Saturday, October 18, 2008
RADICAL PINK
Colors evoke emotions. White brings goodness and purity to mind. Red makes us think of anger. Green puts us immediately into a garden scene. Pink evokes thoughts of femininity, and girl babies. Then there are the pink breast cancer signs, an image I notice more now than I used to. Pink on a man can sometimes signal homosexuality. There are pink flamingoes. In the '50s we called Communists "pinkos".
Pink has a new image these days. Radical politics. I know, I know, the image is at war with itself in my mind, too. Nevertheless there is a group calling itself "Code Pink" that has gotten into the news.
"In These Times" tells us "Code Pink has become a lightning rod for contemporary activism--from both the right and left....At a November press conference at the Heritage Foundation, President Bush singled out Code Pink--along with what he called "MoveOn.org bloggers"--for setting a dangerous, radical agenda for U.S. politics." According to the September 29 article one protester carried a sign reading "Impeach Bush". The article provides a bit of history:
Code Pink has come to be viewed as a gaggle of smart but silly women, an unkempt listserv, and a mismatched array of girly accoutrements, housed on Capitol Hill, in a space known simply as the D.C. House.
In 2002, Medea Benjamin, Jodie Evans, Starhawk and Diane Wilson founded the organization, beginning with a four-month White House vigil and joined by 100 dedicated, brightly clad adherents. The group has become a lightning rod for criticism of the antiwar movement — and of contemporary activism.
Did you get that? Starhawk. She describes herself this way on her website:
"Welcome! I'm Starhawk, author of many works celebrating the Goddess movement and Earth-based, feminist spirituality. I’m a peace, environmental, and global justice activist and trainer, a permaculture designer and teacher, a Pagan and Witch. To see how it all weaves together, follow the many strands of my web."
On October 11 Jonathan Martin reported:
For all the passion and anger on display this week from Republicans at McCain events, the most vitriol demonstrated at his rallies and town halls over the past year has typically come from antiwar protesters, often affiliated with the group Code Pink.
They get around. The Medill Reports tells us:
in recent weeks the organization has expanded its efforts to include the economic crisis.
Singing "no bailout" to the tune of "Amen", and staging a "die-in" on the steps of the Russell building, Code Pink marched to the Senate offices of presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama.
I guess that protest didn't get them very far.
In an old article FrontPageMagazine.com goes into greater depth:
...this group was in fact founded by
four experienced activists and hardcore communists – Jodie Evans, Medea Benjamin, Diane Wilson, and a radical Wiccan activist calling herself Starhawk. Code Pink works closely with United For Peace and Justice, whose leader Leslie Cagan is a longtime devotee of Fidel Castro and the Socialist Party USA.
Another Code Pink ally is Medea Benjamin’s group Global Exchange, which has strong ties to the communist Workers World Party. Imbued with a deep hatred for the United States and capitalism in general, Benjamin is a pro-Castro activists who lived in Cuba (and was married to a Cuban) was a principal organizer of the 1999 Seattle riots in which some 50,000 protesters wreaked havoc and tried to shut down the World Trade Organization meetings.
Throughout the 1990s, in fact, many of the Marxists currently working for Code Pink were busy organizing anti-free trade protests – some of them violent – and filing numerous high-profile lawsuits that forced American corporations to spend enormous sums of money to defend themselves. When we examine the backgrounds of Code Pink’s major players, we find that they have very little in common with “average, everyday, concerned” American women or activists just interested in peace.
Jodie Evans, for instance, sits on the board of directors of the Rain Forest Action Network (RAN), a coalition of anti-capitalist, anti-corporate environmentalist groups. RAN’s co-founder Michael Roselle also founded the Earth Liberation Front, which the FBI ranks alongside the Animal Liberation Front as the foremost domestic terrorism threats in the United States. According to the FBI, during the past seven years those two groups have been responsible for more than 600 criminal acts and $43 million in damages. And in 1985, Code Pink spokeswoman Sand Brim, who was then the executive director of Medical Aid, flew an American neurosurgeon to San Salvador to operate on the combat-wounded hand of Marxist Revolutionary Party Commander Nidia Diaz, whose group had recently murdered four American Marines and nine civilians....
Code Pink now consists of more than 90 chapters in numerous American cities and such far-flung nations as Costa Rica, Norway, and India. Mocking the Bush Administration’s color-coded security alerts, the “Code Pink Alert” warns that this administration poses “extreme danger to all the values of nurturing, caring, and compassion that women and loving men have held.” Professing their commitment to “wage peace,” Code Pink members see no justification for war under any circumstances – where the U.S. is concerned.
In addition to scorning America’s military action in Iraq, Code Pink members also condemn the racism, sexism, poverty, corporate corruption, and environmental degradation they claim are rampant in the U.S. In this respect, Code Pink is like other prominent “peace” movements in our country – portraying America as a moral cesspool and an imperialist aggressor, while remaining mute about whatever barbarities occur anywhere else on earth. Not even the pre-war atrocities of Saddam Hussein drew a scintilla of condemnation from Code Pink.
Guess whose campaign Code Pink raised funds to support, and where they've been peddling their influence lately. The answer is reported at Townhall.com. Amanda Carpenter writes:
Jodi Evans, a founder of the radical anti-war group Code Pink and "bundler" for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wednesday....
At the meeting Evans and fellow Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin offered Ahmadinejad a plan to build a “peace park” in Tehran and invest funds in Iranian businesses “that produce green and sustainable products, such as bicycles.”
Evans signed on to become a “bundler” for Obama’s presidential campaign last June. As a bundler, she has pledged to raise at least $50,000 for his campaign.
Birds of a feather flock. Apparently in pink[o] garb.
Thanks to Susanna for the heads up on this one.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
