Transcripts For CSPAN Q A 20131226 : vimarsana.com

CSPAN Q A December 26, 2013

I do not think a lot of people know the hearings are public. The first is, how do get into them . Most of the time it is a question of standing in line. I did a of standing in line. I was really exciting that there were such a thing as cspan that lets as here these hearings. What is exciting is going to these hearings. Many come to washington and get into one of those hearings. It gives you tremendous insight into how our Government Works and how it does not work. Lets go back to 2007. We will run a tape showing what your organization does and get you to tell us why and how. Here is 2007. [video clip] i think no one really knows what the duration of the presence would be. I suspect the contracts operate under the Coalition Provisional order 17 that says the noniraqi contractors are immune from legal processes if there accept pursuant to the terms and conditions of their contract. My upbringing tells me that Sexual Activity outside the bonds of marriage between a man and a woman is immoral. That is what i was taught. That is what i believe. The hearing is adjourned. [gavel] thou shall not kill. Thou shall not kill. Clear the room. We have had enough of this. Clear the room. Clear the room. Clear the room. [gavel] that is enough of this. I have tolerated all i can. I stopped it before you were ever born. Get out of this place. Lets go. What did you see . Were you there . Yes, i was there. It is a fact that we are really anguished over what our government has been doing. We go to the region and we go to iraq and afghanistan and iran. We go to egypt, gaza, and we see things for ourselves. We come back and see our government is in a different reality. The American People thought Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attacks at the world trade center. We went there and we saw people who said there were no weapons of mass destruction. There is no reason to go to war. We try to get into the halls of our government and into their offices. We are trying to tell them we should not go to war against a country that has not attacked us. We tried to go to other venues. Some of those venues are congressional hearings. It is one of the few places where we can see our elected officials and get our message across. We get arrested all the time at these hearings. It is not fun. We do not take that lightly. I got arrested in a hearing of a Judiciary Committee for going like this for holding up a peace sign. We do not do this because we like to. Do this because we fill obligated as u. S. Citizens. How many were in the room . About 25 people. Who are they . Your friends . Many of them are people who have gone on these trips with us to these places and come back with this sense of obligation. Others are people we have gone out and talk to over the years and empowered them to make their voices heard. Many of them come from places around the country where they go into their congressional offices regularly and try to have meetings and do sittings in the offices. They sometimes get arrested in the congressional offices. They are people who feel as passionate as i do that the government has been doing a lot of bad things that have led to the deaths of many innocent people. We mourn the lives of everyone who was killed on 9 11. We mourn the lives of innocent people in other countries who have been killed as a result of our actions post9 11. How much in advance do you plan these . Sometimes we plan than the evening before. Often times we do not know what are the hearings that are coming up. Sometimes you get advanced notice and we will have a couple of days to plan. They are pretty spontaneous. Lets look at a hearing on september 18, 2002. This is the secretary of defense. [video clip] inspection, not war inspection, not war inspection, not war thank you, ladies. Mr. Secretary, we will put them down as undecided. [laughter] [applause] mr. Chairman, as i listened to those comments, it struck me what a wonderful thing free speech is. Of course, it is not the United States are the nations, but iraq that threw the inspectors out. They threw them out and rejected 16 resolutions of the United Nations and its stipulations, but of course people like that are not able to go into iraq and make demonstrations like that because they do not have free speech. Im really glad you found that clip. That was the first hearing i ever went to post it was in San Francisco with my colleague who flew in from texas. It was two of us at the time. That was a hearing where he was making the justification for attacking iraq. We had just got back from iraq. The inspectors were not kicked out. They were there. They said there were no weapons of destruction. We were fair years to come back and hear the lies that were being given. What we did not hear the clip which were questions, how much money would they make from this work . How many u. S. Soldiers would be killed in this war . I would like those questions answered now. Everyone laughed in the room. It was like we were fools, we were freaks. We were right. Many people suffered. My heart breaks for the families for the american soldiers that were killed in that war. My heart breaks for the iraqi people. It is a country with a lot of educated people despite sanctions. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a dictator, but they had free education. Iraq is a former shadow of itself now. I feel the American People need to know what state iraq is in and what we did to that country. What auspices were you under when you went to iraq . How did you get in . We were a group of women. We put out a call to people around the country saying, who would like to go . We did not know if we would get in or if the u. S. Would bomb at the time. It was a scary time to go. We got a group of about 11 or 12 of us. We flew into jordan. We do not know if we would get into iraq. We drove across the desert. Im jewish. We got to the border and a border guard took my passport and said, benjamin, is that jewish . I started shaking like a leaf. I thought, uhoh. Im in trouble. The tensions between iraq and israel were very high. A half hour i was waiting and waiting and he came back huffing and puffing and said, i brought my notebook. I have been studying hebrew. I was wondering if you could correct my grammar. That was the border guard. I asked, why are you standing here . When we were at war with iran, i studied farsi. Now that we are at war with israel, im studying hebrew. We should learn to communicate with enemies. At was the first iraqi i met. We got into baghdad and we met a woman. She said, i love black women poets. Who is your favorite . She started telling me hers. It is an educated country with wonderful people. How many on that first trip . 