An Activist Tells Her Story

By Vastleft, http://www.correntewire.com/lets_active

I recently spoke with Mimi Evans, a New York-based progressive activist whose day job is raising money for non-profits.

She’s so passionate and articulate about the peace and impeachment movements that I wouldn’t have felt right about chopping her comments into textbites. So, this runs somewhat longer than I usually post.

Here, she introduces herself:

I started out protesting Bush in January, 2001 when I went to Washington with thousands of other outraged Americans after he stole the election from Gore. That was my first taste of what lay ahead.

Busloads of people, mostly ’60s leftovers like myself, had descended on Washington to be met with heavily armed riot police, helicopters, snipers, and a bad attitude. At the end of the day some guy — cold and drenched and discouraged, like I — turned to me and said, “Well, it’s only gonna be four years. How bad could it be?”

Since then, both of my sons have been in Iraq. I camped out in Crawford with Cindy Sheehan two years ago. I marched as the only anti-war person in the “America Supports You Freedom Walk” that Rumsfeld initiated to commemorate 9/11, and I met with Hillary Clinton in Washington last summer — with some other military parents — to ask her to change her position on the war.

I organized hundreds of people to go out to Coney Island last April and lie on the beach in a huge human mural that spelled IMPEACH. And I just got a meeting with my own Congressman to ask him to sign on to HRes 333 — the impeachment of Cheney.

How did you become active in the antiwar protests?

I was passionately against the war as it built up, and I was incredulous as I watched it build up. I was working for a United Nations agency, and I remember watching the inspections, and watching the UN being kind of run over roughshod. And I was just morally outraged, but I didn’t do much at the time.

My older son, who’s a humanitarian-aid worker, went to Iraq right after “Mission Accomplished” to work for a humanitarian-aid organization and start to, let us say, rebuild. That was in 2003.

My other son was an enlisted Marine, but I didn’t feel he was going to Iraq, and he didn’t feel he was going to, either. It seemed like the war was winding down there for a moment in 2003. The “last throes of the insurgency” and all that.

But it was very scary to live as a parent with a child in that type of a zone. They tell you, oh, “we’re fine, we’re fine.” And there wasn’t a lot of heavy-duty antiwar protest actually. It was very scattered.

My older son served in Iraq for a whole year, and then he went to Afghanistan for a whole year and worked for the UN himself, worked on elections.

Things started to get quite frightening in 2005. He came home, and really within two weeks, my other son — who’s a Marine officer — received his orders for deployment.

That’s when I just… There was a lot of, back in ’05, a lot of still yellow ribbons on people’s cars. Antiwar protesters were sort of looked upon as pariahs.

And then Cindy Sheehan emerged, and actually I met her on Cape Cod. She was asked to speak, and I was asked to speak with her, and I remember thinking – it was before she was quite known at all – and I remember thinking “what could I say to a mother who has lost her son?” But Cindy was so inspirational, and she’s so sort of normal and thoughtful and ordinary and unassuming. In a way, so inspirational because she has such quiet peace about her. And we spoke together at Cape Cod Community College. And I was drawn to her immediately. And right after that, my son came to say goodbye, and he left for Iraq.

I didn’t know what else to do with myself. So, I got on a plane and I went to Texas [to protest at Camp Casey]. It was that Texas experience that completely catapulted me into the antiwar movement.

Two summers ago, clearly things weren’t going well [in Iraq], and everyone caught the Crawford fever, whether they were there or not. It was a real pivotal moment, almost like Woodstock.

But you became disaffected with the antiwar movement?

The feeling of having my son in Iraq — and at the time, actually, his wife was pregnant — was something that’s impossible to describe.

When the nation goes about its business, going to the mall and shopping and chatting on cell phones and being completely uninvolved in the war… I just felt like I wanted to punch someone every day. It was so polarizing.

What happened, I think, to the antiwar movement after that, was Congress certainly wasn’t going along with it, and people started to scatter, and other movements started to get involved. That’s why I got discouraged and disgusted.

