A couple of weeks ago during the “No War, No Warming” demonstration, even though we had a permit for a rally on the West Lawn of the Capitol, police, some carrying automatic rifles, closed off all the front entrances to the Capitol, so that to get to the West Lawn, we had to climb over waist-high walls.
All this excessive security recalled my first trip to the capital of Montana, Helena, last year. I went with a labor group for a rally on an initiative to raise the minimum wage, and I was sitting alone on the steps of the Capitol, beside the stage, listening to the speakers, and a man in working clothes and his dog sat down on the steps beside me. I was playing with the dog when the governor of the State of Montana was introduced. The man beside me turned out to be the governor, daring to wander around the state Capitol without even an entourage.
The Senate and House Office Buildings are anything but user-friendly. The long, long hallways don't have a single bench or chair or anywhere at all to sit down, and the hallways are snarled in a labyrinthine puzzle that all but guarantees a person will get lost and wander in exhausting circles trying to find their Senator or Representative.
I blogged yesterday about distributing Naomi Wolf's new book, “The End of America,” to all the Senators. It did occur to me after I posted it that maybe the Capitol Police read Code Pink blogs. Distributing anything to Senators is illegal, but I've been carrying heavy bags full of books into the Senate office buildings over and over all week, going through the X-ray every time without being stopped, until this morning. This was my last day, I'm leaving Monday for Montana, and I had 14 books left to distribute.
But I didn't make it through the first X-ray at the Russell Building this morning. The Capitol Police guarding the entrance stopped me, wanting to know what was in my bag. They found a bunch of copies of just one book, very suspicious. I said they're for a select list of Senators, from the publisher, and showed them the names on my list, organized by building. They said it's against the law to distribute anything to Senators.
I left and walked over to the Dirksen Office Building, and almost made it through security there. My books got through the X-ray unmolested, but as I was walking away a warning came over the police radio about a suspicious woman, who may be from CODEPINK, trying to distribute material to Senators. A friendly woman cop named Tyra came after me. She was carrying her radio and I could hear nonstop chatter about me and CODEPINK. Exciting! A 65-year-old grandmother wearing pink is on the loose on Capitol Hill, with books! I showed Tyra the books, told her this was the last group and I'd already distributed the books to all the rest of the Senate, and they were grateful to receive them. It's a $14 book! People recognize a valuable gift when they see it. I told her the whole story (explained in an earlier blog) about how I came to be distributing these books. I invited her to accompany me to the office of the first Senator on my list, and she walked along beside me as we looked for the office.
She reported on the police radio that she had me; they could stop looking. After a few minutes she got a call and walked away from me, not leaving me but taking a call she didn't want me to hear. I waited, there being no chance at all of getting away. She came back to me and said she wouldn't accompany me further, warned me that it's against the law to distribute anything to Senators, and if they received a complaint, they would take action. I noted they hadn't yet received any complaints, and I'd almost finished the task. I don't know why they let me proceed with something they'd just told me, repeatedly, was against the law. Maybe they realized they might get complaints from Senators who wanted their copy of the book!
I was thoroughly decked out in pink, since I'm one of the few Pinkers who can still wander Capital Hill hallways, and we want to show the colors. On the other hand, I really wanted to finish the task of getting this book to all the Senators, and this is my last day. I was afraid, after all the police radio chatter about me, that I might be stopped again by any cop who saw me, had heard the chatter, and missed the denouement. So I ducked into a restroom, took off my CODEPINK T-shirt. I was wearing a “Arrest Cheney First” black long sleeved T-shirt underneath. I turned my CODEPINK black hoody inside out, and tried to carry my CODEPINK bookbag so the logo didn't show. Couldn't do anything about my long pink skirt. And the “Arrest Cheney First” T-shirt also attracted a lot of attention. Several suit-clad men in the hallways and in Senate offices laughed and complimented me on it.
No one else stopped me. I finished distributing Naomi Wolf's “The End of America” to the whole Senate and celebrated with a tiramisu at Union Station.
23 comments:
You should have brought Code Pink's favorite books like the Communist Manifesto and distributed those. Too bad you didn't get arrested! Did you set a fire in the bathroom?
Any truth to the rumor that the next Code Pink campaign is to be called "Set fires in the women's bathrooms at the capitol Senate building?"
Eve Tetaz you're not.
