Joshuah Bearman: Bush Lied; People Died

Sep 03, 2004

Bush Lied; People Died

Super Duper Exclusive Via Special Synergy With Air America's "The Majority Report."

Click on the still above to play footage.

Now this takes some balls. These scenes are from the floor of the Republican National Convention Thursday night. When the President mentioned Iraq, June Brashares unfurled a banner that with what became the tidiest protest slogan of the week: "Bush Lied; People Died." As Brashares was escorted out she continued to yell those words. Brashares was one of three protesters who made it into Madison Square Garden on the final night to disrupt President Bush's existentially bogus speech. Incredibly, she got in the convention with no credential by boarding one of the shuttle busses departing from a delegate hotel. When she got to the Garden, she claimed to have lost her credential, and security issued her a new one. So as to maximize visual effect, she chose as her protest spot a seat down in the delegation rows on the floor, and the chair she eventually stood on to protest was apparently offered to her by an unwitting Pete Wilson.

The actions were planned by Code Pink, a group organized by Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans. Evans was also in the hall Thursday night, in the press section. She pulled off her dress to reveal a pink slip scrawled with the slogan "Fire Bush! Women Say Bring The Troops Home Now!" It was only a few seconds before security personnel apprehended her and quickly escorted her out Gate 75. The third protestor was Jorge Medina, whose son Irving was killed in Iraq in November 2003.

Code Pink activists were able to infiltrate security the last nights of the convention to disturb the major speeches given by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dick Cheney, and President Bush. As Cheney spoke, Tiffany Burns of Los Angeles stood up and unfurled a banner that said: "Cheney and Halliburton: Making a Killing in Iraq." Burns, Evans and Brashares were all released from Jail and charged with disorderly conduct. Brashares was also charged with assault.

Medina was not charged because the authorities sympathized with his grief over the loss of his son in Iraq. On Tuesday, Fernando Suarez del Solar, another acitivist whose son Jesus was killed in Iraq, stood up during Laura Bush's speech and held up a poster with a picture of his son. As Suarez was being escorted out of the hall, many of the Republican delegates expressed their sympathy and said they agreed with him. Suarez was even able to conduct interviews with media and talk to a couple dozen Republicans before security brought him out of the hall.

Medina also said that as he left he could see the compassion from the delegates in their eyes. "They watchied the picture of my son," he said, "and they didn't say anything to me, except a few said they were sorry." As did the police, who, Medina says treated him very well. Which means his and Suarez's couragous moments were unusually effective. Their statements were able to penetrate Republican indifference and mean something to the other side, making their actions the most moving and important protests of the entire week, and perhaps even the administration.

And check out my latest post: It's an RNC wrap-up about how Bush's speech proved that there are indeed multiple universes -- the real one in which we live, and the one in the minds of the GOP. Find out what it's like to almost get sucked in!

And: Read my exploration of the strange frontier of Republican moderates in the LA Weekly. Like the Discovery channel, it's fascinating and edifying.

Protest footage by Jason Blalock. See more stills from the video on the Majority Report's site.

Sep 03, 2004 | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/73807/1087292

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Bush Lied; People Died:

» Bush lied, People died! from renas e veados
Esta imagem não vimos na TV. June Brashares a ser retirada da sala onde decorreu a convenção bushista, enquanto grita a plenos pulmões: Bush lied, People died! - Bush mentiu, Pessoas morreram! Esta acção foi o... [Read More]

