Tom Hayden : Is President Taking New Tack on Counterterrorism?

President Obama speaks about his administration's counter-terrorism policy at the National Defense University in Washington, May 23, 2013. Photo by Larry Downing / Reuters.

Obama responding to critics:  
Tide turning on counterterrorism secrecy

While defending his military policies as constitutional, the president was promising to wind down the 'forever war,' sharply reduce drone attacks, repatriate detainees to Yemen, and move again to close Guantanamo.

By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / May 29, 2013

President Barack Obama’s speech at the National Defense University on counterterrorism revealed a commander-in-chief increasingly worried about political criticism of his Guantanamo detentions, his penchant for secrecy, and his drone warfare policies. Where Obama has shielded his policies on the basis of external terrorist threats, he now is responding to critics who threaten to upset domestic support for those policies abroad.

In past years, Obama has defended himself against attacks from neoconservative hawks and senators like John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsay Graham, who charged him with being “soft” on terrorism. But on May 23, while defending his military policies as constitutional, the president was promising to wind down the “forever war,” sharply reduce drone attacks, repatriate detainees to Yemen, and move again to close Guantanamo.

When disrupted by CodePink’s Medea Benjamin, Obama spontaneously said that Benjamin was “worth paying attention to,” and that he was “willing to cut the young lady who interrupted [him] some slack because it’s worth being passionate about.”

Such a gesture will hardly pacify CodePink or the president’s antiwar critics. But their criticisms have become a factor in the national debate. To criticize the president’s speech as “nothing new” is to miss the primary reason for which the speech was given: to explain a careful withdrawal from the Global War on Terrorism paradigm, the heinous impasse at Guantanamo, and the massive secrecy around drones.

The President was cautious in explaining his pivot toward deescalation, mindful that incidents like Benghazi or the Boston Marathon bombings can block his deescalation path, or at least complicate it severely.

The speech, along with Attorney General Eric Holder's letter and background briefings, for the first time revealed the following:

• Obama let it be known that the CIA will cede its control of the drone war to the Pentagon in six months, opening the way to greater public transparency and overdue congressional debate -- Pentagon budgets can be amended while CIA items are unmentionable secrets in Washington;
• Obama called the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force “near obsolete” and proposed its eventual repeal;
• Clarified that drones will not be used after American ground forces leave Afghanistan, a signal the Taliban and Pakistan will hear;
• Vowed to “limit the use of lethal force” to only those targets considered to be ”continuing, imminent threat(s) to Americans,” which could “signal an end” (according to The New York Times) of so-called "signature strikes" or where the threats are to partner-states but not American personnel;
• Acknowledged for the first time that U.S. drone attacks have killed civilians;
• Declassified the official information that the U.S. killed Anwar al-Awlaki and three other Americans;
• Dropped its judicial effort to block a California lawsuit seeking materials related to al-Awlaki’s killing;
• Announced consultations with the media and a report on new whistleblower guidelines by July 12;
• Appointed a new State Department official “to achieve the transfer” of Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo.

The ramifications of the Obama speech and Holder letter will be felt in the weeks ahead. Asked if there will be effects on existing human rights cases, Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) said, “It does, because they never admitted to killing Abdul Rahman, the teenager, in the court papers, nor did they acknowledge that they killed people that they were not targeting. I have a sense that their legal justifications are going to shift, but not sure to what. [It] may be clearer in the coming weeks.”

In a related development, federal judge Rosemary Collyer required the Justice Department to report in two weeks on how the admissions affected the legal issues in the case. While defining al-Awlaki as a justifiable security threat, the administration now says the other three deaths, including aw-Awlaki’s 16-year old son, were not specifically targeted, raising the question of whether the administration will be held accountable in the federal court.

This article was also published at TomHayden.com.

[Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice, and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His latest book is The Long Sixties. Hayden is director of the Peace and Justice Resource center and editor of The Peace Exchange Bulletin. Read more of Tom Hayden's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Medea Benjamin : Why I spoke Out at Obama's Foreign Policy Speech

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the political activist group CodePink, is removed by security after speaking out against President Barack Obama during his foreign policy speech Thursday. Photo by Kevin Dietsch  / UPI. Image from Common Dreams.

Why I spoke out at 
Obama's foreign policy speech

Or, Why Obama's policies themselves, not those who speak out against them, are rude.