You’d go to an antiwar protest — there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s a free country — but there was “Free Mumia” and the Green Party and Lyndon LaRouche, all sorts of others were there. Even PETA were sending people to protest whatever they wanted to protest. It was sort of a catchall. And then there were fringe people who were basically angry at anything. And, of course, without a majority in Congress, we knew that it was really difficult to focus the anger, and we were being ignored even by the Democrats who were in Congress.

Gradually, though, the public started to see things more your way. Cindy Sheehan played a big role, as did events that were far afield from the war. Bush’s failures around Katrina and even the Mark Foley scandal kind of got people’s emotions unstuck.

I completely agree with that. Katrina was two years ago, right after Crawford. And that’s when people started to look at the country and realized the country could not heal. There was no way to respond to anything in the country, whether it be another terrorist attack or natural disaster. Anyone was vulnerable.

Then they watched a completely inept response, and that picture of Bush looking out the airplane window, too, several days later. It kind of was a catalyst where, I think, the anger started to well up. I really think, yeah, Katrina was the linchpin and the downfall of the Republican Party, although believe me they’re still in power. And Mark Foley as well, something small, it was the tipping point.

Today your focus is on impeachment, rather than war-protest per se…

A year ago, I met with Hillary Clinton in Washington, DC. Several other military parents and I had a meeting with Hillary, and we wanted to press her on her position about the war. We wanted to move her farther toward our thinking, which is get out now, bring everybody home now, let’s not stand on ceremony.

And she looked at us — actually I have to say I was prepared not to like her, but she actually was likable. And she said, we can’t do anything until we have a Democratic Congress. We can’t do anything, don’t every pretend that we can change anything.

So, we all said “OK.” And we gave her and we gave everyone a Democratic Congress. And then the first thing out of Nancy Pelosi’s mouth was “impeachment is off the table.”

We looked at how far gone the Constitution is. It doesn’t even exist anymore. You can’t define it as it used to be defined, even as of a couple of decades ago. There’s no respect for it. It’s in shambles, it’s been ripped up, and it’s on the ground.

And whether or not Bush will be in office another day or another ten years, he and Cheney have left the Constitution that way, and it’s going to stay that way. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. That’s why Constitutional impeachment is vital.

If you were drawing up the articles of impeachment, what would be the cornerstone crimes and misdemeanors that you would point to?

I would point to the politicizing of the government, I would point to spying on Americans without an warrant, and I would point to fabricated evidence for the Iraq War. Those would be the three pillars. There’s plenty more, but I think those three are certainly provable.

How do you feel about how the Democrats have done, and will you continue to support them? How do you feel about the position that Cindy Sheehan has staked out — talking about running against Nancy Pelosi?

I think most of the Democrats are spineless. I’m waiting, I think we’re all waiting for someone to come forward and… I remember the days of Watergate quite well, and I think we’re all waiting for one or two people to get a spine and do what needs to be done for America. They’re pussyfooting around everything. They’re all too careful about whether they’ll get re-elected.

Most people, whether they’re progressive or not, I think, are starting to feel they’re not being led, there’s no leadership anywhere. I think they’re all trying to wait out the term, that’s all. We feel very strongly that we’re not happy with who we elected.

I would love it if Cindy ran against Nancy Pelosi, because I think Nancy Pelosi is showing no leadership whatsoever. Whatever is introduced has no teeth in it, it’s just a motion of censure or something like that.

And even censure doesn’t have a groundswell of Congressional support…

No. Now as you know, Dennis Kucinich introduced House Resolution 333. I think what he put in it for grounds of impeachment of Dick Cheney, and not Bush… it’s OK, but it’s the only thing out there.

What people are doing now, including myself, are going around to our own Representatives — in fact, we have a meeting coming up on August 15th with Edolphus Towns — and asking them to put their names on that bill. There are already 15 representatives on the bill. Now granted, 15 out of several hundred isn’t a lot, but it’s growing one or two per week.

