WP: Protesting for Peace With a Vivid Hue and Cry (feature on Code Pink)

[maddezmom]

Medea Benjamin, one of the founders of the women's peace group Code Pink, wears pink every single day, and sleeps in it, too.

Her shoulder bag, her wallet and her cellphone are all pink. When she visits Washington from San Francisco to lobby Congress against the war in Iraq, she stays in Code Pink's new group house on Capitol Hill, where nearly everyone wears pink, where her bedspread and her pillow and her bedroom curtains are pink, as are the drinking cups in the kitchen and the flowers that grow out back.

Code Pink's signature color is a bright, vibrant shade, the hue of Barbie dolls and Victoria's Secret panties. It's a color for those who believe that even in the midst of serious political activism there is room for pink feather boas and pink-ribboned dog biscuits. There is also room for Statue of Liberty pink crowns -- which several women are wearing now as they walk up Fifth Street NE toward the seat of government.

~snip~

Code Pink was founded in 2002 as a women-run, women-led peace organization with a creative approach to protest. There are at least 250 chapters, mostly in this country; in recent months, the groups' focus has coalesced around lobbying Congress to end the Iraq war. In March, Code Pink started renting a group house so women descending on the District would have a place to stay.


more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/09/AR2007060901488.html

[shance]

1. Terrific article. Thanks for posting Maddez.

n/t

[glowing]

2. That's great. The article is written on a noble side... most of the

time we are bashed by everyone.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Beware, beware, beware of the Washington Post, which is among the worst of

the war profiteering corporate news monopolies.

Among their possibly putrid purposes:

Set-up for a downfall. Create ikons--especially ones that are against some particular big-profit enterprise, like war--then besmirch them, and declaim the death of that movement.

Puffing up individuals to split them off from the common purpose of the group, give them big heads, entice them with publicity and possible profit for themselves. Divide and conquer.

Improve readership and credibility for future fascist purposes--after losing readership and credibility by being one of the chief propaganda arms of the Bush Junta for the war--now that the new escalation and another $100 billion for the war profiteers is assured--because they can now afford to throw a little light on the antiwar movement, and give themselves a tiny little glow of fairness and objectivity. Setting us all up for continued war, and future bullshit, that they will be shoveling our way. The more vulnerable among us will forget what they did, and start granting them some credibility again.

If I were Code Pink, I'd be shuddering right now. WaPo is almost as much a "Kiss of Death" as Time magazine, maybe more so. I was going to say, look for dissension in the antiwar movement, but Cindy Sheehan's public retreat may indicate that the moles are already well at work, and may be hired by, or working closely with, WaPo (Bushites). Don't be naive about this. WaPo is a tool of the war profiteers, and they don't do ANYTHING that is not in the interest of, and probably orchestrated by, the global corporate predators who are running things. Not ANYTHING!

And, please, I'm not saying be suspicious of Code Pink. I know many Code Pinkers. They are good people. But that does not mean that their group, and their momentum, cannot be undermined and even destroyed by government/corporate moles, spies and black ops specialists, and strategic use of publicity.

And none of this matters to real people, who suffer from the war profiteers and the corporate predators. These stunts by the corporate media are just part of their overall delusionary narrative of our national life. For instance, if they now besmirch Code Pink (one possible tactic), and then declare the movement dead (I can well see them doing this, in order to create the new war narrative around a Democratic regime)(--can't have the anti-warriors harassing the invaders of Iran and the enacters of a military Draft!), it won't mean a thing, as to real Code Pinkers and their beliefs, nor to other sufferers from the war machine. The antiwar movement won't be dead. It will simmer along, at 70%, 80% of the American people, but will not appear in the national narrative.

Few people recall that 56% of the American people opposed this war from the beginning (Feb. '03, NYT and all other polls). 56%! That would be a landslide in a presidential election. (And, believe me, it was!). But that majority got ignored, stifled and Diebolded. Just as the current whopping antiwar majority of 70+% got ignored, stifled and Diebolded in 2006 (in the delusional narrative of a Democratic "victory"), and the war was then ESCALATED and lavishly funded AGAIN.

So, "Code Pink As Heroes" fits into this delusional narrative in some way that maybe we can't quite see yet. Stay alert! Keep working on transparent vote counting!