By Medea Benjamin / Common Dreams / May 27, 2013

Having worked for years on the issues of drones and Guantanamo, I was delighted to get a pass (the source will remain anonymous) to attend President Obama’s speech at the National Defense University.

I had read many press reports anticipating what the President might say. There was much talk about major policy shifts that would include transparency with the public, new guidelines for the use of drones, taking lethal drones out of the purview of the CIA, and in the case of Guantanamo, invoking the “waiver system” to begin the transfer of prisoners already cleared for release.

Sitting at the back of the auditorium, I hung on every word the President said. I kept waiting to hear an announcement about changes that would represent a significant shift in policy. Unfortunately, I heard nice words, not the resetting of failed policies.

Instead of announcing the transfer of drone strikes from the CIA to the exclusive domain of the military, Obama never even mentioned the CIA -- much less acknowledge the killing spree that the CIA has been carrying out in Pakistan during his administration. While there were predictions that he would declare an end to signature strikes, strikes based merely on suspicious behavior that have been responsible for so many civilian casualties, no such announcement was made.

The bulk of the president’s speech was devoted to justifying drone strikes. I was shocked when the President claimed that his administration did everything it could to capture suspects instead of killing them. That is just not true. Obama’s reliance on drones is precisely because he did not want to be bothered with capturing suspects and bringing them to trial.

Take the case of 16-year-old Pakistani Tariz Aziz, who could have been picked up while attending a conference at a major hotel in the capital, Islamabad, but was instead killed by a drone strike, with his 12-year-old cousin, two days later. Or the drone strike that 23-year-old Yemini Farea al-Muslimi talked about when he testified in Congress. He said the man targeted in his village of Wessab was a man who everyone knew, who met regularly with government officials, and who could have easily been brought in for questioning.

When the President was coming to the end of this speech, he started talking about Guantanamo. As he has done in the past, he stated his desire to close the prison, but blamed Congress. That’s when I felt compelled to speak out. With the men in Guantanamo on hunger strike, being brutally forced fed and bereft of all hope, I couldn’t let the President continue to act as if he were some helpless official at the mercy of Congress.


“Excuse me, Mr. President,” I said, “but you’re the Commander-in-Chief. You could close Guantanamo tomorrow and release the 86 prisoners who have been cleared for release.” We went on to have quite an exchange.

While I have received a deluge of support, there are others, including journalists, who have called me “rude.” But terrorizing villages with Hellfire missiles that vaporize innocent people is rude. Violating the sovereignty of nations like Pakistan is rude. Keeping 86 prisoners in Guantanamo long after they have been cleared for release is rude. Shoving feeding tubes down prisoners' throats instead of giving them justice is certainly rude.

At one point during his speech, President Obama said that the deaths of innocent people from the drone attacks will haunt him as long as he lives. But he is still unwilling to acknowledge those deaths, apologize to the families, or compensate them.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. military has a policy of compensating the families of victims who they killed or wounded by mistake. It is not always done, and many families refuse to take the money, but at least it represents some accounting for taking the lives of innocent people. Why can’t the President set up a similar policy when drone strikes are used in countries with which we are not at war?

There are many things the President could and should have said, but he didn’t. So it is up to us to speak out.

This article was first published at and was distributed by Common Dreams. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

[Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org), cofounder of Global Exchange and CODE PINK: Women for Peace, is the author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control. Her previous books include Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart, and (with Jodie Evans) Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism.]

Medea Benjamin interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!
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BOOKS / Jonah Raskin : Medea Benjamin on 'Killing by Remote Control'

Killing by Remote Control:
Medea Benjamin's 'Drone Warfare'

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / June 20, 2012

“The drones were terrifying... the buzz of a distant propeller was a constant reminder of imminent death.” -- Journalist David Rohde

[Drone Warfare: Killing By Remote Control by Medea Benjamin. Foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich (2012: OR Books); Paperback; ISBN 978-1-935929-81-2; 262 pp.; $16. E-book ISBN 978-1-935928-82-9.]

President Obama makes jokes about them; Pakistanis -- and others around the world -- live in fear of them. They’re fast and efficient and they save the lives of Americans troops -- their advocates insist. Drones -- unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) -- are here now bigger and bolder than ever before, spying on more people than ever before and killing more people than ever before by remote control and at the behest, more often than not, of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Medea Benjamin -- the author of the new book, Drone Warfare, and the cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange -- isn’t buying any of the buzz about the UAV’s. She thinks they’re illegal and immoral and ought to be banned except for peaceful purposes -- like fighting forest fires.

