Posted on 09/04/2004 6:39:30 AM PDT by pjsbro
They have lobbied in the halls of Congress wearing pig costumes and wandered the streets of Manhattan dressed in evening wear and rags.
But the three founders of the women's antiwar group Codepink are seasoned advocates who may have pulled off the protest coup of the convention: While thousands of demonstrators chanted on the streets, drawing only glancing attention from the Republicans, their members were inside Madison Square Garden night after night, unfurling banners and baring slogans, forcing even the president to take notice.
''We don't want just to be outside on the street talking to ourselves,'' said Medea Benjamin, 51. ''We want to be on the inside where they don't expect us,'' she added. ''We like to confront the people who are making the policies that we are so appalled by.''
Time and again, they have managed to do just that, with a combination of wiles, determination and a sense of humor. In the fledgling group's first action, in September 2002, Ms. Benjamin and another woman interrupted the testimony of Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, before the Armed Services Committee, unfurled a banner reading ''U.N. inspections, not U.S. war,'' and began asking some questions of their own, said Ms. Benjamin, who also runs Global Exchange, a human rights advocacy group, with her husband in San Francisco.
''That picture of us in that room full of generals went all over the world,'' she said. ''It was the first really visible opposition to the war in Iraq in a dramatic way, and we got such incredible feedback that we realized we had touched a nerve, especially in women.''
The group formed after Ms. Benjamin was at a retreat in 2002 with Jodie Evans, 49, who is active in environmental and social issues and has run campaigns for Jerry Brown. What started almost as a joke about the color-coded terror alerts quickly grew after they organized a vigil that lasted for months outside the White House, where they met Gael Murphy, 50, another founder.
Suddenly, Ms. Benjamin said, Codepink chapters were popping up all over the country and organizing actions to protest the war, but also to draw attention to federal budget cuts, civil liberties issues and the television news portrayal of the war. With more than 100 informally linked chapters, Ms. Benjamin said, the group now includes elderly women as well as teenagers, professionals as well as students.
What unites them is their female focus on peace and justice issues, she said, but part of what has made them effective is their campy sense of humor. Member have dressed in pink slips to symbolically fire officials with whom they disagree, yelled ''shut up'' outside of Fox News in Midtown and created their own buttons and discount program for peaceful police officers in answer to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's peaceful-protester promotion.
Ms. Evans stood up at the convention during the president's speech on Thursday and showed anti-Bush and antiwar slogans on a pink slip she wore, then was removed. On Wednesday, Ms. Murphy managed to cause a disruption while Vice President Dick Cheney spoke.
''If we're not having a good time while we're doing low-paid or no-paid really stressful organizing,'' Ms. Benjamin said, ''it's hard to keep that up.'' Even so, the burnout potential is high, she said. ''We have to help each other remember we've got other obligations, like kids and relationships, because we're so obsessed with the work we're doing.''
She touched a nerve, alright. The crazy bone.
Must be a Communist Front Group.
We should've sent them to Iraq as inspectors.
Evans has also been identified as a former close colleague of Governor Davis and longtime friend of chief Democratic hit man Bob Mulholland.
Why am I not surprised that this leftist nutjob is named for a mytholgical woman who ran crazy and murdered her own babies to get revenge on a man???
She leads her two children to the house, and that no other may slay them in revenge, murders them herself. Very effective is this scene in which, after a soliloquy of agonizing doubt and hesitation, she resolves on this awful deed: In vain, my children, have I brought you up, Borne all the cares and pangs of motherhood, And the sharp pains of childbirth undergone. In you, alas, was treasured many a hope Of loving sustentation in my age, Of tender laying out when I was dead, Such as all men might envy. Those sweet thoughts are mine no more, for now bereft of you I must wear out a drear and joyless life, And you will nevermore your mother see, Nor live as ye have done beneath her eye. Alas, my sons, why do you gaze on me, Why smile upon your mother that last smile? Ah me! What shall I do? My purpose melts Beneath the bright looks of my little ones. I cannot do it. Farewell, my resolve, I will bear off my children from this land. Why should I seek to wring their father's heart, When that same act will doubly wring my own? I will not do it. Farewell, my resolve. What has come o'er me? Shall I let my foes Triumph, that I may let my friends go free? I'll brace me to the deed. Base that I was To let a thought of wickedness cross my soul. Children, go home. Whoso accounts it wrong To be attendant at my sacrifice, Let him stand off; my purpose is unchanged. Forego my resolutions, O my soul, Force not the parent's hand to slay the child. Their presence where we will go will gladden thee. By the avengers that in Hades reign, It never shall be said that I have left My children for my foes to trample on. It is decreed. Jason, who has come to punish the murderess of his bride, hears that his children have perished too, and Medea herself appears to him in the chariot of the sun, bestowed by Helios, the sun-god, upon his descendants. She revels in the anguish of her faithless husband. "I do not leave my children's bodies with thee; I take them with me that I may bury them in Hera's precinct. And for thee, who didst me all that evil, I prophesy an evil doom."
These are Hillry's gal pals....
Jodie Evans was the campaign manager of Jerry Brown's 1992 presidential campaign!!!!
and they have yet to make a difference : )))
I remember the line Archie Bunker said about a "Ms" really being a near "miss".
i am really glad our side does not behave this way. it is juvenile, deceitful and ultimately stifling to the process of free speech.
but then, free speech is not what all these people are about, is it?
All there is in these old hens is: self importance, sanctimony and false piety. It's all about "Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! I'm so wonderful." IMHO, these silly twits are pathetic. Thank Heavens people associate these post-pubescent juveniles with liberals and not conservatives.
They're making a difference. Imagine where we'd be without them. Probably the same place the Vietnam war would have been without VVAW.
They came off looking like fools, but they'll be able to tell the tale to their grandchildren.
Oops. They won't have any grandchildren. They aborted their children.
Do ya' think? Its disturbing the the Democrats embrace these groups but over the years the fringe groups have become part of the party's main stream. Its just like what they taught us in the '50's. The Reds external political machine would dissolve away and become part of the process.
Those idiots think their free speech rights extend to shouting down the president from the convention floor. I liken it to going to a play and screaming at the actors onstage.
I think we should send them to Iraq as election observers (with their trademark pink outfits on, of course)...
If this had been Republicans doing this at the Democratic National Convention, the NYTimes would be having a hissy fit.
"...What unites them is their female focus on peace and justice issues,..."
While the rest of us really toil in the trenches taking aid and compassion one-on-one to those truly in need.
I have yet to see these people actually helping hands on...
Why isn't this kook, Ms. Benjamin, in prison????
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.