codepink-for-peace

[codepink-for-peace]

Jodie Evans: Why I was arrested

On Monday, June 19th I flew to Washington, DC to join the CODEPINK team of Medea, Ally and Olivia and 100 other women who were risking arrest. This was part of the Moral Mondays of The Poor Peoples Campaign; A Call for a Moral Revival.  This one fell on the on the anniversary of the 1948 Seneca Falls Women’s Convention.   

So we came together as women on the shoulders of those women 173 years ago who called for equal rights and voting rights for all. Just last week Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, chair of Congressional Black Caucus, and other activists were arrested at the Senate Hart building calling on the need for voting rights.  But we and most US citizens are not allowed in Congress these days.  So we created a circle blocking all the streets between the Hart Building and Congress singing and chanting together as we were picked off one by one and arrested.  We were calling on Congress to Pass the Peoples Act, to move the funds from war and weapons to the needs of the people and to call for the right to vote for all.  Kicking off a Season of Nonviolent Moral Direct Action that is moving to our cities and Senators offices this coming Monday.  Find a Poor Peoples Campaign near you to join in on Mondays.

We stand at this moment in history where we must be throwing ourselves at the machine, the violence of those with against those without is like a runaway train.  I was at Line 3 a few weeks ago, where the Rainforest Action and Giniw Collective team put their bodies on the line to stop the violence to the indigenous communities and their wild rice economy, the pipeline will destroy lakes and rivers and water which is essential to life.  Water Is Life.

The Poor Peoples Campaign has been working for years to raise the needs of the people, 140 million Americans living at the edge of poverty while the budget for war continues to escalate.  It is unbelievable that Congress is passing laws while we are locked out of our right to protest.  It is madness!  More money for war is madness.  It is why I leapt at the chance to join so many women to say NO!  To call for a commitment to the people!  The photo of me from the protest was in the Boston Globe, the pink captures the attention of people, it is the color of love and we are all pink inside.

I encourage you to get out in your communities, to travel to Line 3, to disrupt your member of Congress or the Senate this August while they are home.  

They are not hearing enough from us!  Inequality and wars must end!!!  But it will take us in the streets to push the machine backward.  

Peace and love,  

Jodie

[codepink-for-peace]

U.S. Joins Past Empires In Afghan Graveyard

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas JS Davies

An Afghan taxi-driver in Vancouver told one of us a decade ago that this day would come. “We defeated the Persian Empire in the eighteenth century, the British in the nineteenth, the Soviets in the twentieth. Now, with NATO, we’re fighting twenty-eight countries, but we’ll defeat them, too,” said the taxi-driver, surely not a member of the Taliban, but quietly proud of his country’s empire-killing credentials. 

Now, after nearly twenty years of a war that has been as bloody and futile as all those previous invasions and occupations, the last 3,500 U.S. troops and their NATO brothers-in-arms will be coming home from Afghanistan.

President Joe Biden tried to spin this as the United States leaving because it has achieved its objectives, bringing the terrorists responsible for 9/11 to justice and ensuring that Afghanistan would not be used as a base for a future attack on the United States. “We achieved those objectives,” Biden said. “Bin Laden is dead and Al Qaeda is degraded. It’s time to end the forever war.”

What Biden did not admit is that the United States and its allies, with all their money and firepower, were unable to vanquish the Taliban, who currently control about half of Afghanistan and are positioned to control even more in the coming months without a ceasefire. Nor did Biden admit that, in two decades, the United States and its allies have been unable to build up a stable, democratic, popular government or a competent military in the country.

Like the U.S.S.R., the U.S. is leaving in defeat, having squandered the lives of countless Afghans, 2,488 U.S. troops and personnel, and trillions of dollars.

A U.S. withdrawal—especially one not based on conditions on the ground—is, nevertheless, a bold move for Biden. He is going against the advice of the U.S. intelligence community and top Pentagon officials, including the head of the U.S.-Afghan Forces and the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Biden is also coming under attack from Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Senator Mitch McConnell artfully slammed Biden’s decision, accusing him of helping U.S. enemies “ring in the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by gift-wrapping the country and handing it right back to them.” Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the withdrawal “undermines our commitment to the Afghan people, particularly Afghan women.”

But while Biden is being pilloried by some for pulling out too soon, the truth is that he is violating a May 1 deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal that was painstakingly negotiated under the Trump Administration.

Ironically, Biden acknowledged in his speech on Wednesday that the withdrawal agreement the United States signed with the Taliban in February 2020 was a solemn commitment, but then he said U.S. forces would begin their withdrawal on May 1 and complete it by September 11, which is not what was agreed to.

After it was clear that the United States was going to break the May 1 withdrawal agreement, Mohammad Naeem, the Taliban spokesperson in Qatar, issued a statement that the Taliban would now not take part in the ten days of U.N.-led peace talks scheduled to begin in Istanbul on April 24, nor would it take part in any further peace negotiations until the last foreign soldiers leave Afghanistan.

This is a reversion to the Taliban’s long-standing position that it would not negotiate with a government backed by foreign occupation forces. 

U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad spent years of his life negotiating with the Taliban to arrive at the 2020 withdrawal agreement. Secretary Blinken took a potentially historic step back from U.S. unilateralism when he invited the United Nations to lead a new Afghan peace process. And Russian Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov set the stage for a ceasefire and a peaceful transition of power by bringing the two Afghan warring parties together in Moscow in March, where they agreed to keep talking.