Drone Warfare is a useful guidebook for organizers and activists, whether they want to educate themselves and others, or join the global movement that is calling for an immediate end to killing by remote control, and an end to the unending reign of terror that has been imposed from above on innocent civilians -- men, women and children-- ever since 9/11. Imperfect drones have also killed Americans soldiers in Asia.

As in all previous wars, the drone war has led to “doublethink,” as George Orwell called it. Senior White House counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, noted in April 2012 that “Unfortunately in war, there are casualties, including among the civilian population,” and that “sometimes you have to take life to saves lives.”

About a hundred years ago, General William Tecumseh Sherman said “war is hell” and led Union troops on a rampage through Georgia, burning, looting, and killing. He was no less deadly on the ground that the drones are in the air, but he seems to have been more honest than the White House and its advisers are today.

Benjamin has talked to the pro-drone technocrats and to the representatives from anti-drone organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as to lawyers and their clients who have been arrested and gone on trial for demonstrating against UAVs.

She’s read the articles and the editorials about them, too, and she writes clearly and concisely about real people caught up in the machinations of war and with vivid quotations from them, some as recently as February 2012, which means that this book is as up-to-date on the subject as a book can be.

Some of the most powerful comments are by Americans who have experienced drone warfare while in Afghanistan. Perhaps the most electrifying is by David Rohde, a journalist who shared a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and who was kidnapped by the Taliban. Like everyone else on the ground, he lived under the threat of death by remote control.

After his escape and return to the United States, he wrote an article entitled “The Drone War” in which he said that, “The drones were terrifying.” He added that “the buzz of a distant propeller was a constant reminder of imminent death,” and that “drones fire missiles that travel faster than the speed of sound.” The victims, he explained, never even hear the missiles that kill them.

Indeed, the main point of the drones seems to be to terrify human beings en masse in whole regions and across nations, whether Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen. Granted, drones have killed thousands of people, including American citizens, such as Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011. The body count is not insignificant and at times the killing of a single individual may be critical to a military campaign.

But the psychological impact is the hideous big bonus of the drones, much as the threat of nuclear annihilation was a big hideous bonus of nuclear warfare. For the moment, the use of the drone as a psychological weapon by the United States government seems to have tipped the balance of power in favor of American military forces and American spy agencies, though debates about the efficacy of the drones can be followed on the Internet and TV.

The drone is much in demand and highly praised, with thousands of them named the Predator and the Reaper coming off assembly lines and with no end in sight. Indeed, U.S. taxpayers are shelling out more than $3 billion a year for them, and even if they can’t see what they’re doing, they’re hurting American citizens financially.

Benjamin breaks the “sordid” drone saga down into its component parts, looking at its economic, legal, moral, and political aspects. She also puts all the pieces together and shows how drone warfare has led to spirited opposition from citizens in Asia, in Europe, and in the United States. She even works up sympathy for the drone operators who are, after all, no more than lowly workers in the immense, hierarchal hive of military activity.

“For up to twelve hours a day, they stare at 10 overhead television screens, monitoring a constant stream of images being relayed to them from the battlefield while communicating on headsets with drone pilots at other bases and instant messaging with commanders on the ground,” Benjamin writes.

Reading her description of a day in the life of a drone operator makes it obvious that the highly touted drones are greatly imperfect and hardly efficient or inexpensive killing machines. Right now, though, they’re making millions for the super-duper, high-tech weapons industry.

Outlawing drones seems to be not only a worthwhile goal but also achievable. It wasn’t that long ago that governments tested atom bombs and that airplanes loaded with cancer-causing DDT sprayed millions of acres of American farmlands, forests, and suburban backyards, too. The world woke up to the deadly reality of atomic bomb testing and DDT-spraying and put an end to them.

Benjamin offers useful suggestions for readers who want to put drones out of business. At the back of the book, she provides a list of organizations that can help activists and organizers from New York to Nevada. If you want to get started you could go to “Robot Wars” which can be found here.

[Jonah Raskin is a regular contributor to The Rag Blog and the author of Marijuanaland: Dispatches from an American War, For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman, and The Radical Jack London: Writings on War and Revolution. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

Also see "Drones Don't Talk Back" by Danny Schechter / The Rag Blog / May 2, 2012

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Medea Benjamin : To the Gay Community

Code Pink protesters at Senate Arms Services Committee hearing on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in Washington December 2, 2010. Woman with sign is Medea Benjamin. Photo from Democratic Underground.
To the gay community:
Now that you can join, please don’t!

