With the approach of International Women's Day, Winter Soldier II and the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, cointelpro types and nutjobs from the right have targeted CodePink and the Raging Grannies more intensively than before. There was some fallout from yesterday's bombing of the recruiting station in Times Square, with wingnut after wingnut attempting to blame these two groups which are well known for counter-recruiting protests.
Despite this we carried on and had a successful and peaceful day at Hunter College, with more to come tomorrow at Columbia University and on Sunday in Huntington, Long Island. If you're in either area and want to learn who we REALLY are and what we REALLY do, come check us out!
More beneath the fold...
Most of the accusations were made in comments sections or bulletin board forums attached to the article, but one Newsday article mentioned the Raging Granny Peace Brigade by name:
The recruiting center has drawn sporadic protests for many years, including in October 2005, when a group who call themselves the Granny Peace Brigade rallied there against the Iraq war.
Eighteen activists, most of them grandmothers in their 80s and 90s, were later acquitted of disorderly conduct.
What this reference fails to note is that the Grannies, as part of their protest, had facetiously tried to enlist. The judge in question reportedly had a great deal of difficulty keeping a straight face when he heard this.
CodePink's website was attacked several weeks ago by a distributed denial of service, and recently out in Patchogue Long Island, a CodePink counter-recruiting protest had approximately 50 members of the Gathering of Egos show up to try and intimidate and shout down the protesters. It should be noted that this incident happened a few days BEFORE the Times Square bombing.
I was scheduled to help CodePink and the Raging Grannies table at Hunter College's International Women's Day celebration yesterday, and you may well imagine under the circumstances that walking through Times Square in CodePink gear was going to be... interesting... and indeed it was. At least the commute was. As a matter of fact, the commute was so interesting that I ultimately decided to not ride the LIRR all the way in to Penn Station and travel through Times Square at all.
When I got out at Woodside, intending to take the #7 to Grand Central and the #6 to 68th St, I was followed by several people in dark glasses, and there were some obnoxious announcements made over the loudspeaker about "no #7 service into Manhattan" that turned out to be quite ignorable.
The incredibly subversive activities of International Women's Day then began. They consisted of young women reading poetry and doing a bellydancing demo (oh, horrors!), the UN delegate to Liberia giving a very interesting and impassioned speech, while I gave out flyers and sold the odd CodePink button. The fearsome, deadly Raging Grannies performed several of their hilariously pointed songs toward the end of the day and received rousing applause. One granny's acoustic guitar did not explode as an encore, neither did another granny's little tambour drum suddenly turn into a ninja throwing star to be hurled at campus security guards who were trying desperately not to ogle the bellydancers.
I was pleased that no right wing cluetards showed up, or at least they did not make themselves obnoxiously known. I had an opportunity to get up and speak a bit about CodePink and the Raging Grannies and our respective nonviolence policies. Because we had been targeted in the media as being somehow responsible for yesterday's bombing, I addressed that issue directly, and my response all comes down to this:
Pretending to oneself that an activist group that vociferously protests the needless deaths of nearly 4000 American soldiers is somehow interested in causing MORE of those deaths shows a level of stupidity that is beyond the pale.
I also stated that I am a veteran and mentioned how there's a media blackout in play about the war that next week's Winter Soldier hearings are going to well and truly dispel.
CodePink's participation in International Women's Day celebrations continue with a big one happening tomorrow at Columbia University. It is free to all students. Follow the link for details and to register. Or if you're on Long Island, come to Sunday's event at the Huntington Cinema Arts Center.