12. Who paid . Everyone paid for themself. We had people from the jewish community. Everyone pays their own expenses on the entire trip. Where did you get the name codepink and why . We were on a retreat and we took a break. We were joking about yellow lines and red. We do not know what we were supposed to do if the alert change from one to another. Without we need another code alert. That is how we came up with it. These hearing rooms, they see with pink. What did they say to you when you come into the room . The guards see us and they speak into their walkietalkies, codepink is here. It is kind of silly, but they know us and that we are committed to peace. The thing we do is maybe hold up a little sign. They try sometimes to stop us from getting into hearings. Just recently i was in the judiciaries and they try to stop the line. I said, you cant do this. This is a public hearing. When they let me in, they tried to put me in the back room. I said, you cannot do this. This is the United States of america. We had to fight to get our way into the room and often times we get pulled out by doing something as simple as holding up a sign that says, stop funding war, or Something Like that. Here is 2004. May 7. Secretary of defense again. [video clip] within the constraints imposed upon us, i have a few additional orders. Fire, rumsfeld fire, rumsfeld fire, rumsfeld [gavel] the committee will resume its hearing, mr. Secretary. First, beyond the abuse of what do you think the impact of that is . I think the impact is that it shows people who are watching c span either in the u. S. Or around the world that there are americans who are very passionate about these issues and do not like the government invading other countries that we should not in. At that point we were really trying to get out and the u. S. Was torturing prisoners. This was before the scandal broke. We had been to iraq. We had talked to people who had been tortured. We had talked to women who are crying and telling us what happened to their sons. We came back to the United States trying to meet with our Congress People and people in the white house and in the pentagon and saying, how could we be doing this . The doors slam on us all the time. This is the one time we get our voices out there. Some people see us and say, those stupid women and all bc there are men with us. They pretty see it. People overseas are watching c span and are seeing that people are willing to speak out and risk arrest doing it. When did you get this political feeling in july . Growing up during the days of the vietnam war. I was a high school student. My sister is two years older than me. Her boyfriend was drafted and went off to war. He was a lovely young man before he was taken off to vietnam. A couple of months after, he sent her back a present. It was an ear of a viet cong and it was a souvenir for her to put around her neck oh stop i was horrified that this nice young men had turned into what i considered at that time a monster. To think that Something Like the human ear is something that you would wear around your neck. That change me for life. It really made me feel like we have to do everything we can to stop killing each other. We have to avoid wars that are avoidable like the war in vietnam. We have to speak out on behalf of looking for other ways, non violent ways, to resolve conflict. What did your parents do . They were your typical, suburban family. Mostly republican. They said, hey, that is the way things are. What kind of business were they in . My father was in real estate. And mom . A stayathome mom. Can you remember the first time that you protested . Before i protested, i do remember that one of the things we would do as a family every year was when it was hanukkah time and christmas time is to look at the needy families and i remember going with my dad to the store to buy presents for people. You do not give away old stuff. You buy the stuff that you really want and give it to other people. In terms of protest, i formed a peace group in my school. We learned protest songs and we sang them. We organized protests at the high school. Have a diverse time you organized in a professional way. What was the first that you joined or lead . I decided i wanted to dedicate my life to people who were poor. I thought if i went to school and studied nutrition, i could do that kind of positive work. I did that and i got a degree in Public Health nutrition. I went to africa and worked in some of the poorest villages with people who are really struggling to feed their families. The Company Nestle was selling powdered milk to women who did not have enough money to buy the milk. Children were literally dying in my arms because of the false advertising of a company like nestle. I got involved in the International Campaign and it became the First Campaign that successfully got International Code of conduct against companies that were producing baby formula to stop them from doing such things as false advertising in poor places like africa. Nestle . The swiss company. It was was your first protest against a nonamerican company. They would send people into the build is just as doctors and nurses when they were not. It was a code of conduct of stuff they were not allowed to do that anymore. That affected a number of corporations. We have watched you for a number of years on cspan when we see the hearings. How much of the analyzed where we are in the room . The science and