By Medea Benjamin / December 21, 2010

The peace group I co-founded, CODEPINK, has not only been protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the drone attacks in Pakistan, but we have been going to military recruiting stations, high schools and career fairs throughout the country encouraging our youth not to join the military.

We talk to young people about the illegality of the wars under international law since we were not attacked by either Iraq or Afghanistan. We talk about how killing and maiming innocent civilians is morally wrong and creates new enemies, perpetuating the cycle of violence. We explain that the majority of Afghans and Iraqis want us out of their countries and that these wars are not making us safer. We insist that our military should be used to defend us at home, not to invade other people's lands.

We know that the military is one of the only ways many young people can afford a college education these days and that the financial crisis severely limits this generation's career options. But we still encourage young men and women to look for other opportunities that don't involved killing or being killed in wars we shouldn't be fighting.

It might seem contradictory, then, that CODEPINK was an enthusiastic supporter of the rights for gays and lesbians to join and serve openly in the military. But within our organization, it was never even controversial -- we stand up for the rights of all human beings. The decision to join the military or not should be determined by individual choice, not institutional discrimination.

We pressured our Congressional reps and attended every hearing with signs calling for the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. We joined protests at the White House and rallies in Congressional districts. And we were in the Senate on Saturday when the historic vote passed, hugging and kissing our friends who had struggled so hard for this victory.

We understand that allowing gay soldiers to openly serve in the military is a crack in the armor of bigotry that will eventually open the way for gay people to marry and be guaranteed equality in the workplace. We understand this victory in the larger context of the march toward full human rights for this oppressed community. And who knows? Perhaps this victory will also serve to strengthen the military's respect for human rights abroad.

We also understand the potential for a powerful alliance between the gay and anti-war communities. We can work together to help young people -- gay and straight -- find careers that won't kill them, maim them, destroy them psychologically, or cause them to do harm to others.

We can jointly reach out to those already in the military to speak out against the violations of the rights of peoples whose land we occupy. We can ask gay veterans to join groups like Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War. And we can work together to turn our military from an aggressive force to one that truly defends us here at home.

As we struggle to find a more civilized way to treat each other in this world, let us recognize the commonalities in the fight for gay rights and the fight to end war.

[Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace This article was distributed by CommonDreams.]

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Medea Benjamin : Death Marchers Haunt New Bush Library Digs

Demonstrators from March of the Dead protest in front of Dallas SWAT officers during groundbreaking at new George W. Bush Presidential Center at SMU, Nov. 16, 2010. Photo by G.J. McCarthy / AP.
Breaking new ground:
Protests at the future site
of the George W. Bush Library

By Medea Benjamin / November 19, 2010

DALLAS -- Several thousand people lined up to see George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice shovel dirt into a hole at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, the site slated to become the George Bush Presidential Center housing a museum, library, and archives.

Over 100 peace activists showed up to protest, including New York City artist Laurie Arbiter, who helped organize a March of the Dead and carried a sign asking "Does America Have a Conscience?" "Rather than build a library, we should leave the broken ground and just fill it with a big pile of rubble," said Arbiter. "That would truly represent the catastrophic results of the Bush Administration."

As part of the March of the Dead, protesters dressed in black, wore white death masks and had signs around their necks representing dead Iraqis, Afghans, and U.S. soldiers. The dramatic march stopped traffic and provoked strong emotions in passers-by, participants and even the police.

Renee Schultz, who drove from Indianapolis to join the protest, wore the death mask and a sign representing a 23-year-old female U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. "When I first put on the mask, I just stood there and cried. I kept thinking, 'I am 23 years old and had my whole life ahead of me. Why did I die?'" Schultz looked over at the riot police and noticed that one of them also had tears streaming down his eyes.

When the marchers attempted to reach the public viewing area, the police forced them back to the designated "protest pen" far from the ceremony. One of the protesters, a wheelchair-bound veteran of the Korean War and World War II, angrily told the police that he did not fight in two wars to be told that his freedom of speech would be confined to a "protest zone."

The gathering was part of a three-day People's Response, filled with rallies, marches, teach-ins, and exhibits of crosses and soldiers' boots to represent the war dead. Organized by Texans for Peace, The Dallas Peace Center, CODEPINK, and Veterans for Peace, among others, the speakers included former FBI agent Colleen Rowley, former CIA agent Ray McGovern, retired Colonel Ann Wright, professor Robert Jensen, and Texas State Representative Lon Burnam.

