Tuesday, May 31, 2005

CODEPINK'S Stop the Next War Now (excerpt from Medea Benjamin & Jodie Evans' preface to the book)

From the preface of CodePink's Stop the Next War Now, written by Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans:

CODEPINK started around a picnic table when a group of wild, passionate and peace-loving women began laughing uncontrollably at George Bush's color-coded security system -- code yellow, code orange, code red. We knew that the terrorist attack of 9/11 was no laughing matter. Many of us had had friends killed in the attack. But the government's advice to buy duct tape and plastic sheeting in the event of a code orange alert had us in stitches. Should we put duct tape over our mouths or the mouths of the terrorists? And who gets wrapped in plastic sheeting -- us or them?
When the laugher subsided, we grew somber. We agreed that the terrorists attack on 9/11 should be treated as a crime against humanity, not a call for war. We grieved over the innocent Afghans killed in the post-9/11 invasion. We talked with dread about a possible war in Iraq. And then we started dreaming and scheming about what we, as women, could do to stop the spiral of violence.
Gentle Nina Utne from Utne magazine imagined thousands of circles of ordinary women gathering around kitchen tables, defining for themselves what real security meant. Radical Texas fisherwoman Diane Wilson saw anarchic clusters of unreasonable women hurling their naked bodies into the war machine. Medea envisioned a global uprising of women -- Americans and Saudis, Muslims and Jews -- linking arms and demanding that men stop the killing. Visionary astrologist Caroline Casey imagined a gathering of wise women calling for a code hot pink alert to save the earth. Jodie, picking up on the pink, dreamed of a pink tent city outside the White House, with women singing and dancing and growing so powerful that George Bush could no longer take us to war.
The imagination and creativity of many women, woven together, became CODEPINK: Women for Peace. [. . .]

Again, that's from the preface, written by Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans. (And it's from page xv.) (Preface runs from xv to xviiii.)

We've noted the book, Stop the Next War Now, before and we will do so again. Dallas compiled a list of the contributors to the book for our community. And last week, we offered two paragraphs from Alice Walker's foreword Stop the Next War Now. If I had time, we'd do an excerpt every day because I think this book is that important.

On May 4th we noted this:

Code Pink has a book out entitled Stop the Next War Now. For more information, see Code Pink or BuzzFlash. The book contains contributions from a number of women this community has noted and highlighted. Among the contributors: Medea Benjamin, Amy Goodman, Barbara Lee, Naomi Klein, Eve Ensler, and Arianna Huffington.

We will continue to note the book here. Again, time permitting, we'd note it every day. Check out the list of contributors to the book that Dallas compiled for us -- trying to find other ways to address issues beyond "drop a bomb." Actually, that would be "drop a bomb on them." "On them." Because it's always about a "them," "a division."

This book is, my opinion, a very important one. If it takes a year, we'll continue to note a paragraph or two from each contributor. Hopefully, it will interest you. There are two links above that you can purchase the book from. You can also utilize your public libraries. That's by requesting the book through your library system. I think it's an amazing book providing viewpoints that we need to hear and ideas that we need to think about.

The Third Estate Sunday Review, A Winding Road, Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude and Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man have all attempted to get the word out. If you haven't checked out the book, please consider doing so.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.