GARDEN GROVE, Calif. -- In sweltering heat, a mainstream media-ignored press conference closed out the hunger strike outside the district office of Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif. The rolling hunger strike was part of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) and Code Pink's national "Troops Home Fast" campaign that started in July 2006.
Without Hollywood fanfare, the effort in Garden Grove drew a total of 26 hunger strikers and 45 non-fasting supporters. Code Pink's Kathy Hundemer and MFSO's Pat Alviso felt a fast was the next logical step in the effort to keep Sanchez's feet to the fire. A month ago, 20 peace activists had conducted a sit-in at Sanchez's open house to demand that Congress stop funding combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Six got arrested and charged with trespassing misdemeanors.
The sit-in and the hunger strike anticipated a biased report from Gen. David Petraeus that could continue the escalation through spring 2008, even though the Iraqi government has failed to meet 11 of the 18 benchmarks set forth in the emergency supplemental bill passed by Congress last May, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Sanchez appeared to believe money for the C-17 military cargo plane being built in California would be tied up with money for fighting and rebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan. The LA Times reported Sanchez flatly stated she will not vote against war funding if it threatens defense industry jobs for Californians. Critics quickly accused her of putting livelihood above life, which they claim shows how beholden she is to defense contractors.
The Democratic Party as a whole is currently under public scrutiny for their lethargy and awry leadership. At the start of the year it gained control of Congress for the first time since 1995. Since the 110th Congress convened, a series of unblocked votes on key issues related to national security and the war on terror stunned not only pavement-pounding peaceniks but also armchair protestors who voted many Democrats in, believing a major housecleaning was imminent.
Instead, Bush got his troop surge.
The general feeling is that Democrats have betrayed the American public by dragging their feet while bombs are dropping and hundreds more U.S. troops and Iraqis are expected to perish by the end of Bush's term. Indeed, it is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who refuses to put impeachment on the table, calling it a distraction to her party. She and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., control the agenda in both houses, yet they allow funding bills to go to the floor.
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Democrats are bowing down time and again to an executive branch that sidesteps its legislative counterpart, such as when it preemptively attacked Iraq in 2003 and pursued illegal warrantless surveillance of Americans in 2002. In fact, last month AT&T, a top contributor to Sanchez's 2006 campaign, was the defendant in a class action suit alleging it had provided the NSA with customer information in a data-mining operation.
It would appear a Democratic Congress subsequently makes legal what a Republican White House was already doing illegally.
On the penultimate day, the organizers found out that Sanchez's office planned to close at 1 p.m. the following day for Labor Day weekend. The office ended up closing a little before noon, perhaps for lack of constituent business, perhaps because they were privy to the hunger strike culminating in a press conference right outside Sanchez's front door.
Alviso assured them no one's getting a free pass, not even Sanchez. Several hunger strikers then chimed in that they've repeatedly spoken with and protested local Republican leaders. He finished by saying, "Tombstones in Arlington Cemetery don't say Democrat or Republican. They say 'soldier.'"
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