Cindy Lee Sheehan

In 2008, Sheehan unsuccessfully challenged then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for Congress. ² In 2012, she was the Peace and Freedom Party’s vice-presidential nominee alongside actress and comedian Roseanne Barr. ³ In 2014, she was its 2014 nominee for California governor. ⁴

Background

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Casey Sheehan, a U.S. Army soldier who was killed on April 4, 2004 at the age of 24 while serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom in the Sadr City district of Baghdad. ⁵

In January 2005, Sheehan co-founded and later worked as president of Gold Star Families for Peace, an antiwar advocacy organization, which organized activists who had lost family members in the Iraq War. ^{1 6}

Sheehan is the author of several books discussing her political activism, including Peace Mom: A Mother’s Journey through Heartache to Activism, Not One More Mother’s Child, as well as Dear President Bush, which features a foreword written by left-wing academic and activist Howard Zinn. ⁷

Activities

Activism

In August 2005, Sheehan established what would later be known as the “Camp Casey” vigils outside of then-President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, during which  she set up camp while Bush was present to try and pressure him into articulating the “noble cause” for which veterans, including her son, had died. ⁸

The Camp Casey vigils precipitated the creation of the Camp Casey Peace Institute, which aimed to give safe harbor to soldiers who had went absent without leave (AWOL) after their petitions for conscientious objector status had been denied, and to fund the work of young antiwar activists. ⁹

On September 26, 2005, Sheehan was the first of several hundred antiwar demonstrators arrested in front of the White House following an organized antiwar rally and march days before. During the rally,  demonstrators had attempted to deliver the names of the soldiers and civilians killed in Iraq to then-President George W. Bush and occupied the sidewalk outside the White House in protest when he did not meet with them. ¹⁰

On May 28, 2007, after working with organizations including Military Families Speak Out and Code Pink, Sheehan announced that she was resigning as a spokesperson of the antiwar movement, claiming that she had lost favor with many of its supporters when she had become critical of the Democratic Party. ¹¹

In 2008, Sheehan traveled to Cairo, Egypt as a member of a delegation from the Muslim American Society to protest the military trial of 40 members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood. While there, she also went to the National Council of Women to request a meeting with Egypt’s then-First Lady, Suzanne Mubarak, to have a discussion in their joint capacity as mothers, bringing with her mothers and wives of detainees to file complaints about alleged harms to their families. ¹²

In 2008, Sheehan was a signatory to a letter, along with over 1,250 others calling upon Pope Benedict XVI to protest the Iraq War during his visit to the U.S. Among the letter’s demands was one to the effect that the Pope should refuse to meet with then-President George W. Bush at the White House as a form of protest.  ¹³

Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox

“Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox” is a blog and online radio show founded by Sheehan that aims to promote a variety of left-wing, environmentalist, and antiwar movement aims ostensibly independent of mainstream politics. To that end, the project publishes educational and advocacy material and engages in aligned organizing. Originally, the project was hosted on the platform Blogspot, where, as of 2026, there was an archive of posts from 2009 to 2023.  ¹⁴ However, in August 2022, Sheehan announced that the project would move to the Substack newsletter platform under the name, “Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Newsletter.”  ¹⁵ As of August 2026, the project was publishing a podcast, SheeLilly, with left-wing academic and activist Dakotah Lilly as co-host. ¹⁶

The Alliance for Global Justice, an organizing group that is a fiscal sponsor to numerous left-wing initiatives, has provided funding to Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox. ¹⁷

Political Candidacies

Sheehan has run for multiple political offices as a candidate of minor left-wing and radical-left parties. In 2008, Sheehan challenged then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for Congress, campaigning on policies involving reducing the number of U.S. troops abroad, decriminalizing marijuana, promoting fuel sources favored by environmentalists, electoral reform, bank nationalization, single-payer health care, and education subsidies. She finished second in a field of seven candidates.  ²

In 2012, Sheehan was the vice-presidential nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party alongside actress and comedian Roseanne Barr. ³

In 2014, the Peace and Freedom Party nominated Sheehan for governor of California,  ⁴ challenging then-Governor Jerry Brown (D). During the campaign, she was critical of the latter’s performance as governor and claimed that he was financially influenced by the fuel-energy and private-prison industries, and stated that she would campaign to Californians at town hall meetings and address their concerns through community-based solutions, particularly their concerns regarding the state’s public school system. ² She received 1.2 percent of the vote.  ⁴