Also among the protesters was Cindy Sheehan, the Gold Star mother who led a prolonged protest outside Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas in 2005. "Bush should not be allowed to profit from war crimes, crimes that he has even admitted to," said Sheehan. "It's not right that he will make millions from his book and speaking engagements, while millions have been killed, displaced, tortured and had their lives ruined because of him."

The whole dang crew: Digging in at groundbreaking ceremony for George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Nov. 16, 2010. Photo by L.M. Otero / AP.
The protesters focused on the lies Bush told the American public to justify invading Iraq, his authorization of torture and the need for accountability. "Accountability is the sign of a true democracy," said former CIA agent Ray McGovern. "No one should be above the law and the truth must not be buried or rewritten."

Protesters were also concerned about the policies the new Bush Center will promote. President Bush said the Center would include an "action-oriented institute" to advance the principles his administration stood for, including the "benefits of limiting the role of government in people's lives."

According to local organizer Leslie Harris of CodePink, "this really means promoting the same kinds of disastrous policies that brought us preemptive war, economic crisis, environmental disaster, unprecedented presidential power, and diminished civil and human rights. We can't let one of America's worst presidents shape our future policies."

The peace activists who came to protest Bush also discussed their disappointment with the Obama administration and the difficulties they anticipate in pushing the new, more conservative Congress to stop funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the actions they encouraged were:

• supporting the January 15 FBI protest in Washington DC;
• promoting local campaigns, including citywide resolutions, to bring our war dollars home;
• reaching out to allies, particularly groups victimized by the economic crisis, but also reaching out to members of the Tea Party who want to see cuts in Pentagon spending;
• pressuring the State Department to stop using private security contractors;
• supporting the December 16 veteran-led civilian disobedience in Washington DC;
• organizing a delegation to Iraq to take testimony from Iraqis about George Bush and the legacy of the US invasion;
• stopping John Yoo, author of the "torture memos," from teaching law at the UC Berkeley law school.

For some light entertainment after long days of protest, a group stopped by local Barnes and Noble to reshelve -- and photograph -- Bush's Decision Points in a more appropriate place in the store. These included placing the book next to The Murder Business in the True Crimes section, Wing Nuts in the Fantasy Section, When Law Fails: Making Sense of Miscarriages of Justice in the Legal Section, and our favorite in the Children's Section, Dr. Seuss' Will You Please Go Now?" With the renewed media attention on George Bush, including his sanctioning of torture, Bush might do well to take Dr. Seuss' advice.

[Medea Benjamin was a founder of CodePink. Follow her on Twitter: www.twitter.com/medeabenjamin.]

Source / Huffington Post


Where Bush's book belongs. Images from Waging Nonviolence.
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Medea Benjamin : Getting Naked in Houston to Expose BP

CodePink demonstrators at BP headquarters in Houston, May 24, 2010. Photo from CodePink / Flickr.
Naked truth:
Exposing BP's criminal behavior

By Medea Benjamin / May 28, 2010

See gallery of photos, Below.

HOUSTON -- Diane Wilson, a fourth generation shrimper from the Texas Gulf and a founder of CODEPINK, has been watching the BP spill and the botched clean-up with a mixture of dread and anger. After all, it’s her livelihood and that of her community that’s at stake.

“I’ve lived all my life in the Gulf Coast, in the oil, chemical, and gas hellhole we call an energy corridor,” said Diane Wilson with her Texas twang. “I’ve been fightin’ these polluters for 21 years. But this BP spill is the nail in the coffin of the people who make their living along the Gulf Coast. This is our 9/11 in slow motion.”

Diane has been incensed by the cavalier attitude of BP CEO Tony Hayward, who said that the largest oil spill in U.S. history is a tiny speck in the vast ocean. “He had the nerve to say that those miles upon miles of underwater oil plumes that stretch to who knows where and do who knows what to the fisheries, the ecosystem, and Gulf of Mexico for possibly generations, is really going to have a ‘very, very modest impact.’ Sittin’ there listening to BP’s lies made my blood boil,” Diane fumed. “I realized I better get off my butt and do somethin’ about it.”

