Austin rally calls for healthcare reform,
An end to the Afghanistan War
By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / October 19, 2009
More photos, Below.
Faith leaders Rev. James Rigby and Rev. Roscoe Overton addressed the crowd. Castro’s Beard and Will T. Massey provided music. Cynthia Good and Joe Carr shared poetry. Members of the Iraq Veterans Against the War flanked Bobby Whittenberg, an Iraq veteran, as he spoke. Brian Hannah, also an Iraq veteran, addressed the crowd.
Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of CodePink, spoke about her recent trip to Afghanistan. Her delegation met with Afghan women there. They returned with a petition from those women demanding that peace talks begin and that Afghan women be participants in those talks. At the recent San Francisco fundraiser which Obama attended, Jodie Evans of CodePink was able to hand the petition directly to the President.
On a lighter note, the rally was visited by “Billionaires for Wealthcare.” Dressed elegantly in black dresses and one tuxedo, sporting champagne glasses and one cigar, they urged the crowd to look at the world from their perspective with posters that read: “Do No Harm To My Bottom Line,” and “Cigna and Palin in 2012.”
Demonstrators also staged a “die-in” to honor the war dead.
On Sunday at Cafe Caffeine in Austin, Medea Benjamin spoke at length about the Afghanistan war and the need to advocate for withdrawal of U.S. troops and the initiation of peace talks. United Nations Resolution 1325 calls for women to participate in peace talks and Benjamin said that Obama should earn his Nobel peace prize through a peace process that includes women in accordance with Resolution 1325.
Benjamin talked about the large presence of contractors from KPR, Z (formerly Blackwater) and the Armor Group (whose members were recently photographed in a lewd Embassy hazing party). She spoke of the poverty and dire need for economic development, the rising civilian casualties.
The Rag Blog
re 2nd photo: It was moving to see Austinites willing to spend a few uncompfortable minutes lying on concrete (at some tiny sacrifice of “dignity”) to represent the shameful fact that “boots on the ground” in Iraq & Afghanistan result have resulted in thousands of undignified bodies on the ground.
A
Except that view is not true. We do everlasting we can to prevent and save civilians that are there. We are helping things get better over there.