By reneging on the May 1 deadline, President Biden has squandered much of the hard-won goodwill and trust that was painstakingly built up through these diplomatic efforts. It was not impossible to meet the May 1 deadline. The Trump Administration was steadily withdrawing troops, Biden’s transition began in November, and he’s been President since late January. 

It is also unclear whether the United States will continue the war by providing airpower for the Afghan military and carrying out covert operations. Throughout these two decades, the United States has dropped more than 80,000 bombs on Afghanistan and waged a secret war with special forces, CIA operatives, mercenaries, and paramilitary units. Ending U.S. airstrikes and covert operations is as vital to peace as withdrawing U.S. troops.  

It’s true that a U.S. withdrawal may lead to setbacks in the gains made by Afghan women and girls. But those gains have been mainly in the capital city of Kabul. Two thirds of girls in Afghanistan still receive no primary education, and Afghan women will never achieve significant advances while their country remains at war. 

The United States and NATO military presence has made an end to violence impossible for twenty years, as the Taliban have long made clear that they will keep fighting as long as their country is under foreign occupation. And as long as the U.S. continues to prop up a weak, corrupt government in Kabul, instability and political fragmentation is inevitable.

Ending the fighting and investing a small fraction of U.S. war spending in education and health care would do far more to improve the lives of Afghan women and girls. 

The United Nations, even with the full support and cooperation of the United States, will have its work cut out to convince the Taliban to rejoin talks. If the U.N. fails to negotiate a lasting ceasefire before the occupation forces withdraw, the U.S. and its NATO allies will be leaving a country still at war with the Taliban, the Afghan government, and various warlords vying for power. 

We must hope that, in the coming months, the U.N. will find a way to bring the warring parties in Afghanistan together and craft a ceasefire and a workable peace process based on power sharing. After so many decades of war and intense suffering, much of it perpetrated by the United States and its allies, the Afghan people desperately need—and deserve—an end to this war.

[codepink-for-peace]

And the United States’ white supremacist foreign policy only fuels Sinophobic attacks. Sign our petition: https://www.codepink.org/blinken #china #antiasianviolence #antiasianhate #antiasianracism #racism #antiracism #whitesupremacy

The events that unfolded over the past 24 hours in Atlanta were not isolated incidents. Hate crimes against Asian Americans have increased nearly 150% in the US in the last year. 

Last June, in the wake up of yet another uprising in hate crimes committed by white supremacists, we released the following statement:

White supremacists, Nazis, and other purveyors of hate can fully fuck off. They are not welcome here.

These words are as true today as they were then. We stand with the Asian American community. If you see hate speech on Tumblr, please report it. That shit is not tolerated here. 

To help the survivors and families of yesterday’s hate crimes, please consider donating to a nonprofit like the Atlanta branch of Asian Americans Advancing Justice if you can. If you can’t, consider spreading the word. We’ll list more resources and reblogs over on @action as we find them.

As always, please make sure you are taking care of yourself as well. If you’re struggling for any reason, please reach out to any of the free and confidential counseling services listed here.

[codepink-for-peace]

The United States’ aggressive foreign policy only fuels Anti-Asian violence here and abroad. Sign this petition to have more peaceful foreign policy! #peace #humanrights #activism #china #politics #racism #antiasianracism #humanitarian

[codepink-for-peace]

[codepink-for-peace]

This isn’t what I usually write about, but I think it’s important.

[codepink-for-peace]

When a marginalized group is asked for peaceful protesting, what is really being asked is for them to “protest” in a way that those with privilege can actively and happily ignore.

[codepink-for-peace]

[codepink-for-peace]

“Soplo divino” 🌬 Artista: @francescopinzon #arteurbano #neomexicanismos

[codepink-for-peace]

I just supported Strength in Synergy! on @ThunderclapIt // @codepink

[codepink-for-peace]

Our own Ariel Gold confronts New York Governor Andrew Cuomo at the New York State Fair over his unconstitutional executive order creating a blacklist of BDS supporters fighting for justice for Palestinians!

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT7hJ-0Xwuc)

[codepink-for-peace]

Trump's hate leads to violence & war! #RNC2016 should denounce racism & demand a #President4Peace! #RNCinCLE http://thndr.me/vrVNKU

[codepink-for-peace]

Our amazing #RNC2016 disrupters, Chelsea Byers and Alli McCracken!

[codepink-for-peace]

Medea Benjamin talks to Amy Goodman abt 28 pages connecting Saudi Arabia to 9/11 & what CODEPINK is up to at the RNC!

[codepink-for-peace]

CODEPINK was outside three different RE/MAX locations in Venice, California, yesterday, demanding they stop profiting from open houses on stolen land in Israeli settlements! http://www.remodelremax.org

[codepink-for-peace]

Action at the Saudi Arabian Embassy – Los Angeles, protesting human rights abuses! Join us to #FreeThe3! http://www.codepink.org/saudi_arabia_youth_dp_action

[codepink-for-peace]

Outside the Saudi Arabian Embassy - Los Angeles. Help us #FreeThe3! http://www.codepink.org/saudi_arabia_youth_dp_action