All the flamers! You must be doing something right! Power of the purse - Yes Nancy its time, not another dime for this obscence war.
Dear Anonymous: No, I haven't made any claim to the heroic courage of Eve Tetaz. On the other hand, I do have at least enough courage to put my own name on my comments.
Carol Marsh
Nice work Carol!! They are funny with those rules, eh?
peace,
jim
Oh please. Accusing Code Pink setting fires in the bathroom? What part of non-violent, non-destructive, anti-war do you not understand, anonymous cluetard?
OK, carol, I confess, I'm Subcommandante Marcos. Medea can vouch for me, she interviewed me for a book she helped write. Even used my image with my guns and bullets. Ain't that "peaceful"...
Don't let the fact that I use guns and violence to achieve my goals, they're the same goals as yours, we both hate America and I'm a Marxist just like Medea, though I never lived it Cuba, nor did I work for the state run, state controlled newspaper like Medea.
coles, you're full of it. you clowns housed SDS and they nailed some good looking hot babe with a brick in Georgetown, without even a hint of remorse by the way.
They were destructive, they were violent and you are a liar saying code pink is not.
The burden of proof is on you, anonymous coward. Until you have any sort of proof, everything you have to say is about as meaningful as your name. In a word: not.
And, Anonymous, someone has been playing with matches in the women's bathrooms at the Senate Office buildings... I wonder who might be responsible for that? Code Pink supplies the bulk of the loons at the capitol lately so you be the judge....
The Liars March for Tyranny and Oppression: Commie Claws are Coming to Town
Kerri Houston
The media is already characterizing the protesters as “anti-war activists” and their organization as “peace groups.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. They are communists. They are not in favor of peace; indeed, they are hell bent on inciting a communist revolution here in the United States.
Because there aren’t enough of them to occupy an entire city block, they snatch the well meaning into their grasping clutches by misrepresenting their true agenda and hoodwinking college students, grandparents, and soccer Moms with a social conscience into participating in their rallies. Afterall, a rally with only 10 people is, well, a meeting held outside.
So far the media either has not discovered the true nature of protest organizers, or it is generally unwilling to report it.
Communism is a failed political ideology spawning government sponsored terrorism responsible for the murder of over 100 million souls and the unimaginable misery of hundreds of millions more during the 20th century. Its political leaders have sanctioned genocide, giving us the killing fields of Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and the intentional starvation of 10 million Ukrainian peasants in 1933 by Josef Stalin. Millions of innocent Chinese were starved by their communist government resulting in reports of horrifying stories of villagers sacrificing children as a food source.
Modern communists recognize that most people find murderous thuggery distasteful. They wisely do not want to be associated with the brutal realities of past and present communist dictatorships of Stalin, Castro to Kim Jong Il. They have therefore hidden their real agenda behind ideals of which we all approve, such as “peace” and “justice.”
United for Peace and Justice is the chief sponsor of the Inaugural protests and it is run by Leslie Cagan, a longtime communist activist and devotee of Fidel Castro who was active in the American Communist Party commencing in the Vietnam War era. She was also a member of the Communist Party USA’s Committee for Correspondence. Her goals are the promotion of communism and the destruction of the current U.S. system of democracy.
UPF was deliberately formed as a false public and “moderate” voice to shield the American Marxist movement. Their water was originally carried by A.N.S.W.E.R., a communist front “anti-war” organization that was the brainchild of the Stalinist Workers World Party, but when A.N.S.W.E.R. showed its true colors at one too many anti-war rallies, the organized Left became nervous, prompting the formation of United for Peace and Justice with Ms. Cagan in charge.
Formal members of the Peace and Justice Coalition include state chapters of A.N.S.W.E.R., Committees for Correspondence, Communist Party USA, Communist Party of Vietnam, Ruckus Society, Not In Our Name (NION), September Eleventh Families for a Peaceful Tomorrow, MoveOn, the Communist Parties of Maryland, New York and Indiana, The Exploding Goldfish, Tennessee Guerrilla Women, Code Pink and the Marxist Feminist Lesbian Jamaican Radical Poets.
One of the leaders of A.N.S.W.E.R. is President Johnson’s former Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, an outspoken communist activist who has volunteered for the Saddam Hussein defense team. He founded an organization that supported former murderer Slobodan Milosevic and current murderer Kim Jong Il. He is a director of the post-Trotsky Workers World Party and claims that Osama bin Laden is a victim of U.S. terrorism. He believes that our government deliberately set out to make Islam its enemy so that we had a reason to build more things that go boom.
