Cindy Sheehan is Running For Congress (Even Though She Won't Win)
"The ruler no longer says: Either you think as I do or you die. He says: You are free not to think as I do; your life, your property–all that you shall keep. But from this day on you will be a stranger among us. Anyone who does not conform is condemned to an economic impotence which is prolonged in the intellectual powerlessness of the eccentric loner. Disconnected from the mainstream he is easily convicted of inadequacy."
-Enlightenment as Mass Deception, Adorno and Horkheimer
Cindy Sheehan ran for Congress against Nancy Pelosi in 2008 on an anti-war platform. Her son was killed in Iraq in 2004. It was a long shot to put it mildly. I joined Sheehan’s campaign for Congress in California for exactly one month - October 4 to November 4, 2008. During this time I took hundreds of photos and formed my own relationships with her and her campaign staff. I’ve taken these artifacts and put them together them in ways that I hope both memorialize and further the goals of the campaign. I designed a book and accompanying set of cards that capture my experience of her campaign and the unique characters staffing it. The cards are pictured below.
Cards designed to draw attention and contextualize on a human scale our problems of working class poverty in the U.S. and the ignorance around Iraqi civilian casualties in the Iraq War, issues central to Sheehan's campaign.
Card 1 reads: 18% of children in the United States live in poverty according to the 2007 Census. Poverty is defined as $21,000/year before taxes for a family of four. If this class represents all the children living in the US, the front row all live in poverty.
Card 2 reads:The US government has not counted the number of civilian deaths in the Iraq war that we have been fighting for almost six years now. Estimates vary widely - anywhere from 100,000 to 600,000 regular Iraqi people have been killed violently. That is anywhere from roughly 14% - 80% of all the people living in San Francisco.