Are you concerned that the Republicans will gain an advantage if progressives start turning to “splinter candidates”?

Well, I think there are some really solid Democratic candidates, even Hillary Clinton — I don’t want to say “even,” but yes. And I think we all have to look back at what happened in 2000 and 2004 with other candidates.

Granted, I’m not going to acknowledge that Nader helped lose the election, because I think the election was rigged, but I don’t think Nader added to it. I don’t think that a protest like that is going to be helpful. The Republicans are going to use everything they can, including probably hacking into voting machines. There has to be a solid Democratic vote, an overwhelmingly solid Democratic vote, and I think we have a really strong field of candidates.

As to the “spinelessness,” not to whitewash that, but isn’t part of the reason Democrats are afraid of their own shadows the fact that the press is loaded against them?

I blame the press, too. This is the greatest story of the century, and the press has shown also no backbone to do the type of investigative journalism that needs to be done. It could probably done quite easily, if they could find a way to get to someone. If they had a “Deep Throat.”

Your sons, have they gone public with these kinds of opinions themselves?

Well, my older son (the humanitarian aid worker), he’s so disgusted with the whole thing, he doesn’t get involved anymore. He has his feelings and we talk, but he’s not physically involved. He and I used to go to protests, including the demonstration in Washington in 2000.

Right now, he’s so over-the-top with his outrage, that he’s bowed out of it. I think he feels like he’s almost ready to leave the country. His outrage is focused on feeling powerless, which I think is part of the conspiracy of the Republican Party — to divide and conquer and to make people give up and feel powerless.

When you use a word like “conspiracy,” don’t people get ready to fit you for a tinfoil hat?

[Laughs.] I use the word lightly and with a little bit of a wicked sense of humor, but I do think that diabolically there is a feeling that the less organized the antiwar movement is, the better. The more people feel like “I am tilting at windmills, I’m banging my head against a brick wall,” they fall away.

How do they accomplish that?

I don’t know if they sent crazy people to infiltrate the movement — believe me, there are a lot of wacky people there. There are also some really big and mean people on the other side who scream at people with bullhorns and call us such horrible names. It’s very difficult.

I went up to a protest when Dick Cheney spoke at West Point a couple of months ago, and it was quite volatile. And a lot of people told me after that that they’re quitting the antiwar movement. They couldn’t take being screamed at and being called vicious names by the other side. A lot of protests are met with people who are viciously pro-Bush and pro-war.

I don’t know if it’s part of a master plan, but the sheer volume of scandals can make your head spin.

There is a real burnout that comes — you can read in the newspaper on one page, two or three different things big and small which are scandalous in terms of who’s indicted, who’s investigated, who refuses to testify, who’s using executive privilege, who’s taking bribes, and it’s… “Aaargh! It’s so awful, and nothing’s happening, so why should I bother?”

So, how does your son the Marine feel about the war?

He enlisted in the Marines in 1999, after college and law school. He wanted to be a JAG. He aspired to do that because he felt that he would be a better lawyer, and his father was a Marine in Vietnam.

The Marines are a great branch of service. There’s a lot of pride in being a Marine. He’s married. He lived at a Marine base for six years.

I thought because of his work with the law — and he thought, too — that he wouldn’t be deployed. [Laughs.] Silly us. Of course he had to be deployed. They’re all deployed. He was deployed to Fallujah a couple of years ago.

Marines and everyone in the service over there — if you can understand this — they’re not for the war, but they have to maintain a focus so they stay alive. They cannot be doubtful about their mission.

When a Marine or a soldier is out from their office or their base, they have to be ready to kill, and even in some gray circumstances. And most of that is really self-protection. A lot of the soldiers and Marines, they have to separate their personal feelings about politics and the war from what their orders are, or else they’re not going to make it.

How does he feel about your being active in the antiwar movement?

He feels fine. It’s not like he’s Alex P. Keaton and I’m a flower-child. We talk about things, we read the same books, we listen to the same radio stations, we read the same newspapers and the same columns, and we have the same feelings.

