Report on CODE PINK's Meeting With LIEberMAN

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/23679

Report on CODE PINK's Meeting With LIEberMAN
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2007-06-15 17:15. Media

Senator Joe Lieberman is waving his sword again. On Sunday, he told CBS "I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq."

Upon hearing these words, our own Leslie Angeline, a CODEPINK member who recently returned from a peace delegation to Iran, decided to go on a hunger strike until Senator Lieberman agreed to meet with us. "Seventy percent of the Iranian population is under the age of 30--the age of my son. Iran is a country of warm, kind, and generous people and their children. We cannot start bombing these kids," Leslie told us.

After first denying her request, Lieberman agreed to meet with us and CODEPINK in his Washington, DC office this Thursday at 4:30 pm EST. But just hours before the meeting, he abruptly cancelled.

Appalled, and unwavering in our determination to reach the senator, sixty of us showed up at the Senator's office at the original meeting time. We were a beautiful group of peace-loving people, including leaders from the Iranian community. But Lieberman was nowhere to be found.

Instead, his office called the police, who threatened to arrest us all. Finally, after hearing Leslie's heartfelt plea and seeing her tears, she and two others were allowed in to meet with Lieberman's chief of staff, legislative director, and aide on the Middle East. The rest of us organized a teach-in on Iran in the Senate Hart Building hallway.

Our peace delegation emerged from Lieberman's office an hour and half later. Leslie told our group, "We gave them good arguments, but what most encouraged me was that the staff kept looking at the photos of the Iranian children that I had brought with me and spread on the table. I feel we touched their hearts, and brought the humanity of the Iranian people into Lieberman's office today."

The senator needs to keep hearing our voices. So please call and email Lieberman's office to demand that he retract his reckless call for military action in Iran and call for more diplomacy, not war! Call [phone] and ask to speak to the chief of staff or legislative aide Vance Serchuck, or click here to send Senator Lieberman an email along with this picture of our action outside his office.
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/codepink/postcard.jsp?postcard_KEY=224
We are holding photos taken from Leslie's recent trip to Iran. Tell Lieberman not to attack these beautiful people, this beautiful place. (See more action photos here.)

Stopping the next war now,
Dana, Desiree, Ena, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Jodie, Karin, Leslie, Libby, Medea, Nancy, Patricia, Rae and Samantha

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Good for them!!

These ladies are sheroes!!!

[ncrainbowgrrl]

2. kick and recommended...

:kick:

[bigscott]

3. WTF?

"I feel we touched their hearts"

You think he really HAS a heart when it comes to Iranian babies?? Please - his office was humoring you - I bet that son of a bitch never even knew you showed up

[Richard Steele]

4. I believe I correctly predicted they would call the police rather than honor the appointment.

Gee, I must be psychic! :sarcasm:

Pleasantly surprised that they actually changed their minds
and met with two of them, though. I guess his office staff
aren't all as heartless and shitheaded as he is.

[BurtWorm]

5. Joe is a chickenhawk.

Talks a big game but scared to meet Code Pink.

[Gregorian]

6. Presenting the photos was genius! This is what the whole country needs.

I'm shocked that anyone in the level of supposed awareness that a Senator's office should be, is not.... Argh. That sentence needs a stick of dynamite.






We need people to see the horrors. Americans for the most part are unaware of this mess.

And for those who do not have an imagination nor empathy (which is about 100%), we must present to them the reality of war.


We don't have a media, so this is what we have to do.

[Peace Patriot]

10. Hey, Gregorian, you don't think that some of those 70+% of Americans who oppose

the war and want it ended have imagination and empathy? We must never forget the ways that the progressive American majority has been disempowered and disenfranchised. Some are callous, yes. Many are not. Many feel the wrongness of it. Many have shown amazing resistance to relentless, 24/7 war propaganda. Somehow they get informed. Somehow they think things through. Another stat, which went by us briefly, last summer, and I lost the url for: 84% of the American people oppose any U.S. participation in a widened Mideast war. 84%! I think the American people are better characterized as angry and mystified that democracy is not working. Not lacking in imagination. Not lacking in empathy. But bewildered as to what to do--how to move this political establishment to obey the will of the people.

Another fascinating stat--or two stats: 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq War from the beginning, Feb. '03, before the invasion, even before all of the Bush Junta's lies were exposed. 56%! (That would be a landslide in a presidential election--and, believe me, it was.) Now grown to over 70%. But back then, at the same time that 56% opposed the invasion, about 50% believed that Saddam had WMDs and/or had something to do with 9/11. What this means is that some portion of that 56% were struggling, trying to figure things out for themselves with these bits of disinformation rattling around in their heads, and were able to think it through and to conclude that the threat was exaggerated and that war was not the solution.

Beware of accepting the war profiteering corporate news monopolies' delusionary portrait of the American people, concocted of very narrow political spectrum (rightwing) "commentators" and news shaping. I think you are right that the carnage in the Middle East has been deliberately sanitized and "blackholed"--and the "arguments" about the war made into a farcical exercise in "talking heads" and political doublespeak. So true! But I don't believe that THIS is a reflection of the American people and their views--what they know, what they feel, what they want. The American people are not the problem--they are a THREAT to the war profiteers. And we need to help re-empower and re-enfranchise them, not slander them unfairly.

