I went to the Code Pink / Raging Grannies for Peace Mother's Day Peace March today that kicked off at Columbus Circle in Manhattan. It was a moderate crowd. There were sing-a-longs and printed out lyrics were passed around for a few less-than-electrifying renditions of 'God Help America' sung to the tune of 'God Bless America', 'Give Iraq our Constitution' to the tune of 'I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy' and finishing with a 'Mother's Day Lament' sung to the tune of 'My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean'.
A member of Mouths Wide Open gave me a pack of toy soldiers and informed me that the idea was to place the soldiers in specific places around the city and photograph them.
The insert read:
'We're spreading plastic Army Men around the country and around the globe as small everyday reminders of the ongoing horrors of the war in Iraq - using them as tools to foster dialogue, action and resistance to the war. Let's put these little messengers everywhere - green plastic icons to the American conscience, creating an environment in which it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the war, the loss of life and the unending destruction."
There was a small but visible counter-demonstration as well. They passed around a flyer that asks the question: Who and What is Code Pink?Code Pink is supposed to represent non-political women aroused by injustice. But one wonders why it bothers with the pretense. To mock the State Department of Homeland Security's color-coded terror alerts, the radicals of the anti-war Left chose pink, the color symbolic of baby girls. Code Pink supporters say they will warn against the "extreme danger to all the values of nurturing, caring and compassion that women and loving men have held." In 1917, the Bolsheviks cried out for "peace, land and bread" to fool the Russian people into believing they were patriotic, not ideological. Nine decades later, Code Pink relies on the same Leninist tactic: Better Pink Than Dead.