On Saturday the 26th, CodePink was asked to cosponsor and/or participate in the "Global Peace Festival", which will be held on August 9th in Washington DC.
At the time, I was a bit alarmed by the representative's focus on "monotheistic/Abrahamic religion as a unifying reason to support peace". I happen to be a polytheist, and expressed concern that this event would have more of a "religious right" focus than a true interest in supporting a peace initiative or a celebration of the world's diversity. And I was correct to have those reservations, because it subsequently came out that this event is being primarily sponsored by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. Yep, that's right kids - the Moonies came to call this weekend at the CodePink house, and we are not the only peace activist group they are likely to approach in this manner.
This morning approximately 110 people lined up outside Rayburn 2141 hoping to get into the hearing. We were initially told that there were 40 seats available to the public, but ultimately only SIXTEEN people were allowed inside. There were two overflow rooms, both of which were rendered standing room only as staffers and interns also attended in force. There has been one hallway arrest so far. Here are Laurie Arbeiter from World Can't Wait and Jenny Heinz of CodePink, who both came down from NYC to attend the hearing.
While Judi met with Rep. Ackerman's Long Island staffers, Medea Benjamin and the DC group confronted Ackerman himself in Washington DC - ironically enough, IN HIS OWN HOUSEBOAT!
Early this morning I found an unusual email from Medea Benjamin waiting for me in my inbox. It seems that last week when she was arrested in Florida, they confiscated her Global Exchange press pass, and could I make her another one?
Ever since I figured out how to duplicate Medea's press pass for other members of CodePink, I have been doing so with her blessing. Since Medea is the founding director and CEO of Global Exchange as well as one of the founders of CodePink, how I implemented it may be a bit of a hack; but it is quite legitimate insofar that yes, these are valid press passes for a news organization, created with the full knowledge and permission of the company director.
Now, ironically, I was going to have to whip out a copy of the document that served as the original.
On May 8th, Jes Richardson, Leslie Angeline and Medea Benjamin of CodePink crashed a Hillary fundraiser and managed to unfurl a banner protesting her remarks about "obliterating" Iran. Clinton's dismissive reaction as Jes was led from the room was to hope that "he didn't step on any of the cookies or the cakes."
Well Hillary and supporters, I am sorry to have to go to this extreme, but here it is...
Warning: graphic picture of some cookies and cakes that got stepped on below the fold...
Desiree Fairooz, CodePink's "house mama" and the gutsiest librarian from Texas you'll ever have the honor and pleasure to meet, has been found guilty only of a single "disorderly conduct" charge and given a 5 day suspended sentence, a $50 fine and 3 months unsupervised probation. She WAS facing up to a 180 day jail sentence and two counts of assaulting a police officer that were dismissed.
The Mall said we disrupted the pleasant environment they strive to maintain for their shoppers. They say the Mall is private property and their corporate ownership has the right to limit individual freedom of speech.
We say We will not be silent! The American casualty count continues to climb. Hundreds of Iraqis are killed each week. The cost of this war that was based on lies is hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars and continues to grow.
I'm putting this diary together to coordinate information and add a little informed backstory - not to take away from davefromqueens excellent diary on the subject, but to add some information I don't want to see lost in the sheer volume of comments on his diary.
It's ironic that my diary Friday announcing the Smithhaven Mall protest barely got a nod from the community, but I realize that's the way it goes sometimes (and I personally can't wait for the end of the candidate circus, le sigh). We would like to see a lot more of you at the next Long Island mall protest - and there WILL be a next one.
By now most of you know who this guy is: Don Zirkel, arrested for wearing an anti-war T-shirt in the Smithhaven shopping mall on Saturday.
Some of you have asked how to get his T shirt. I have that information and more, below the fold.
"This is a sad and important milestone. We're saying enough: Bring the troops home," said Janet Egan of the Suffolk Peace Network, a coalition of Suffolk groups that is sponsoring the 2 p.m. rally along with the South Country Peace Group and other organizations.
The Suffolk groups will be joined by Nassau-based groups including the Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives. Other organizations expected to take part include North Country Peace Group, Code Pink Long Island Women for Peace, Long Island Veterans for Peace, MoveOn and Pax Christi Long Island, the Catholic peace movement.
Additionally, CodePink will be handing out a certain number of FREE TICKETS to see the movie STOP LOSS the StonyBrook AMC/Loews!
CodePink's web site is under a distributed denial-of-service attack. Their service provider is working on the problem but their award-winning web page is down for the duration. As a system administrator myself, I'm actually rather surprised it took this long for the freeptards to do this to CodePink.
I am not exactly sure what the timing of this attack is supposed to signify, or whether it is in retaliation for something in particular.
However, there is some nice New York and Long Island CodePink news that ordinarily would be available on the CodePink web site that I will now provide here. In the finest tradition of internet sustainability, I shall view freeptardism as damage (brain damage, mostly) and route around it. :)
CodePink has been sponsoring occasional conference calls. Tonight's call features some pretty heavy hitters, including DK's wife Elizabeth, so I figured this would be of interest to the community. Dennis himself is at a fundraiser this evening in Manhattan.
Exciting news! Elizabeth Kucinich, wife of Dennis Kucinich and spokesperson for peace, will be joining our Speak Up for Peace conference call this evening! (Note: it will be 9pm EST.)
Join us tonight for a phone conversation with female peace movement leaders. We'll hear from Ret. Colonel Ann Wright, Iraq Veteran Against the War Maricela Guzman, impeachment activist and former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, Elizabeth Kucinich, CODEPINK Co-founders Gael Murphy and I, and author and CODEPINK wordsmith Gayle Brandeis. This all-star group of activists will share with us their personal experiences speaking out for peace, and what we can do to continue speaking up as we move forward into 2008.
You may remember the sorry tale of Retired U.S. Army Col. Ann Wright and her peacenik colleague from CodePink being turned away at the Canadian border because their names appeared on an FBI database of dangerous terrorists, pedophiles and peaceful protesters.
This time Wright had a specific invitation from six Canadian Members of Parliament, but when she arrived at the airport in Ottawa they once again refused her entry.
For those of you keeping track of those 'minor regulatory harmonizations' involved in the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), there have been some Canadian developments in the Security arena.
Not only are Canadian border guards now arming themselves and using a (sort of) home-grown 'No-Fly List', they are now apparently using an FBI database to justify preventing anti-war activists from crossing the Canada-U.S. border for being... well, activists.
If you have watched C-SPAN lately you have probably seen these women in pink protesting the War in Iraq. When I first saw them I did not think much of it. A couple of women in pink vocally protesting during the Petraeus hearings. Perhaps they were friends that just decided to color coordinate; but I kept seeing them. This group is known as CODEPINK: Women for Peace.
Just today I saw a press conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies by Muwafaq Al-Rubaie, the Iraqi National Security Adviser, where after peacefully handing out fliers before the conference even began someone escorted a woman in pink out of the room. This piqued my curiosity, what was this group that inspired such fear and contempt in the neo-cons? I have heard nothing of them in the news, and after doing a quick search for diaries on them on DailyKos, and finding little information, I decided to write my own diary on them.