Readings

Panda PowerPoint!
I guess I don't mind being "the entertainment" when it's at Mark Allen's second annual Holiday Fry-B-Que. Presented: preliminary findings from my ongoing research into the most charismatic megafauna of all: Giant Pandas.
McSweeny's Presents: The World, Explained | Dec 9, 2006
For those who missed it, there will be more. World, Explained is going strong! Money was raised, laughs were had, and for those paying attention, small amounts of useful information about things like the aurora borealis were transmitted. Plus: Michael Cera = lovably funny. And Nick Diamonds' renditions of Dumb Dog and Hanging Tough are still in my head. As is that horribly catchy Fresh Step jam.
Jest Fest at Skylight Books
Somehow I wound up hosting the 10th anniversary jubilee for Infinite Jest at Skylight Books. Because who doesn't love a jubilee, right? Despite being delirious with Hepatitis A (that's the mild, non-lethal kind; I'm not at risk for Hep B since I always go the needle share and choose clean-looking prostitutes), I managed to not mis-pronounce anyone's name and make an erudite joke and poke gentle fun at Michael Silverblatt.
McSweeny's Presents: The World, Explained | June 10, 2006
Number Three! Last one was sold out so we moved to a slightly larger theater. Andy Richter hosted, and his opening exegesis of CSI: Miami warmed the people up right. Evany Thomas presented her very scientific findings on the Secret Language of Sleep; Starlee Kine bared her neuroses to the world (or at least the 300 people in the audience); Josh Davis showed video of his 135-lb self sumo wrestling a 550-lb opera singer from San Bernardino; and Davy Rothbart closed it out with some Found Magazine magic. Grant Lee Phillips, Sam Shelton and Zooey Deschanel provided the music punctuation! I can still hear their rendition of We Are the Champions.
McSweeny's Presents: The World, Explained | Feb 11, 2006
The second in our series of precision comedy and fact-based entertainment extravaganzas benefiting 826LA. Patton Oswalt was kind enough to host, and Jon Brion joined in on the piano and guitar as thematic accompaniment. Presenters included: David Rees, Michael Colton, John Hodgman (along with his hirsuit troubadour, Jonathan Coulton), and me. Plus: a fashion show of exciting multi-user garmentry.
Little Gray Book Lecture at Galapagos
How to Observe President's Day. Jonathan Coulton's technical wizardry has made this entire show available online. The summary from PRX: Sarah Vowell, John Hodgman and Joshuah Bearman on Presidents' Day, along with a fifteen-piece marching band and a new song about all forty-three presidents. My contribution? Yes, from Yeti Researcher. Again. Actually that was the first one. So I have only five stories!
Little Gray Book Lecture 25 at Galapagos
The Animals: Are They Our Enemies? In the case of my presentation about the giant gerbils of Xinjiang, the answer is yes.
July 25: TJ to LA -- A Night McSweeney's Readings
I was honored to be part of a strange triptych along with Salvador Plascencia and Josh Kun. Sponsored, somehow, by La Ciudad magazine, we all packed into Beyond Baroque with no air conditions. 150 people showed at 7 o'clock on a Friday evening, which we took as a good sign of something. Sal held up and anxiously discussed drawings from his novel, Josh delivered an essay on the Dr. Moreau of Tijuana, and my shtick (again) was Pac Man and metaphysics, this time with fun slides.
October 8th: Skylight Books w/Stephen Elliott
Fun times were had by all. Someone in the audience actually mistook me for an expert on the psychology human character. We ate shrimp cocktail and drank cheap wine and laughed at Bush and celebrated the certainty of right besting wrong in American democracy. A lot of good that did.
October 9th: MoveOn Fundraiser in Los Angeles
See above.

Articles in Print

The Fearless Personal Inventory
Mortified -- the funniest public ritual of personal intimacy to mark the rise of confessional reality.
The Zombie Zeitgeist
A full scale movement is on the lurch. But why the best zombie movie ever made a video game?
Believer interview with Mark Allen
Digital artist and awesome gallerist Mark Allen talks about Tekken Torture Tournament and other projects where people were wired to machines and did strange things in public.
Believer interview with Marjane Satrapi
Enlightening Q & A with the Persian cartoonist, memoirist, quick conversationalist in which she declares: “THE WORLD IS NOT ABOUT BATMAN AND ROBIN FIGHTING THE JOKER; THINGS ARE MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT.”
¡Viva Border Volleyball!
Two on two on a toxic and geopolitically divided beach. (Nifty pictures and video available!)
Yeti Researcher
Yet another 100-page issue of the world's top academic journal devoted scholarship about the Yeti, Bigfoot, Sasqatch, and other mystery primates worldwide. For researchers and lay audiences alike, the latest YR features a history of Sasquatch sightings in southern California, an update on the wily orang pendek of Sumatra, and a new look into Teddy Roosevelt's obsession with bagging a Bigfoot. As Editor-in-Chief, I promise you won't be disappointed.
The Jacuzzi Apocalypse
Notes from Y2K. With some humor, and a nifty drawing by Carson Mell.
Monkey Love
My contribution to the vast cultural conversation on King Kong and the viability of simian-human romance
Man's Best Friend
Nintendogs puts existentialism in the palm of your hand
Digital Trim
Hillary Clinton likes her coffee cold

Stats

Joshuah Bearman

Sep 03, 2004

Bush Lied; People Died

TrackBack

Comments

Post a comment

Recent Posts

Archives

Nifties

Readings

Articles in Print

My Cohort

Newsvine pandas News

Stats

Electro-mediated me