Mission District

Casey_Sheehan

Cindy Lee Sheehan (née Miller; born July 10, 1957) is an American anti-war activist, whose son, U.S. Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, was killed by enemy action during the Iraq War. She attracted national and international media attention in August 2005 for her extended antiwar protest at a makeshift camp outside President George W. Bush's Texas ranch—a stand that drew both passionate support and criticism. Sheehan ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2008. She was a vocal critic of President Barack Obama's foreign policy. Her memoir, Peace Mom: A Mother's Journey Through Heartache to Activism, was published in 2006. In an interview with The Daily Beast in 2017, Sheehan continued to hold her critical views towards George W. Bush, while also criticizing the militarism of Donald Trump.Sheehan was the 2012 vice-presidential nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party, and received 1.2% of the statewide vote in the 2014 California gubernatorial election.

John_W._Powell

John William Powell (July 3, 1919 – December 15, 2008) was a journalist and small business proprietor who edited the China Weekly Review, an English-language journal first published by his father, John B. Powell in Shanghai.
John W. Powell was tried for sedition in 1959 after publishing an article that reported on allegations made by Mainland Chinese officials that the United States and Japan were carrying out germ warfare in the Korean War. In 1956, the Eisenhower Administration's Department of Justice pressed sedition charges against Powell, his wife Sylvia, and Julian Schuman, after federal prosecutors secured grand jury indictments against them for publishing allegations of bacteriological warfare. However, the prosecutors failed to get any convictions. The defendants invoked their Constitutional right to refuse to reveal self-incriminating evidence, and U.S. Department of Defense officials also refused to provide any incriminating archives or witnesses. This information was not revealed until decades later as a result of Freedom of Information Act requests.
All three of the defendants were acquitted of all charges over the next six years, after a Federal judge dismissed the core aspects of the case against them in 1959, due to obviously insufficient evidence against them.