Listen, chat, call in and/or email your questions/comments!
ntodd
Tune in today at 5pm Eastern for the inaugural PINK Talk!
CODEPINK:Women for Peace kicks off their Internet radio talk show with the compelling stories of women in Gaza. We will hear from CODEPINK cofounders Medea Benjamin and Gael Murphy who along with Colonel Ann Wright recently returned from Gaza where they led a delegation of 60 peace and social justice activists to this war-torn region. Listeners are welcomed and encouraged to call in, join the online chat and/or email pinktalkradio@gmail.com with questions or comments for our guests.Imagine that! Code Pink somehow managed to get seats at the AIG hearing. How on earth did they pull that off?CodePink may be an anti-war group, but they’ve also got a nose for news, and five members managed to get seats in the AIG hearing today. And they managed to provide a little lighthearted news.
Founder Medea Benjamin and her partners came dressed, of course, in pink, and came bearing signs like “AIG (arrrow) JAIL” and “Fire Geithner.”
But holding them up while AIG CEO Edward Liddy testified prompted a sharp rebuke to the “lady in pink” from subcommittee chairman Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.), who ordered them to handover their signs or leave, before the committee chairman Rep. Barney Frank asked questions.
Unable to resist a preamble aimed at the glowering, scowling Kanjorski, Frank noted, “considering your method of dealing with this, it’s a good thing no one was wearing a T-shirt.”
As far as their presence there, Benjamin said they saw the AIG mess as intimately related to the wars. “Our economic mess now is related to the war we’re still paying for,” she said.
“They’re criminals. This is criminal what they did,” said Benjamin, referring to AIG. “I can’t believe we’re talking about bonuses considering the rest of the bailout, but this was theft.”
The Capitol police know CodePink well, and Benjamin and a few officers were seen chatting and laughing with each other after the hearing took a break.
(via FDL)
Iraqi women are suffering a ‘silent emergency’, trapped in a downward spiral of poverty, desperation and personal insecurity despite an overall decrease in violence in the country, according to a survey of 1,700 women in Iraq released today by international aid agency Oxfam.
The survey report, “In Her Own Words: Iraqi women talk about their greatest concerns and challenges,” is being released on International Women’s Day to highlight the daily hardships women are facing as a result of years of conflict.
...
“Women are the forgotten victims of Iraq. Despite the billions of dollars poured into rebuilding Iraq and recent security gains, a quarter of the women interviewed still do not have daily access to water, a third cannot send their children to school and since the war started, over half have been the victim of violence. And to add further insult more than three quarters of widows, many of whom lost their husbands to the conflict, get no government pension which they are entitled to,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Jeremy Hobbs.
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- Income was worse for 45% of women in 2008 compared with 2007 and 2006, while roughly 30% said it had not changed in that same time period
- 33% of women had received no humanitarian assistance since 2003
- 76% of widows were not receiving a pension from the government
- Nearly 25% of women had no daily access to drinking water & half of those who did have daily access to water said it was not potable; 69% said access to water was worse or the same as it was in 2006 & 2007
- One-third of respondents had electricity 3 hours or less per day; two-thirds had 6 hours or less; 80% said access to electricity was more difficult or the same compared to 2007; 82% as compared to 2006 and 84% as compared to 2003
- Nearly half of women said access to quality healthcare was more difficult in 2008 compared with 2006 and 2007
- 40% of women with children reported that their sons and daughters were not attending school
Leslie started her vigil for Gazan women and children in front of the White House yesterday morning. After a special PaxLive featuring Desiree, we took the X2 bus to join in for a lovely afternoon of visibility and outreach.
Since my handwriting has been compared to that of a serial killer, I printed out a sign with a quote from Obama's inaugural address: "Your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy."
Des tied a peace ribbon to the White House fence.
After our relatively brief vigil of mere hours, we stopped by to check on Connie, who still had a foam peace hand we'd brought in January when we had a vigil to remember Thomas.
Today we're heading to the White House, then at her suggestion I'm going to the Smithsonian's Ripley Center to check out the exhibition Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968. That should be a good capstone for the action, and my regular 198 Sundays post will in part feature her father, an original Freedom Rider, as our Gaza delegation continues its modern freedom ride.
ntodd
(originally posted at Green Mountain Code Pink)
Hey, we have a new Vermont Code Pink chapter, so why not blog about my meeting with Pat Leahy over there?
ntodd
[House Minority Whip Eric] Cantor listed some of the more extreme liberal forces — he mentioned Code Pink, the women’s antiwar group, and the “radical environmental movement,” which were about the most provocative examples he could come up with off the top of his head — that seemed, in his view, to hold sway among Democrats in Congress but whom Obama, with his centrist outlook, might need to defy.Extreme liberal forces? I like the sound of that...