This 61-year-old grandmother of five is all about action. To protest chemical companies polluting her bay, in 2002 Diane climbed a chemical tower, chained herself to it and then did a 30-day water-only hunger strike. As a CODEPINK co-founder who tried to stop the invasion of Iraq in 2003, an invasion she knew was all about oil, Diane got arrested confronting Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at a Congressional hearing. Then she scaled and tied herself to the White House fence (and almost got shot by a sniper). She even traveled to Iraq when the U.S. military was about to attack, putting herself forward as a human shield.

So Diane put out a call for people to join her in Houston on Monday, May 24, to protest at the BP headquarters. Looking for a creative way to expose the company’s criminal behavior (and entice the media, who rarely cover protests in Texas), Diane was inspired by the example of a group of women from Nigeria who took over a Chevron oil rig and threatened to strip naked if the company didn’t hire more local workers and invest in the community. Faced with just the threat of nudity, Chevron gave in.

“If the Nigerian women could use their bodies on the Niger Delta, why can’t we do it in downtown Houston?” Diane reasoned.

Diane doesn’t take nudity lightly. She didn’t grow up in a hippie commune, but in a fundamentalist Pentecostal family in rural Texas.

I was taught that flesh is sinful, it’s the devil. I was so modest that if my sister said the word ‘bra’, I would climb under the table. I was horrified by anything intimate. So for me, using nudity to expose the truth about BP was WAY outside my comfort zone. But I realized that it’s the destruction of our ecosystem by corporate greed that’s obscene, not a woman’s body.

To prepare for the action, Diane got 100 pounds of fish from her fishing buddies, old fishing nets to drag the dead fish and fake oil to dump on them. She and one of her daughters made beautiful signs saying “Expose BP” and “The Naked Truth about Drill, Baby, Drill” and put them on big sandwich boards. “You could say we was cheatin’ because we decided to use sandwich boards to cover our private parts, but that’s about as nude as those of us from Texas can get,” laughed Diane. “We’ll leave the full-on nudity to the women from California.”

The action was superb. About 100 people showed up from all over Texas and six other states -- including California. Some people wore pasties that said “No BP," some dressed as fishermen, oily birds, and fish. Diane put on her white rubber fishing boots, smeared herself with oil and wore a sandwich board that read “Expose BP’s Obscene Side.”

Two imposter oil workers in BP uniforms doused the group with fake oil, causing the birds and fish to recoil and die on the sidewalk. The police and BP security stood by watching, as nice as could be. It was obvious that BP higher ups had the good sense to tell them that arresting protesters would not help their image.

The group was having fun mocking BP, but when Diane took the megaphone to speak, the tone changed. “I am here because I’m outraged,” she said, her voice shaking. “My family has lived on this gulf for 100 years, we’ve been fishing these waters for generations and now we’re seeing it decimated. All we’re getting from BP is lies. We’re not getting any answers from the government. That’s why people have to hit the streets to demand solutions.”

After the action, I sat down with Diane to hear her solutions and ideas for future actions. “BP should be shaken down like a rotten fig tree,” she said.

The government should seize their profits and use them for the clean up and then to invest in clean energy. We should shame those senators who want to stop the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act legislation that would raise oil companies’ liability from a pitiful $75 million to $10 billion. And we should demand that our government stop offshore drilling. No new permits, period. We have to seize this moment to move our country away from fossil fuels that are responsible for environmental devastation and wars.

CODEPINK has asked supporters to email letters to Senator Murkowski, asking her to stop blocking the Big Bailout Prevention Act. It’s time to protect the fishermen, the coastal residents and the wildlife, not the corporation at fault for the disaster.

But for Diane, sending emails is not enough. She is calling on people throughout the country to boycott BP -- not just passively, but by getting out to BP gas stations to protest and educate their communities on the company and the catastrophe. CODEPINK supports her call to action and is providing resources for action on our website. We’ll also be bringing Diane to Washington, DC, to confront Congress, the White House Administration, and BP executives with the crude awakening about Big Oil.

“Pass out fliers to drivers. Ride your bikes around the stations. Get creative. Hey, maybe you even want to do your own nude protest,” she grins. “Expose BP. Expose that Drill, Baby, Drill means Spill, Baby, Spill. After all, what’s at stake is nothing less than our planet. And that’s the naked truth.”

[International peace activist Medea Benjamin was a founder of CODEPINK.]

Source / Pink Tank







CodePink demonstrators at BP headquarters in Houston, May 24, 2010. Photos from CodePink / Flickr.
Thanks to Fran Hanlon / The Rag Blog

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