Title: FW: [globalnews] Starhawk Issues Code Pink Alert: Unreasonable women's call to action
Starhawk
Code Pink: Women’s Pre-Emptive Strike for Peace
Call to Action
We call on women around the world to rise up and oppose the war in Iraq. We
call on mothers, grandmothers, sisters and daughters, on workers, students,
teachers, healers, artists, writers, singers, poets, and every ordinary
outraged woman willing to be outrageous for peace.
Women have been the guardians of life—not because we are better or purer or
more innately nurturing than men, but because the men have busied themselves
making war. Because of our responsibility to the next generation, because
of our own love for our families and communities and this country that we
are a part of, we understand the love of a mother in Iraq for her children,
and the driving desire of that child for life.
Our leaders tell us we that we can easily afford hundreds of billions of
dollars for this war. But in the United States of America, many of our
elders who have worked hard all their lives now must choose whether to buy
their prescription drugs, or food. Our children’s education is eroded. The
air they breathe and the water they drink are polluted. Vast numbers of
women and children live in poverty.
If we cannot afford health care, quality education and quality of life, how
can we afford to squander our resources in attacking a country that is no
proven immediate threat to us? We face real threats every day: the illness
or ordinary accident that could plunge us into poverty, the violence on our
own streets, the corporate corruption that can result in the loss of our
jobs, our pensions, our security.
In Iraq today, a child with cancer cannot get pain relief or medication
because of sanctions. Childhood diarrhea has again become a major killer.
500,000 children have already died from inadequate health care, water and
food supplies due to sanctions. How many more will die if bombs fall on
Baghdad, or a ground war begins?
We cannot morally consent to war while paths of peace and negotiation have
not been pursued to their fullest. We who cherish children will not consent
to their murder. Nor do we consent to the murder of their mothers,
grandmothers, fathers, grandfathers, or to the deaths of our own sons and
daughters in a war for oil.
We love our country, but we will never wrap ourselves in red, white and
blue. Instead, we announce a Code Pink alert: signifying extreme danger to
all the values of nurturing, caring, and compassion that women and loving
men have held. We choose pink, the color of roses, the beauty that like
bread is food for life; the color of the dawn of a new era when cooperation
and negotiation prevail over force.
We call on all outraged women to join us in taking a stand, now. And we
call upon our brothers to join with us and support us. These actions will
be initiated by women, but not limited to women. Stand in the streets and
marketplaces of your towns with banners and signs of dissent, and talk to
your neighbors. Stand before your elected representatives: and if they will
not listen, sit in their offices, refusing to leave until they do.
Withdraw consent from the warmongers. Engage in outrageous acts of dissent.
We encourage all actions, from public education and free speech to
nonviolent civil disobedience that can disrupt the progress toward war.
http://www.codepink4peace.org
A Code Pink Diary
By Starhawk
Tuesday, October 1, 2002
I am mostly thinking about how to perhaps take in a museum and go to the
airport when I drive over to meet with Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange, to
talk about organizing around the war in Iraq. I’m in Washington DC, staying
on for a day or two after the actions around the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund. The war vote is coming up in Congress in the
coming week. Medea is hanging out with Diane Wilson, who has been
organizing in her home state of Texas against major toxic polluters, Mary
Bull, who spearheads Save the Redwoods/Boycott the Gap, Margo Bielecki who
is a climber and activist from California. We’re joined later by Jodi Evans
and Carolyn Casey, astrologer, writer and host of the Visionary Activist
radio show.
I was thinking in terms of a leisurely breakfast conversation about long
term organizing. I was definitely not thinking about doing an action—I’d
spent Friday morning on the streets with the Pagan cluster marching as part
of the Anti-Capitalist Convergence actions to shut down DC. By nine AM, we
were in jail—where we’d remained for thirty-six hours, missing the events of
Saturday. On Sunday, we’d marched for peace. On Monday, we’d done press
conferences and media work. I was ready to go home.
But by the end of the afternoon, I’d postponed my flight, helped to dream up
a series of actions for the next day, written a call to action, scouted at
least one of our action sites, helped to make signs and banners, and
recruited the remaining Pagan cluster men as our support team.
Wednesday, October 2
We wake up too early, once again. Dear Goddess, why can’t we do midday
actions? But we troop downtown in organized fashion to the White House
gates, where Senate leaders are supposed to pass through to meet with the
President. We are wearing pink T-shirts or pink sashes that say ‘NO WAR!"
We unfurl anti-war banners against the fence. Diane Wilson, an amazingly
brave and athletic woman older than me, leaps lightly up onto one of the
gate posts and unfurls a banner. She gets arrested, but also gets on major
news media.
After checking what is going to happen with her, we move out, regroup, have
coffee. We go on to the Capitol steps. This is the site we have not
scouted—to our deep regret, because just where we’ve called a press
conference, the entire side is under construction and blocked. However, we
gather our supporters on the House side, and some media does indeed turn up.
We march up to the steps, unfurl a banner. Several members of our team
strip down to dove-covered bras and underwear, and we begin our radical
cheer:
"We’re putting our bodies on the line,
You Congresspeople better get some spine,
We say Stand Back,
Don’t attack,
Innocent children in Iraq!
We say Stand Back,
Don’t attack,
Innocent children in Iraq!
We say No!
To war!
We say No!
To War!
We say No!
To War!
Peace is what we’re calling for!
And a little call and response at the end:
We don’t want to bomb Iraq,
We want to take our country back!
We don’t want your oil war,
Peace is what we’re calling for!
Osama Bin Laden we hear you say,
‘Bomb Iraq and make my day!’
We hand out flyers to Congresspeople coming through, and astound and
possibly horrify an entire civics class from a high school in North
Carolina. Again, we get media. No one gets arrested.
4 PM.
I have to leave, to catch my already postponed flight. But Medea and the
others get into the hearing that will mark up the bill in the House to open
debate on the war. At an opportune moment, they strip off their blouses,
reveal their T-shirts, and start chanting our No War in Iraq chants,
disrupting the hearing. Medea does get arrested—possibly because this is
the second hearing she’s disrupted in two weeks, but the others are simply
escorted out.
Conclusion:
The war vote has happened, but the war has not yet begun. The half dozen of
us involved in planning the actions and putting out this call are, indeed,
wild, unreasonable, awesome and outrageous women. But we are not alone! We
know that there are thousands, hundreds of thousands like us out there, in
cities and small towns and farms all across the US.
Imagine if we all rose up, if we all committed a few outrageous acts of
rebellion against this forced march to war. If we kept our opposition
visible, creative, nonviolent but still right in the face of power.
Imagine a blast of pink in your town council meeting, a pink attack on your
local oil company or gas station, a pink witness in the downtown shopping
mall. Last week, a group of youth erupted from the audience of a live show
on MTV with an antiwar message. Think of all those women’s talk shows….pink
T-shirts under that long sleeved blouse, anyone?
This is a Code Pink Alert: meaning an immanent threat to peace, and to the
values of compassion, nurturing and tolerance that caring women (and men!)
hold dear.
Code Pink—it’s a movement you can start yourself. All it takes is a scrap
of pink cloth, a little paint, and an outrageous refusal to be silenced.
http://www.codepink4peace.org
(What--you don't know how to plan an action? See the website for advice.)
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