No time for polite

Posted by CODEPINK Staff

Fernanda Diaz, a blogger for Glamour.com, wrote about her experience as an audience member during yesterday's Unconventional Women event yesterday here at the DNC. She describes the CODEPINK questioning of Nancy Pelosi, there to promote women leadership and women in politics, as a "weird situation."

As I watched pink-clad women popping up all over the auditorium with signs and megaphones—women whose causes I support—I also squirmed with the majority the audience. I, like many of them, was excited to hear Pelosi speak in person, but that didn't mean I wanted the protesters to be blatantly silenced. I was actually quite intrigued by the women yelling "You lied right to my face, Nancy!" and "How would YOU like to be waterboarded?!" in the middle of a touchy-feely empowerment event.

Many people around Denver have asked CODEPINK members out and about this week why they're so disruptive, so rude, and inappropriate (a question asked long before the DNC).

The answer seems particularly appropriate today, the anniversary of women's suffrage. Without being rude, disruptive, and inappropriate, women would never have earned the right to vote. They would've never won Title IX. Black Americans would have never earned the right to vote. Gay and lesbian Americans would never have won the right to marry (indeed, that's a continuing battle). None of the victories earned by most Americans today could have been without standing up to heirarchies of privilege, systematic racism and sexism, and unjust laws. And how'd they do that? By sitting in cafes and buses where they didn't belong, by marching in the streets, by sitting in college president offices, by breaking the law and risking their lives to bring unjust laws to court. That's what we do today: shout where we know we'll be heard even if others refuse to listen, act when we know others will disagree, and challenge what we know to be unjust. There's no time to be polite.