These war profiteers would like you to believe that you are all alone in imagining the horror of war and feeling empathy--that the majority are against you, and are merely callous, stupid consumers. That is their greatest--and maybe their only--propaganda success. I urge you to resist it.

[Gregorian]

12. I expected 2004 to be a total landslide.

And I also expect more open discussion on political issues. I mean, talking in the grocery isles. But I think that last one is just a wish. The election told me a lot more than anything else. It should have been a total wipeout for Bush. A humiliating experience. Not even close to being close enough to steal.

But I still think you're right. There are a lot of people who are silently dissenting this criminal administration. And there are many who are disengaged, even if they don't agree with the administration.

I know you are correct about them wanting us to be divided and in the dark. The lies from the media have done us a world of harm. One of the biggest factors in sandbagging the truth.

And then there is also the degree to which people are in disagreement with the administration. I'm far to the left of most of the country.

I've been disappointed with this society in general for many years. So I know I'm not your typical American to begin with.

But back to the Lieberman thing. I believe the images from Vietnam are a big part of what stopped that war. I don't have anything more than a hunch on that though. I know that's how Naom Chomsky feels as well. The media is keeping us from what they know is a human trait. To show those photos is to hopefully wake up something in that office.

[liberalnurse]

7. Now this is exactly what Code Pink needs to do!

This gains respect once again for their activism. :woohoo:

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. This is exactly what they HAVE been doing

for several years now.

[liberalnurse]

13. No shit!

[Peace Patriot]

9. Thank you, Code Pink, for being there for all of us who can't be!

It is very heartening to read of such efforts to bring human values to Washington DC, the cold, barricaded Dark Tower of this greedy, murderous empire where our political leadership has now betrayed our greatest aspirations as a people to be a force for peace and justice in the world. Such actions of conscience can have ripple effects that touch many more people than is obvious, and can bring about revolutionary change, within people, and even in seemingly hopeless political situations.

I'm thinking of the Argentine women and their lonely public protests and witness, for so many years, for the thousands of 'disappeared' people who were tortured and disappeared during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. They stood on the streets of Buenos Aires holding the photos of the disappeared, day after day, year after year. They let no one forget the victims of greed and oppression. Slowly, with the efforts of many people on many aspects of Argentine social and political life--and particularly as a result of the catastrophic World Bank/IMF/U.S. destruction of the Argentinian economy in the '90s, the large scale peoples' uprising that that engendered and the election of a leftist (majorityist) government (that of Nestor Kirchner), aligned with the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, the government and the society as a whole have been engaged in investigations and trials regarding those atrocities and in "never forgetting" the horrors of rightwing rule. The courage and persistence of those women provided a model of peaceful resistance. One CAN resist, one CAN have an effect, even in dire circumstances. Peaceful witness to injustice moves people in deep ways that we may never fully understand.

This is not to be naive about war profiteer puppets like Lieberman. His 'disappearing act,' being a no-show for the meeting with Code Pink, indicates that he is running away from his own humanity. How can he advocate attacking another country, in which thousands of innocents will die, and NOT meet with people who have information and views on that action that SHOULD BE heard, in this purported democracy? He is running. He is hiding, because he is dishonest. But maybe, in the way of things--how fate seems to design things--it is his aides who needed to be touched by this human witness.

I applaud Code Pink for their efforts. Such activism is never easy. And we should take care not to regard it as "just another soundbite" in our corporate media drenched environment. It is far more important than the war profiteers will ever acknowledge. It is one of the seeds of the rebirth of democracy here.

[bigtree]

11. do they pressure republicans?

does ANYONE have any interest anymore in pressuring republicans?

Last time I checked, we have more than enough Democrats on board for an exit from Iraq. It's republicans who've yet to provide the veto-busting number of their own to advance legislation containing an exit date.

Fuck Lieberman. He's the least of the opposition. It's not like his vote alone would do ANYTHING to bring the troops home. The ones who need the pressure and attention are the republican enablers. I hope these groups can find the time to do that, and I hope their efforts are highlighted here as well.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. No, never

:sarcasm:

[Moochy]

15. Who is saying that Lieberman is a democrat?

I had to peek, and see who you replied to. just some hack on ignore... nevermind.

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. Just one of the many who don't think the ladies in pink

ever go about their lobbying in the right way. I am so damned grateful they are there doing what they do that I don't dare question their tactics.

[Moochy]

16. K&R

:kick: Lieberman needs a conscience transplant.

[Breeze54]

18. Thank You, Code Pink, for meeting with his office anyway!!!

:yourock:

It takes a lot of courage and perseverence to stick to your guns!!

Thank You Code Pink, for all you do and have done!!!!!!!!!!! :hug:

[Nikki Stone1]

19. LIEberman AWOL? Big surprise.

:eyes: