
October 15, 2008 at 5:00 am
Cindy,
Not only were the robo calls done at the wrong time, robo calls are illegal in the State of CA. All robo calls, at any time.
It is there, clearly, in the California Public Utilities Code sections 2871-2876. See this link for details: http://thinkdodone.typepad.com/ccd/2008/06/lets-make-some.html
Volunteer phone calls are more effective, but just as annoying.
The fine is $500 per incident.
Looking at the 38k calls you made that is a fine of: $19 Million.
Shaun Dakin
CEO
StopPoliticalCalls.org
October 14, 2008 at 12:18 pm
cp0808
What is really blatantly obvious is people who tow their party line, like you, regardless of the ETHICS of the people in the top positions, are pathetic and tiresome. Pelosi JUST SOLD YOU DOWN THE RIVER with this bailout, and you believe the propaganda your party spoon feeds you about it? Can you not think for yourself and actually take a chance on someone who shares common American values, over a corporate appeaser?
I think you will be quite stunned when this campaign grasps Pelosi by her roots, and tosses her into the compost bin of political tyrants. Sprinkle with supporters, and add water, and an ethical America will grow again.
VOTE FOR CINDY!
http://www.cindyforcongress.org
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October 14, 2008 at 11:50 am
For what it’s worth:
Mercury Retrograde ends in two days– and the Hunter’s Moon in Aries should work in Cindy’s favor. ;}
We will hang in there for Cindy! Why?
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
— Gautama Buddha http://tinyurl.com/3tlk48
Also this:
AT&T Promises Not to Spy on You … Sort Of
Timothy Karr, SavetheInternet.com
AT&T and other telco giants have sworn before Congress to keep their distance from “deep packet inspection,” or DPI, which allows network managers to inspect, track and target Internet content. But these execs aren’t telling the public the whole truth about their Web-filtering plans. http://tinyurl.com/4f7zxp
October 14, 2008 at 11:26 am
I think you may be a tad paranoid, it is blatantly obvious that you will not win against Nancy Pelosi, and the consequences of getting caught sabotaging your campaign are so bad, that it would be incredibly stupid to even bother.