CODEPINK - Global Exchange

Medea Benjamin appeared on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show as a lead up to the Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington, DC on Saturday, October 30th. Medea shares how CODEPINK was invited on the show.

When Jon Stewart was on Larry King’s show talking about his Rally to Restore Sanity, he likened himself to Alice in Wonderland and the rally as the Mad Hatter Tea Party. But is Jon Stewart really Alice, trying to find sanity in an upside-down world? Or is he the March Hare, the ultimate “slacktivist” who thinks it’s always teatime — time to sit back and jibberjabber?

The 10-30-10 rally on the capital’s mall is a looking more and more like a celebration of “slacktivism.” Stewart is courting people who do NOT want to open their window and yell, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” As he says in the Rally for Sanity website, he’s looking for the people who’ve been “too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs).”

So let’s get this straight: people who were so horrified when the U.S. invaded Iraq that they joined millions of others to protest are not sane? We shouldn’t speak out against Wall Street bankers whose greed led to millions of Americans losing their jobs and homes? It’s irrational to be angry when you see the Gulf of Mexico covered in oil because BP cut corners on safety? Don’t get upset when the Supreme Court rules that corporations are people and can pour unlimited funds into our elections?

Stewart often roasts the warmakers and corporate fatcats on his show, but he seems to think that his viewers should be content to take out their frustrations with a good belly laugh.

When Jon Stewart announced the Rally to Restore Sanity, he included CODEPINK among the “loud folks” getting in the way of civil discourse. He also equated progressives calling George Bush a war criminal with right-wingers calling Obama Hitler.

So we started a Facebook page asking Jon Stewart to invite us on the show to set the record straight. Beware of what you ask for. We did, indeed, get a call from the producers but it was not for a live interview with Jon Stewart. No, it was for a taped session with myself, a Tea Party organizer and a tear-gas dodging, anti-globalization anarchist “giving advice” to Daily Show’s Samantha Bee about how to organize a good rally. It was clear they wanted to portray us as the crazy folks who should NOT come to their rally for reasonableness.

I consulted with my CODEPINK colleagues. Some said, “Don’t do it. It’s a trap and will only further marginalize us.” We’d already been ridiculed several times on the show, like when we stood up to question General Petraeus at a Congressional hearing or when we organized protests at the Marine Recruiting Center in Berkeley. But the majority of my colleagues thought it would be crazy to decline the chance to get an anti-war message out to millions of viewers.

The producers told us to come to the New York studio “in costume.” The anarchist, Legba Carrefour, was all in black, including a black bandanna covering his face. The Tea Partier, Jeffrey Weingarten, came in patriotic red, white and blue. I decided to “go professional”, with a CODEPINK t-shirt and a gray suit. The producers were disappointed. They had wanted me to appear in one of the wild outfits we have worn in Congress — like a hand-lettered pink slip accessorized with a hot-pink boa and a glittery “no war” tiara.

But my attempt to look professional was thwarted by the fourth guest who suddenly appeared and was positioned right behind me: A huge, scary puppet head of Iranian President Ahmadinejad.

So there we were, four “crazies” being quizzed by Samantha Bee for over two hours. She started out with softballs — what did we stand for, what activities did we engage in. Then the questions and the antics got sillier and sillier. By the end we found ourselves spinning a blind-folded Samantha Bee around, then watching her swing a baseball bat at Ahmadinejad’s head to see if was really a pinata.

I’m sure that with over two hours of tape, there will be plenty of footage to turn into a four minute segment showing us as a bunch of nutcases. After all, it is a comedy show.

But it’s too bad that Jon Stewart, the liberal comedian, is putting anti-war activists, tea partiers and black bloc anarchists in the same bag. And it’s sad that he’s telling his audience — many of whom are young progressive thinkers — that activism is crazy.

An anonymous assistant on the Daily Show’s blog chastized CODEPINK on line. “Dipping hands in fake blood or screaming over everyone just makes you look crazy and then the rest of the country ignores you.” He said that we should, instead, focus on solutions.

CODEPINK has been proposing solutions since the day we started. We risked our lives meeting with UN weapons inspectors in Iraq right before the U.S. invaded to see if war could be avoided. We have repeatedly traveled to Afghanistan to push for reconciliation. For the past eight years we have been posing solutions about how to deal with terrorism, how to extricate ourselves from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, how to make us safer at home. Whether under Bush or Obama, our voices of sanity have been drowned out by a war machine that makes billions selling weapons and hiring mercenaries.

Meanwhile, we’ve witnessed the agony of mothers who have lost their sons in these senseless wars, the unspeakable suffering of our friends in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the lavish spending on war while our schools and hospitals are gutted.

It was because of this insanity that we began to interrupt the war criminals during their public appearances, shouting — yes, shouting — for an end to the madness. It was because of this insanity that we put fake blood on our hands to represent the hundreds of thousands of innocents who died as result of their lies. In our post-9/11-24/7 news cycle, we learned that the more audacious and outrageous the action, the more likely we were to get our anti-war message into the national conversation.

