Posted by CODEPINK Staff

About 25 COPEPINK members staged a demonstration to protest the "Freedom Cage" created by the DNC and Democratic Party. We arrived sweaty and exhausted, since the cage, a large parking lot outside the Pepsi Center surrounded by a chain link fence, was miles away from the Pepsi Center, or anywhere else delegates convene. Clearly any sort of protest or dissent inside the cage totally moot -- hence the point of our demonstration.
We saw no bathrooms, nowhere nearby to buy food, no shade available (and the sun boiled down). Within 10 minutes of our arrival, dozens of police arrived and surrounded us on the other side of the fence. And we noticed what looked like a sniper's booth mounted outside one of the stage. The message was clear: any dissenters must be silent. Many reporters covering the action agreed the cage would be laughable it weren't so clearly throwing our First Amendment rights in protester's faces.


