BELFAST, Maine — As social justice activist Medea Benjamin checked out the Waldo County Shrine Club Saturday afternoon before beginning her presentation there, she took in the art being hung on the walls and the general bustle of activity happening all around.
“What keeps us going is music, dance, joy, beauty and art,” she said of her decades spent protesting war and the misuse of power. “We can talk of really serious, horrible things — then we can laugh, eat together and be together.”
Benjamin, 59, is a co-founder of the prominent activist group CodePink. She spent the week traveling up the coast of Maine on a tour for her book “Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.”
While local folks put the finishing touches on an event they’d been preparing for weeks, including a peace singalong and political theater, the pink T-shirt-clad Benjamin took some time to talk about her passion for peace activism.
“This work is really rewarding,” she said. “It allows you to work with people who are among the poorest and most harmed by war, and at the same time, we encourage people to find ways to make activism fun.”
Benjamin said that she first became involved with activism as a high school student protesting the Vietnam War. In 2002, she and other women began the group CodePink with a four-month-long vigil in front of the White House to support peace.
Peace activism really ramped up in the later years of President George W. Bush’s term, she said, and has slowed down during the Obama administration.
“The peace movement is a lot quieter under Obama,” she said. “When Obama came in, there was a huge wave of goodwill around the world. That has pretty much dissipated. Now, we are hated.”
She attributes much of this ill-will to the American use of unmanned aircraft, or drones, to seek and kill enemy fighters.
The use of drones, which is controversial in part due to the fact that children and other civilians have been killed during the unarmed air strikes in countries including Pakistan, is something that Benjamin would like to bring more attention to in the United States.
“Drones are just a piece of technology, but they’re very undemocratic,” she said. “According to international law, you’re supposed to give your enemies a chance to surrender. Drones don’t do that.”
American people don’t often see victims of drone warfare, she said.
“How much easier is it to violate the sovereignty of other nations with drones?” she asked. “It’s really a logical issue for us as CodePink to take on.”
CodePink activists have been protesting drone warfare outside of U.S. Air Force bases and also outside of corporations which make the drones.
“We want to show that there are many people who care about this,” she said.
The life of an activist can be difficult.
“We do get deported from a lot of places. We do get arrested a lot of times,” Benjamin said.
But it also feels necessary to her.
“Our friends in these places are risking their lives every day. We feel an obligation to work to improve our government’s policies,” she said.
And her book tour has reminded her that the country is full of pockets of like-minded people who also are working towards the same goals.
“You come to this beautiful little town of Belfast, and see this wonderful sign that says ‘Welcome,’” she said. “We are hosted in every town by people who are really trying to live their lives simply and sustainably … it keeps me inspired by meeting such inspiring people.”
“We do get deported from a lot of places. We do get arrested a lot of times,”I’m sure her communist ways are welcome here in Maine.
How is she a communist? Please explain to us. Thanks.
Is differing with our government’s policies a “communist” thing? Or is it a part of democracy that allows dissent?
Look at all the code pink supporters dressed as blades of grass!!! Big turnout in ol’ Belfast town!!!
Funniest comment of the week.
As a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, the United States is bound to its regulation of warfare. Since, as Ms. Benjamin points out, “According to international law, you’re supposed to give your enemies a chance to surrender. Drones don’t do that.”
To those who criticize those who oppose their indiscriminant use, recall that we are a nation of laws, and even those American citizens accused of terrorism have the right to a trial, or at the very least, the right to surrender. Neither was the case for Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and his father Anwar al-Awlaki.
And let’s not forget the village of Wech Baghtu, Afghanistan, where at a wedding party, 37 civilians were killed in a drone incident including 23 children and 10 women; another 27–35 including the bride were wounded.
Flaunting the rights of American citizens and the Geneva Conventions, America is losing any moral authority it may have had.
How about September 11th? Did those people in the towers have, “the right to surrender”? Where was the, “moral authority there”?
People like you, are the reason this nation is losing strength.
So how, fundamentally, is driving a plane into a building, killing innocent civilians, different from dropping a bomb that kills inncent civilians. The civilians are dead through no fault of their own.
Put aside your chauvinism and look at the situation from the point of view of the innocent.
I think I am. (point of view of the innocent)
I also believe you forget where this began. If you hate America, please feel free to leave at any time.
This isn’t about loving or hating America. It’s about being pro-life.
No time for a history lesson on how this began. But it certainly wasn’t begun by a goatherder’s daughter or a waiter in the World Trade Centers.
Pro-life eh? Funny that you say that. I’m willing to bet good money that you are a supporter of abortion. So, killing bad people is wrong but killing babies is okay????
Well, one knew the women’s reproductive rights (right to decide when or whether to bear children) issue would get thrown in somehow.
So let me open myself up to attacks from the “all sperm is sacred” crowd, and point out that there are too many humans on earth right now using up becoming-scarce resources.
If you think God or anyone/thing else is going to replace these resources just for you (a la the “Rapture”) you’re living in a dream world…..and if that’s what you believe, good luck with that.
We need 1-1/2 Earths just to maintain people now alive….and if they all start using resources like we in America do, then we need 3-1/2 worlds to support them all.
Clearly, this is not tenable, so the birth rate needs to come down steeply.
Outlawing contraception for women is simply stupid and suicidal as the population heads towards 9 billion. If a woman gets accidentally pregnant, she should have a choice of what to do.
No one likes the idea of abortion, but until there’s a SAFE and EFFECTIVE means of contraception for women, abortions will remain a necessity as too many men insist on impregnating “their” women so she’ll pop our “his” kids.
Go invent such a device and you will become an instant trillionaire.
So because this person has an opinion that you dislike that translates into them hating America?
How does your brain even come to that conclusion?