For this the Daily Show calls us crazy!

Don’t get me wrong. CODEPINK women love to laugh and we try not to take ourselves too seriously. But we do feel thatit’s the sane people who protest crazy wars, who cry out against the dangers of global warming, who rail against big money in politics, who implore our politicians to spend our resources rebuilding America, not bombing people overseas.

So let’s celebrate the people who walk the talk. Slacktivism did not end slavery, activism did. Slacktivism did not get women our rights. Activism did. Slacktivism won’t end war or global warming. But activism just might.

Jon Stewart says he wants to restore sanity to Washington; so do we. We’ll see you out on the mall, Jon.

This Saturday, join CODEPINK in Washington, DC for Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Bring your best Mad Hatter Tea Party costume! Let’s restore sanity by ending war!

From our sisters at CODEPINK…

Here’s what’s going on behind the scenes in the “peace negotiations” between Israeli and Palestinian officials, announced by Secretary Clinton for September 1st, 2010.

See the full transcript (or just script) and photos.

Last Monday, President Obama gave a speech before the Disabled American Veterans national convention in Atlanta, Georgia stating that the US military is on target and will withdraw all its combat troops from Iraq by the end of August.

Global Exchange and CODEPINK join in on a statement in hopes to get out the truth that the Iraq war was based on lies, left Iraq in tatters, drained our resources and MUST NOT be repeated for years to come in Afghanistan.

Read the ‘Iraq Debacle’ statement as we evaluate the legacy of seven years of war and urge the Administration and Congress on actions to take.

The Iraq Debacle

We Demand:

Full withdrawl and closure of military bases.
Reparations to Iraqis.
Full support for returning troops needs.
Prosecution of officials who led Iraq War.
Transfer of war funds to rebuild USA.
Taking lesson from this war to: End Afghan War.

Follow our sisters at CODEPINK as they organize actions during the week of August 24-31 — the week that most US troops are set to return from Iraq.

Not since the Pentagon Papers have the inner workings of war been exposed to the public in such an explosive fashion as with the Wikileaks’ revelations on the Afghan war. The Afghan War Diary is composed of over 90,000 leaked military documents that expose the harrowing truth of the war in Afghanistan, revealing widespread corruption, soaring Taliban attacks, cover-ups, excessive civilian casualties and more.

Our sister organization CODEPINK, spoke with Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed the Pentagon Papers that in turn helped end the Vietnam War.

“Wikileaks has given us a picture of the this war that shows a total replay, as in Vietnam, of a corrupt, incompetent set of allies whose main merit is a willingness to be paid by Congress and be supported by the drug trade. We are clearly mired in an escalating stalemate. The troop increase Obama has requested will make no difference.
Let us make sure his sacrifice is not in vain by using these revelations to force Congress to stop funding this war.”

The “leak” comes precisely during the week that Congress will be voting on another $33 billion for war. House leaders are said to be rushing to hold a vote for fear that these reports could create opposition to the measure, and this is exactly what we need to do. We need to open the floodgates of opposition and drown the funding that would send more of our soldiers to die in vain.

TAKE ACTION TODAY

Call 888-493-5443 now.
Tell your Congressperson that the WikiLeaks’ documents
confirm that this war is immoral and unwinnable.
See CODEPINK’s talking points.

Whether we succeed in blocking the war funding or not, we’ll be able to clearly identify Congressional war enablers and war opponents, so we can punish and reward them when they’re home for August and at the polls in November.

Global Exchange News & Action Alert

Sign up for our e-newsletters.

photo: (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

General Petreaus is being confirmed today as the new commander of the war in Afghanistan. His confirmation hearing in Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, chaired by Senator Carl Levin, was noteworthy only because of the Senators’ refusal to ask critical questions about the 9-year-old war that has claimed the lives of over 1,000 soldiers and countless Afghans. The only debate in the hearing centered on whether there should be a timeline of July 2011 to begin the drawdown of US forces, or whether our commitment should be open-ended. Questioning the war itself, as the majority of Americans now do, was only done by the CODEPINK activists in the audience, who were constantly threatened with arrest as they held up signs saying “New General, Old Graveyard”, “Obama’s Vietnam” or simply “No More War!”

There was, however, one heated exchange the media missed because it happened just after the hearing ended. As Senator Levin was leaving the room, CODEPINK members, just back from the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, confronted the Senator from Michigan. “Senator, how can you spend $33 billion more for an unwinnable war when your hometown of Detroit is falling apart?” said CODEPINKer Tighe Barry, who is from Detroit. “Shame on you, Senator. We need jobs in Detroit, not more bombs in Afghanistan,” said Joan Stallard.

It was the only time the Senator lost his cool. Shaking his finger at the protesters, he yelled, “I live in Detroit. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Detroit’s problems have nothing to do with the war.”