some of them are so precise that you seem to know exactly where the cameras will be. We did for a while try to position ourselves where we thought the cameras were. We figured it out. We had people who stay at home and watch cspan and say, move a little to the left or move a little to the right. What happens now is that the c span camera seems to be just a on a close shot on the one person testifying and we do not get those opportunities very much anymore. You think we are manipulating the cameras . We feel that the cameras used to give more of a view of what was happening in a room. We thought that was important. We thought that was part of what a public hearing was. If they have a little button that says, war, it would be nice to do a little span of the room. I do not see cspan doing that anymore. If you could speak with one of the directors in the room, what would you say . I would focus on go is not only testifying, but who is in the room . Who cares about this issue . Why might they be there . You have seen clips where we have gotten really rowdy. Most of the time we are sitting there quietly. We might have a little sign. They might say that you can only hold the site as shoulder length see you are not blocking the view of anyone else. I think it is nice or cspan to look around the room and see who else is there. How do you know when you vocally protest in the room . A lot of the times we want to hear what is happening in the room. If there are good questions and good answers, we might sit there quietly. If they do not ask good questions or the answers are terrible, we might be compelled to get up out of our seats. I go to hearings quite often. Most of the time we are sitting there learning in those hearings. Valerie was testifying. This was in 07. [video clip] i said the United States loyally as a covert operational officer for the Central Intelligence agency. I work on behalf a National Security of our country and on behalf of the people of the United States until my name entry affiliation were exposed in the National Media july 14, 2003, after a leak by administration officials. How then can the president make the most important decision of all about the security of our country . I do feel passionately about that. You have to get the politics out of the policy process. I appreciate that. Someone who is in the military was very upset about the invasion of iraq and came to spend some time in washington. She was very upset about george bush taking us into a war that she considered lies. She wanted to get her message across. The tshirt said . Impeach bush. She wrote on her shirt. When did you learn you could not have any signs . Somewhere online. How much do people on capitol hill, either the police or the staff of the committee or members, talk to you ever . We have meetings all the time with people on the hill. Even today when i leave here, i will be going to meetings on the hill. We have been doing that regularly. We believe in and inside and outside policy. You do as much as you can inside talking to people and trying to get good pieces of legislation and senators and congressmen to sign onto good legislation. I think the system is quite broken. You also have to work outside the system. Mobilize hundreds of thousands of people in the street. Thousands and thousands of phone calls and the petitions. The same thing is happening under president obama as well when we feel we have to do other kinds of outside action. You ran for office once . I did. I ran against senator feinstein on the green party ticket. Why . I felt like she had become part of the machine. I felt it was an opportunity to get my voice out in a different venue. We will show a clip of senator feinstein. This is a fairly recent one. Were you in the room for this . I dont know. Are you usually the room for these demonstrations . Usually. Do you meet as a group before you come to the hearing . Sometimes we meet in line. It depends. What determines whether you will stay all night . How often will they allow you to do that . There are some things illegal that happens at all hearings. People pay for other people to stand in line for them. That is wrong. If you want to get into the hearing, you get there yourself. Lobbyists. Right. They pay other people to get there the night before and take up all the space. They do not allow us citizens to get into. Sometimes we have to go there to be the line standers. We have to get there before they do. On a normal day, how early do you get there . 7 a. M. When the building opens. This is the john brennan hearing for cia director. [video clip] im very pleased to be joined by my wife and in yemen, pakistan, somalia please remove that woman. Please, if you could please expedite the removal. Pakistan and yemen do your job. World peace depends on it. Please proceed. Im going to ask that the room be cleared and that codepink not be permitted to come back in. You have done this five times and five times are enough. You had your hand with the sign. Yes. I would like to explain the two women there. They had just returned. We had a group of 34 people who had gone to pakistan. We went to the tribal areas with the u. S. Drones are killing so many people. One woman came from San Francisco to washington, d. C. Right after being in pakistan. She wanted to have the chance to say that brennan is the mastermind of this program that is so inhumane. It is killing many innocent people and causing the u. S. To be seen as the enemy for millions of pakistanis. The second woman who got up and spoke was from indianapolis. She had also just got back. She was holding a list of names of children who had been killed with the drone strikes. We feel that we are the voice of conscience of the United States. We wanted to tell the people of pakistan that we do not agree with the Drone Program where our government plays the judge, jury, and executor. We are not even acknowledging what are doing that. The women that you saw and the others that went with us to pakistan, i think they should be getting a medal for having spoken out against suc

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