They also didn’t run terror camps in the WTC.
Sorry, but there were many Federal offices in WTC complex, including CIA and FBI. It was an act of war, and in war, humans do all kinds of horrible things, including taking the lives of an “extra” 2500 civilians or so.
Al-Queda saw it as a “legitimate” target. They saw the CIA as terrorists in their countries.
In fact, history of wars since WWI is that the percentage of civilian deaths to combatant deaths (soldiers, sailors, pilots, etc) is higher, and getting more so, as armies are better protected, (hum vees, night vision, kevlar vests, etc.). It is just the “rest” of us who get the short end of the war stick…
Good enough reason to try another way to settle disputes.
Well thus the issue. Please tell me what country does not know America is the world power. They know EXACTLY what we can and will do. However they instead of fighting up front or surrender they hide in civilian areas. This way they can be either safe or a marter if attacked there. I hate death and killing as does most every military person I have meet in my life. However as a common sense logical approach it is far far better for the fighting to be there and not here.
Do we really know who did that foul deed? Google questions about 9-11. Many of the official explanations simply don’t add up at all.
Just saying we need more serious investigation to answer all the multitude of questions about who did what and when around 9-11.
9-11 can’t be our permanent excuse to attack whoever has oil that the oil companies want to steal, as they did in Iraq. And now want us to attack Iran, which has never threatened to attack us (and hasn’t attacked another country for over 200 years).
I hope she understands that she has a lot of enemies in this world that American service members are fighting so she can be protected to conduct her personal protest. Somehow I doubt it though.
Not a single American service member at the current time is fighting for any of my rights. The current wars have nothing at all to do with my right to protest or speak my mind but for some reason people such as yourself think they do.
Keep telling yourself that.
Prove to me that I am wrong.
Go away.
Did the truth hurt your feelings?
The fact that here in America you are free to type your disagreement with the countries military in a public forum is proof enough. Go to the countries we are in and see if the people there can do the same.
America does not fight for just our people but freedom. This is why we are the nation who has freed so much of the world but unlike others we gave the countries we defeat back to the PEOPLE..
Do not like all you want. Never loose sight of how many places in the world speaking what you think can get you jail or even death at the hands of government.
And I’m talking about current wars, not the past. None of my freedoms would be lost if we pulled all our troops out of the Middle East.
Yes they would. Think hard it will come to you..
Can you tell us why we’re in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, South Korea, and 170 other countries around the world? And why we’re shooting villagers with whom we have no quarrel whatsoever with drones manned from computers thousands of miles away?
And why we’re killing children and their families in wedding parties, funeral parties, schools, hospitals in other soverign nations?
Defense is one thing; invasions without even good reason are quite another. So, I reiterate, why are American troops all over the world, costing us billions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars?
Slowed down during the Obama administration? What a shock. I wonder which way this group goes!
I will not vote for him nor Romney or any candidate that proposes war as a solution to problems.
I do not think I have voted for a “winning” candidate in my lifetime of 40 plus years of voting!
Belfast is becoming a freaky place. I’ll skip that town on my visit up that way next time. I’ll spend my money in an American town..
Indeed…MOON BAT CENTRAL…
So, since when is dissent with government policies “unAmerican?” That you may disagree with some people’s politics is more a part of a democracy, yes?
Or are you right in every possible thing you say and do – and you won’t tolerate discussion or dissent from your views?
She has some good ideas and knowledge about where the government is aiming this country. heard her on the pulse and she had some good ideas… I am her political opposite yet rather then distroy this messenger I choose listen to thing she presents… We don’t need to be in a war. The only terror we face in America is our own government
If a drone saves 1 single American solider from harm then I vote we make more every day.
Why are we there? Why is the American military sending drones to villages in Pakistan, with whom we are not at war nor have they threatened us in any way?
TALIBAN!! Pick up a paper sometime. They are sending drones so as not to put our people in harms way.
But why are we there?
The CIA funded and organized the Taliban against the Russians years ago, and now the remnants want the USA out of their country, too. How would you feel if Afghanistan had the superios weaponry and invaded us because they didn’t like our politics or religion?
So, why are we there in the first place? No one in the world is threatening to attack our country. No one. This has been true for many years.
9-11 is still open for debate who planned and executed that very intricate set of events, and it hardly seems likely that a few guys who barely knew how to fly anything did all that all by themselves. In fact, it’s extremely unlikely. So we need to seriously investigate how and why that happened……and why Pres. Bush then allowed private planes to go around the coluntry (even though all commercial aircraft was grounded) just after the Twin Towers went down and collect the bin Laden family and let them fly home.
Check it out – Pres. Bush the elder was then and for years afterward in business – the Carlyle Group – with Osama bin Laden’s father……..they were friends!
Lots of stuff needs to come out some day so all these misplaced hatreds and lies can be exposed for what they are – – grabs for money and power.
You can Google any of thewe statements I’ve made here for verification with many sources.
Sir please adjust your foil hat from your statement it seems it may have drifted to one side allowing the rays to get into your head again.
As long as radical muslims are calling for sharia law world wide I would say EVERY service member is sticking his/her neck out for you. I don’t think you can rationally deny that point.
And the radical “Christians” calling for another Crusade against Muslims are calling for their version of “Christianity” to rule the world. So where does it stop?
Do you not think we can sit down and talk to others about what our common interests are and what will keep us from killing one another over religions thousands of years old that stem from the same base?
And what church do you go to?
My religion is personal, and no one else’s business but my own.
And I bet you think your religion is the only correct one and everyone should follow your god.
Who said I was religious? Wow man, your dilusional.
Why would you state your religion is personal if you are not religious?
And “you’re” not “your”
Is this the “Pink Slime” we’ve been hearing about in the news?