But wasting billions of dollars on more killing in Afghanistan means starving our cities of financial resources, and Detroit is a tragic example of this trade-off. With the tanking of the auto industry and government neglect, Detroit now looks and feels like a war zone. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses have been abandoned and are left crumbling. Unemployment is higher than any major U.S. city, crime and drugs are rampant, and the dilapidated high schools have a shocking dropout rate of 38%.

With all its factories and skilled labor, Detroit could have become the epicenter of good, green jobs for a 21st century economy. With the help of government investment and incentives, Detroit could be churning out electric vehicles and cars that get 100 miles per gallon. It could be building the components for high-speed rail, wind turbines and solar panels. The Motor City could have been in the driver’s seat, steering the country out of its economic depression.

Instead, Detroit is careening off the cliff and elected official like Senator Levin are throwing trillions of dollars into a bloated military budget and unwinnable wars. Detroit’s own citizens—the ones who have not yet abandoned the city—have been forced to pay for their own demise. In the past decade, residents of Detroit have paid $1.8 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Taxpayers in Senator Levin’s home state of Michigan have been forced to pay $27.8 billion in war spending since 2001.

The war has a new commander, but it's the same old graveyard of empires. photo: CODEPINK

That same money could have retrained tens of thousands of workers for green jobs and retooled dying factories. It could have paid for 390,000 teachers and librarians or provided 5,000,000 Pell grants so students could get the new skills they need for the new economy. It could have alleviated Detroit’s devastating 40% poverty rate by providing healthcare for 4 million low-income people or meals to 27 million poor seniors. Instead, our “leaders” have chosen to feed the war machine.

So the next time Senator Levin, or any elected officials, tells us there is no connection between our economic crisis and the war, give ‘em a piece of your mind. Better yet, call your rep today (212-225-3121), as they are poised to steal another $33 billion from our cities and send it off to Afghanistan. Tell them to stop destroying our country—and Afghanistan. Tell them that from Detroit to Kabul, we need jobs, not bombs.

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org) and CODEPINK: Women for Peace (www.codepinkalert.org).

(article also appears on Common Dreams)

On Wednesday, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK was detained, questioned and denied entry to Canada when trying to cross the border from Detroit. DemocracyNow! speaks with Medea about the incident.

Transcript from DemocracyNow!:

AMY GOODMAN: One of the people I saw at the US Social Forum in Detroit was Medea Benjamin. Medea Benjamin and one of her co-activists at CODEPINK attempted to come into Canada the day before yesterday, Tighe Barry and Medea Benjamin. Medea describes what happened.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Yesterday my colleague Tighe Barry from CODEPINK and I had an hour and a half free, and we thought, let’s go over to Canada and have lunch. We went there and were detained. They searched our car. They held me for questioning for about four hours and asked me everything about the Social Forum and what I was doing and what conferences I was taking part in. They asked if I was coming for the G20 summit. They even asked me who I voted for for president. After four hours, they allowed me to return to the United States, but my colleague, Tighe Barry, was kept. He was held overnight, and he is still there for a second night in a row. They said that they can hold anybody who has any kind of record, a misdemeanor, a felony or anything, and they can hold them for as long as they want before they put them before a judge for deportation hearings. And one of the reasons they said they could do this is they said the United States does it all the time. So he has no charges against him, but he is being held now going on for forty-eight hours.

MIKE BURKE: Now, Medea, I know that both you and Tighe have traveled extensively around the world. Has this ever happened to either one of you before?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: No. We go everywhere. I mean, we’re constantly traveling, and Tighe is constantly traveling. He’s never had a problem. The issue with Canada is it’s the only country that shares the criminal database with the United States, so it has a record of everything that is in the criminal records here in the US computer system. So they can dredge up something from thirty years ago, which they did in the case of Tighe, as well as arrests that we’ve had making antiwar protests in Congress or in front of the White House. And it’s very dangerous, because this information sharing is starting with Canada and is supposed to then be extended to other countries that the US has special relationships with, like Mexico. So it’s important as activists that we really protest this now, before we’re not allowed to travel very far beyond our borders.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Medea Benjamin being interviewed by Mike Burke in Detroit. She and Tighe Barry didn’t make it into Canada. Tighe Barry has been held for more than a day now.

UPDATE 06/25/2010: Tighe Barry has been released and is headed back to the USA

On Monday June 21 members of CODE PINK: Women for Peace buried a Hummer on this wildly artistic street, the Heidelberg Project, that is a symbol of hope and revitalization in a city devastated by economic downturn.

In Pictures: Check out Code Pink photos from the event.

On Video: Watch members of Code Pink bury an actual Hummer during the U.S. Social Forum in Motor City June 21, 2010. This video is courtesy of a film team from Rollins University in Florida.

Dear Jon Stewart, Sane People Protest Crazy Wars