Brian Becker, another protest organizer and member of UPJ’s partner A.N.S.W.E.R was recently found in North Korea proudly denouncing the U.S. for “war crimes” against that country’s citizens while accusing our soldiers of committing mass murders. He is also a member of Clark’s organization and the anti-Semitic Workers World Party, which incidentally, is on the FBI’s terrorist watch list.
Code Pink, another “anti-war” organization hiding its ideology, is run by communist associate Medea Benjamin. Code Pink has primarily chosen women to lie to, taking advantage of the genuine concern that some homemakers and grandmas have about the Iraq war and using them to add voices at local protests.
Benjamin’s main claim to fame is organizing the violent 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in which she used the Marxist World Worker’s party to help supply bodies. The ensuing riots injured innocent bystanders, caused millions of dollars of property damage for business owners and taxpayers, and left many out of a job. A long time friend of Cagan and Central American communists, Ms. Benjamin was instrumental in the founding of Peace and Justice.
Ms. Benjamin also has formed a group in Baghdad called Occupation Watch dedicated to demoralizing U.S. troops by encouraging them to abandon the Iraqi people and obtain discharges under false pretenses. She was also behind placing in Baghdad the pre-war “human shields” whose dedication to the cause was quickly revealed when they headed for high ground just prior to shock and awe.
UPJ’s partner Not in Our Name is a group with connections to the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party. Communist activist Clark Kissinger was an instrumental member of the 1960’s violent Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Panthers and founded an organization dedicated to halting U.S. security interests during the cold war. He is a co-director of NION.
Parents, if your well-intentioned college student is participating in a “peace” protest on Inaugural Day, these are his or her partners.
They are not patriotic Americans who love peace and hate war. They are unpatriotic Americans who love communism and hate us. Human freedom is their enemy, and they have snared thousands of uninformed protesters into their web.
They are brilliantly deceptive as they cleverly incorporate their communist beliefs into activism that they cover in a mainstream cloaking device. But if they are so dedicated and proud of their beliefs, why do they strive to hide them?
Communism was, and continues to be, a plague on mankind. It has caused incalculable economic and ecological destruction as well as extinguishing the human spirit of millions of our global neighbors, past and present.
As today’s communist movement ironically uses the freedom of speech stripped from those under communist rule to ruthlessly and deliberately promote their agenda, we must never forget those who have suffered under its hands.
In our own act of irony, let’s commit a positive act of compassion by taking an active step to honor communism’s victims. Thank them for reminding us of the tyranny that is communism and go to www.VictimsofCommunism.org to donate some of your ill-gotten gains of evil capitalism for a monument to be built in Washington that reminds us of a brand of human suffering we must never allow again.
That’ll really hack them off.
Kerri Houston works for Frontiers of Freedom, the interestingly framed euphemism for an ultra-neocon "think" tank that is heavily funded by R.J. Reynolds, Exxon, and Philip Morris. Consider the source.
Exactly, consider the source. When you march with Code Pink you are marching with a group that embraces dictators like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. You are marching with a group that associates itself with the Communist Party USA and Anti-Semitic Socialistic groups like International ANSWER. Indeed, consider the source!
Being a Communist is legal and is a philosophy embraced by many, many people who aren't dictators. I can belong to a group and work for a common goal with people who believe differently than I. Whether the leadership of Code Pink embraces Chavez and Castro is immaterial. They are not profiting off of the deaths of anyone, unlike your apparent heroine, Kerri Houston, who owes her salary and notoriety directly to the deaths of millions and the destruction of our ecosystem.
I guess nuance and truth are not two of your strong suits. Black/ white, good/bad, is a very narrow, sad way to go through life.
What balls? :)
My balls.... you can lick the lint off from them!
My name is Jack Meoff!
Thanks GOD that this country never had a female president and hope that it never will.
You women sound uneducated, ignorant and stupid. Full of hate for this great country.
I am a hispanic women, a mother, an engineer and a naturalizer citizen of the greatest country in the world the USA. You have not idea how lucky you are to live in this country.
Where I come from you will put on jail for the hate that you believe and/or you will just "vanish" for good. Hugo Chavez and his poor ignorant followers will make sure of that.
