Liza
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 15:52:47 -0500
> To: lbo-talk <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> Subject: mighty in pink
>
> <http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030303&s=featherstone>
>
> The Nation - March 3, 2003
>
> Mighty in Pink
> by LIZA FEATHERSTONE
>
> "It's not easy to be warm and fashionable at the same time," smiled
> Nina Human of Atlanta, who, ensconced in a billowing pink scarf, was
> succeeding admirably. It was a sunless late afternoon in January, and
> Human was at the Women's Peace Vigil in front of the White House,
> protesting the Bush Administration's impending war on Iraq. Human has
> never protested anything before, but she has spent many sleepless
> nights worrying about this war. She learned about the vigil,
> organized by the Code Pink Women's Pre-emptive Strike for Peace, on
> the web. "I told my husband and my boss: 'I'm going,'" she said.
>
> The name Code Pink is, of course, a clever spoof on the Bush
> Administration's color-coded terrorism alerts. The idea grew out of
> the observation of organizers--including Starhawk, Global Exchange's
> Medea Benjamin and Diane Wilson of Unreasonable Women--that women
> were leading much of the current antiwar organizing and that more
> women than men opposed the war on Iraq.
>
> In October, women all over the country began wearing pink to
> protests, while Benjamin and her cohorts conceived the Women's Vigil,
> a constant, rolling presence in front of the White House. The vigil
> began November 17 and will conclude with a week of actions in the
> first week of March, ending on March 8, International Women's Day.
> Code Pink-inspired vigils are regularly held in Utah, Texas and
> elsewhere, and a group of women in Albany, New York, will keep a
> rolling fast and vigil until March 8. Code Pink is not an
> organization but a phenomenon: a sensibility reflecting feminist
> analysis and a campy playfulness, influenced in style and philosophy
> both by ACT UP and the antiglobalization movement.
>
> [...]
>
> No Code Pink participant that I interviewed discussed her womb or her
> period (for this I was grateful). But Nina Human, the protester from
> Atlanta, said she felt that "women need to get together because it's
> our sons and daughters they'll force to go over there." Besides, she
> added, "I think women are basically more peaceful people."
>
> This sort of sentiment doesn't sit well with Jenny Brown, a
> Gainesville, Florida, activist who is a member of Redstockings (yes,
> this radical feminist group, founded in the 1960s, is still around).
> "Since when are women naturally peaceful?" asks Brown. "Harriet
> Tubman carried a gun when she ran the underground railroad." Brown is
> only 37, but her thinking comes out of a venerable tradition. In
> January 1968, radical feminists protested the Jeanette Rankin
> Brigade, an all-women peace formation. They held a funeral procession
> and buried traditional womanhood. As Brown explains, "They felt that
> appeals based on women's peaceful natures would only assure men that
> they were not a threat."
>
> [...]