The feminist peace activist group Code Pink will be holding what they call a Convergence and Activist Training Camp seminar the day before the Republican National Convention in Tampa next month. The seminar is currently scheduled to take place from 1-8 p.m at a site to be determined.
The group is trying to rally members with a call to, "Bring Your Vagina to the RNC." Your vajayjay vacay will presumably include participating in various protest marches that will take place that week in Tampa.
Code Pink will repeat their actions the following week in Charlotte, N.C., at the DNC. Co-founder Medea Benjamin says the training will be somewhat site specific, in that there will be more focus on banks in Charlotte (home of Bank America), whereas in Tampa the emphasis will be on what Democrats have referred to as the Republican "war on women."
Benjamin says that all Code Pink training sessions are guided by an ethos of non-violence. The group works to make sure participants engage in non-violent protest, and they take steps to insure nobody affiliated with Code Pink engages in violent behavior.
In both convention host cities, Code Pink will be emphasizing their anger at the continuing U.S. presence in Afghanistan. "In terms of the wars it’s pretty much the same (with Republicans and Democrats)," Benjamin says, "but we’ll have more of an emphasis on stopping the drone attacks in Charlotte, because that’s been such a signature of the Obama administration."
It's a subject Benjamin knows a lot about, having recently published the book, Drone Warfare: Killing By Remote Control. "We've been one of the few groups speaking out about it," she she told CL by telephone Friday morning from Washington D.C. "That’s why I wrote the book and am going around asking where is the outcry?"
During the Bush administration, anti-war activism was prominent as the Iraq war escalated, but Benjamin says it's been "muffled" under Barack Obama's tenure — drone strikes and all.
Benjamin will be in St. Petersburg the week before the convention begins, speaking at Studio@620 about her new book.
