CPTnet
3 November 2011
WASHINGTON, DC REFLECTION: History is knocking.

By JoAnne Lingle

A friend sent me an email with this subject heading: "History Is Knocking, Stop The Machine!  Create A New World!"

The first paragraph hooked me: 

 There comes a time when efforts to avoid the truth begin to fail, when one can no longer go about daily life and pretend that all is okay.  If you are like most of us, you are experiencing this.  There comes a time when one can no longer shut out the atrocities of U.S. foreign and military policy: trade agreements that destroy farming; mass unemployment; especially among communities of color; illegal detention and torture; increasing drone attacks resulting in mass civilian deaths; and once again a President who lies the United States into another war for oil and bankers.

 I immediately signed up to be at Freedom Plaza in Washington DC on October 6.  

Daily, we protested against corporate, governmental, and financial institutions.  We did banner drops, demonstrations at financial institutions, disruptions at a medical conference sponsored by Wall Street investors, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum drone exhibits, General Atomics, a manufacturer of drones, and in House chambers. 

 On October 13, eight of us were arrested on charges of disruption while Leon Panetta was speaking in the House Armed Services Committee Hearing.  When Panetta said, “6,000 had died fighting for freedom,” I thought about the hundreds of thousands we have killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and other places.  I thought about our complicity in the covert war against the poor in South and Central America, Africa, the Middle East, especially in Palestine.  On my bookshelf are empty gas canisters, bullets and rubber coated steel bullets, all collected from the streets of Hebron that were made in the U.S. and/or paid for by my government. 

Inside my jacket, I had a folded-up sign that read “End the War” and on the other side, “Stop the Killing.”  I stood up with my sign and shouted, “Stop the killing of babies and children!  Why aren’t we counting the babies and children we are killing?”  The next thing I heard was the gavel striking loudly and a call for order.  Immediately, three Capitol police dragged me out of the chambers and cuffed me in the hallway.

Of all the events in DC, the highlight for me was the October 16 dedication Dr. King’s statue.  Cornel West came to Freedom Plaza and said, “If Martin Luther King were alive today, he would not be at that at that statue – he would be here with us!”  In memory of Dr. King, he said it was a day to be arrested and proceeded to the Supreme Court where he sat down on the steps with a sign that quoted Gandhi: “The worst form of violence is poverty.”  Eighteen others joined him on the steps and were duly arrested.