Have you ever in your miserable life read a history book? What do you expect man to do... bake cookies all day? so, that you can go a protest?
Wars are good because it gets read of the bad people in the planet.
Wars help technology that helps your old parents or a small child live longer.
Man for 1000 of years hunt and have gone to war for a better life.
Code Pink is the proof that we women cannot and should not be allowed to rule anything other than our homes(the world cannot handle changes every 28 to 30 days)
People please, spend your energy in things such as going to young groups and talk to the young people about not having children at 15 because that leads to poverty. Talk to young women to stop having children by more that one man because that will lead to peverty and so on. Do somthing meaningful with your life.
By, the way what do you expect someone in the military to do? get pay and just be cute wearing an uniform? get great benefits without doing a job? so, that you can be happy?
I am sorry but people die at war but that is what wars are about. I am thankful to the United States military for what they do. My own child one day might join the military someday and I hope that I can be very proud of him or her.
At last thanks to people like you and the liberal media my native country's new dictator Hugo Chavez have slowly but surely destroyed everything and anything in Venezuela. People cannot find medicine, cann't get services, cann't get jobs, cann't get food, cann't leave the country.
The country is now full of illegals from Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, El Salvador, Arabics. THe internet is now being search. I have to be careful what I said to my family on the phone and the internet.
I hope that one day you and everyone in CODE PINK ask God for forgivness for what you are doing and for hurting so many people along the way with your stupid ignorant ideas.
You are pathetic women (CODE PINK). You should be ashamed!
Thanks GOD that this country never had a female president and hope that it never will.
You women sound uneducated, ignorant and stupid. Full of hate for this great country.
I am a hispanic women, a mother, an engineer and a naturalizer citizen of the greatest country in the world the USA. You have not idea how lucky you are to live in this country.
Where I come from you will put on jail for the hate that you believe and/or you will just "vanish" for good. Hugo Chavez and his poor ignorant followers will make sure of that.
Have you ever in your miserable life read a history book? What do you expect man to do... bake cookies all day? so, that you can go a protest?
Wars are good because it gets read of the bad people in the planet.
Wars help technology that helps your old parents or a small child live longer.
Man for 1000 of years hunt and have gone to war for a better life.
Code Pink is the proof that we women cannot and should not be allowed to rule anything other than our homes(the world cannot handle changes every 28 to 30 days)
People please, spend your energy in things such as going to young groups and talk to the young people about not having children at 15 because that leads to poverty. Talk to young women to stop having children by more that one man because that will lead to peverty and so on. Do somthing meaningful with your life.
By, the way what do you expect someone in the military to do? get pay and just be cute wearing an uniform? get great benefits without doing a job? so, that you can be happy?
I am sorry but people die at war but that is what wars are about. I am thankful to the United States military for what they do. My own child one day might join the military someday and I hope that I can be very proud of him or her.
At last thanks to people like you and the liberal media my native country's new dictator Hugo Chavez have slowly but surely destroyed everything and anything in Venezuela. People cannot find medicine, cann't get services, cann't get jobs, cann't get food, cann't leave the country.
The country is now full of illegals from Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, El Salvador, Arabics. THe internet is now being search. I have to be careful what I said to my family on the phone and the internet.
I hope that one day you and everyone in CODE PINK ask God for forgivness for what you are doing and for hurting so many people along the way with your stupid ignorant ideas.
You are pathetic women (CODE PINK). You should be ashamed!
I thank God for:
President George W. Bush
SecState Condi Rice
SecDef Robert Gates
General David Patreus
The United States Army
The United States Navy
The United States Air Force
The United States Marine Corps
The United States Coast Guard
Army Rangers and Green Berets
Navy SEALs
Marine Force Recon
Air Force Para-rescue
All Military personnel and their families for making great sacrifices for a country they LOVE
Let's keep this "WAR MACHINE" rollin and kill those islamic extremeist wherever they may hide!!!
Very funny and touching article. Thank you for your courage and your steadfast efforts to stop this terrible war.
Wow, lotta stupid trolls on this post lol. I've got my own book recommendation, also by a wonderful woman named Naomi: THE SHOCK DOCTRINE by Naomi Klein. It talks about how extreme capitalist ideology (no limits on corporations or on "free trade", all assets privatized, govt services cut drastically) is imposed by force around the world, taking advantage of the shock caused by wars, natural disasters, and economic crises.
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