He was enlisted for six years, he got out of the Marines. And sure enough, a while later he signed back up, and now he’s in the reserve. I gave him the raised-eyebrow look that a mother would do.

“I’m a military lawyer,” he said, and the military lawyers feel strongly about the Constitution. They feel strongly about no torture. He said this is not the time for good military lawyers to be leaving the service. He’s teaching military law now, and he’s teaching them. He tells them “torture baaaaad.” Very simple stuff, but that’s what he and his fellow lawyers feel needs to be taught.

What has it done to you and your feelings about your fellow citizens, when you see how many people did and still do think Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, enough of whom voted for Bush to be re-elected or to be close enough to steal another election?

Well, I love America. I travel around America, have been doing it for decades. I love this country. I feel very patriotic, I’ve studied American history, and it really matters to me that we uphold the Constitution and all the work that went into making this country what it is.

So, I respect what holds this country together. And I love living in New York, where there are people from all over the world who live on the same block and get along. I’m somewhat of an idealist.

So many people have been deployed, and so many people have been killed. Right now it’s pretty hard not to know somebody who knows somebody who’s been deployed. And so, it’s starting to touch real lives, and it’s taken so many years, which is too bad, but it had to hit home, it has to hit home to people.

Speaking of the Constitution, the separation of church and state is a hot topic for me, and it’s just come up in a military context with further developments on the Christian Embassy controversy, where Pentagon officials in uniform did a promotional video, using the authority of the military to promote a Christianist group.

I consider myself a religious person. I am a Christian, and I go to church pretty regularly. And what distresses me greatly, all of this — including promotional videos — is an ideological hijacking of Christianity. As I suppose the Muslim faith has also been hijacked.

These are extremists who are working in the name of their own god. I’m completely catatonic when I see all these things done in the name of god — the Christian god especially — and to affiliate the Christian god with a branch of our service is of course not only illegal as you say, it’s despicable, because it’s based on motivation by guilt, holier than thou and that stuff. It has nothing to do with the Christianity that Jesus taught.

In some ways, isn’t there a kind of untouchable “sacredness” applied to the troops — putting them up on a pedestal — that’s really a disservice to them? They become an abstraction, something people use like a cudgel in platitudes and slogans, instead of talking about them as real people about whom life and death decisions are being made. You can keep them in a quagmire hellhole, because you’re not talking about young men and women. To me that seems a very dangerous thing.

Indeed. It is very dangerous. There’s an ideology here that underlies the whole thing. It’s like the struggle between good and evil, it’s literally like the Crusades were. It’s almost identical. It’s us vs. them and all of that, that’s been built up in the minds of all the people who get their news in soundbites. They think there’s us and them, and they are going to come over here and rape our women and steal our children. They won’t ask a question like “who’s them?”

I hate to think that the troops are in the middle of any of our political talk. But they are. You know, it’s all so sacrosanct: “Let’s support the troops, let’s make sure they have the armor they need.” Most of the people I know and work with on this say “they don’t need the armor if they’re coming home.” So, let’s not kid ourselves.

Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) says the same thing: supporting our troops means getting them home now. They’re a great organization. Every day when my son was in Iraq, and I’d have a panic attack — and a lot of parents do, you wake up in the middle of the night, cold and clammy and you haven’t heard from them in 48 hours — you can call them in the middle of the night, and they’ll talk to you.

Is there anything else you’d like to say to the progressive community?

I want to say that we have to impeach. We have to impeach. I don’t care if he’s impeached on the last minute of the last day of his term in January, 2009. We have to impeach him. And just because people say it can’t happen doesn’t mean that you can’t take personal responsibility to work to do it.

It has to be done for the future of this country. Impeaching him will fix the Constitution. It will put it back in the box where it belongs. It will put the proper restraints on the Constitution so future presidents will be able to use it as a working tool of democracy. Right now it is in shambles, it’s been stretched. And the next president or the next can use it in the same shape it’s in now. So we have to care.

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