PINKtank

I just penned a piece in response to the brouhaha around the health care protesters, more specifically, the comparisons to CODEPINK (everywhere from Fox News to The Colbert Report to NPR). It’s rather sad that there are so few groups out there organizing and protesting in public forums, including Congressional hearings, that we are the most obvious example to people. And it’s too bad that people misinterpret what we do based on cleverly edited TV footage: what we do is completely different from the health protesters in town halls…as I write:

This is comparing the proverbial apples to oranges and doesn’t distinguish Congressional hearings from the public-centered town halls. In Congressional hearings, the discussion is all too often one-sided, with the voice of the people woefully absent. We seek to expand the conversation and introduce the elephants in the room — most often we’ve delivered our message with our choice of costume or the messaging on our signs and t-shirts. We do this after we have exhausted every other remedy to express our opinions — after we’ve called, written letters, delivered petitions, brought activists to DC from around the country and met with our representatives. We resort to non-violent direct actions when there is no other way to get the message across.We’ve understood, regrettably, when we go to a hearing that if we stand up and deliver the message that it is quite probable that we will be arrested. Our ‘outbursts’ are not meant to shut-down conversation; they’re meant to join it where we have been shut out. This does not seem to be the motive of the health care protesters, who appear upset that the topic is even being visited.

Read the rest on Huffington Post here.

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