The Socialist recently had the chance to sit down with“Peace Mom” Cindy Sheehan and ask her about the her thoughts on the connection between oil and politics.

The Socialist: There has been a lot of news recently about the BP oil explosion in the Gulf. There has been a real disconnect between the role of the oil companies and the US wars and the role of the military industrial complex. What connections do you see between oil and politics?

Cindy Sheehan: That’s a really complicated question. As soon as the oil explosion happened and as soon as we were allowed to know the scope of the disaster, I wrote an article called “You’ll Pry My Car Out of My Cold Dead Hands.” It’s not only our government’s and our military industrial complex’s addiction to petroleum or petroleum-based products, but it’s our own. We want to blame Tony Hayward or Halliburton, but very few people want to place any blame on the Obama administration, because you know the Bush Administration was filled with oil people. There are many people in the Mineral Management Services that Obama kept from the Bush Administration. We need to recognize the fact that Ken Salazar if a big fan of offshore drilling while being the Secretary of the Interior. Our entire economy, our entire foreign policy, our entire domestic policy seems to revolve around oil. So, we have very poor public transportation in this country. In the places where we do have public transportation, it is very expensive and not very accessible to a wide population. People who can afford it would rather drive their cars. I lived in Washington, D.C. for two weeks without a car. Washington has the best public transportation system in the country, but it is still very difficult to live in this society without a car. I don’t have a car in California either. Instead of only worrying about capping the well, and cleaning up, and hearing politicians say that we have to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we need to reduce our dependence on all oil, natural gas, and coal. We need to move from a fossil-fuel based economy to a sustainable economy and that has to be from the top down and from bottom back up again. That is, if we want to sustain life on this planet.