Well, I Had A Long Involved Post In Mind About Why I Really, Really Don’t Like Code Pink And United For Peace And Justice
June 30th, 2008
But Try-Works commenter Puck beat me to the punch.
TARD is basically made up of the large, liberal national protest bureaucracies like UFPJ, CodePink, etc. They are the big corporations of the protest movement. And, naturally, they are organizations that quash independent, grassroots, local, spontaneous, radical activism. They quash anything that doesn’t follow their script. Along with this, they make everything they touch bland, safe, boring, rehearsed. TARD is a last minute attempt to co-opt the work that R68 has been working on for over a year. These liberal, national groups show up in town and find a few faces willing to sell out the local community for a few bucks. They also exploit existing splits in the local scene in order to move in. One really has to wonder about the intelligence of those who are are selling out the Denver activist scene to get paid positions. They sell out for next to nothing — it isn’t like UFPJ or CodePink are going to have any use for these Denver sellouts after August. After August, these national groups will cut them loose. In the end, the sellouts are just fucking themselves over by wrecking the Denver activist community. I don’t see how these sellouts can show their faces in public.
My advise to the sellouts: You’ve really fucked up for nothing. You ought to cut your losses. You should come hat in fucking hand back and talk to the right people while they are still willing to listen.
June 30th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
You know what Recreate68 needs? A bagcheck. How far away is that tent area from downtown? 1.5miles or 30 min is doable. Buses are great, but not for their 50,000. But even among people with real places to stay, they tend to have 10-15lb backpacks with a jacket, and soon everyone hunts for places to stash them. Cars fulfill that function for most people, but only a few will have them nearby. It should be some building, maybe where they do the food, but within a mile where people can drop something off. Denver is sort of low rent, but it would probably be a building someone owns or works at. At a previous convention, it took just a couple heroin users or local thieves to start darting in and soon 20+ people had bags stolen, and that really brings the mood down like food poisoning at a tent.
July 1st, 2008 at 7:42 am
Tell ‘em: www.recreate68.com
July 1st, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Ben, after seeing your blog entry on Medea Benjamin I did some online research to try to ascertain what it is that pisses you off about her, as well as to find out who the heck she is as I had no idea.
I quickly figured out that the reason was probably for the very things that Bakers Without Borders mentioned in their list of complaints, but when I read in the Wikipedia entry on her of her falling out with Marla Ruzicka, and an actual quote of hers in this regards, it was enough for me to know that Medea Benjamin deserved the pie.
For those not familiar with Marla Ruzicka, she was a tireless champion for children who were brutalized via American military action, most notably in Afghanistan and Iraq. Shortly prior to her death by a roadside bomb, Marla had gained access to classified documents that proved that the U.S. military does indeed keep track of civilian casualties, aka collateral damage, and was planning to share her thoughts for future articles with her numerous journalist acquaintances that evening at a party which she had organized.
The Boston Globe did a series on an Iraqi boy that Marla helped to bring to the U.S. for medical treatment after he was paralyzed when his family car came under attack by the U.S. military at a check point.
You can read about Rakan here:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/02/26/26rakanart/
An update on this saga is that Rakan is dead. His house was bombed by insurgents a few days ago, killing him and leaving three of the other kids in the house in serious condition.
Marla put her life on the line for these kids and was willing to do whatever it took to see to it that they received compensation and medical care for their injuries and losses that they sustained as a result of U.S. military action. She hounded U.S. officials until Rakan was issued a visa to come to the U.S. for the medical care that he needed.
So what did Medea Benjamin want Marla to do instead of this very important on the ground work? Medea wanted Marla to return to San Francisco and bring her energy to the movement, i.e., stop doing the effective work that she was doing on the ground. Marla would have none of that, which ticked off Medea who wanted to reign her in and put her back under her own control.
Marla leaves a legacy of actually making a difference in the lives of these kids. Was it enough? Not even close! But Marla did what she could to help make things right.
The only complaint that I have about the pieing is that the pie ought to have been made out of ice cream. Medea Benjamin is fond of giving away ice cream to homeless people and Arab children, and gushing about it in a self-congratulatory fashion as if it has an actual impact on the dire circumstances that they endure, so it would serve her right to have her own actions shoved in her face, literally.