For anyone tenuously informed about American politics of the past two years, Code Pink is an organization that arouses mixed feelings. Some adore it, others hate it, some find it amusing, others fail to postulate the organization’s purpose. Code Pink serves the role of Britney’s clam shot on C-SPAN, a sensational eye floater that draws attention away from Petraeus’ head to the corner of the committee room where a fuscia-clad woman is dancing a jig. Despite the deplorable trend of official Democratic organizations and outlets giving credence to Code Pink as a group of national subversive heroes, the organization should not be tolerated, let alone encouraged by Americans seeking meaningful change in policy.
The purpose of protest is to effect change by drawing others into your cause and to bring injustices to light. In turn, this demonstration’s purpose is to force action, mediation, or negotiation with those with the power to improve your lot or the lot of those you’re interceding on behalf of. If you can’t reach a larger audience through your actions, then protest has no purpose.
Code Pink appeals to…well, Code Pink. More aptly, the Code Pink model of protest appeals to white middle and lower-upper class college students and former students with a flair for histrionic displays of theater as the most potent way of getting attention from a world that shunned them in high school. Protest becomes an excursion for this clique of liberal arts sucklers who will settle into Ikea furniture and obsessive child raising after the ancillary interest in perceived injustice fades with the entry into the job market.
Thus, while Code Pink serves the needs of the Whole Foods hipster who has an ingrained yearning to live a realized Decemberists music video, few others take positive notice of the causes they are promoting or the organization itself. What people see on television is women wearing pink disrupting a committee hearing on Capitol hill. They see a parade of what looks like a herd of curmudgeon-y breast cancer activists berating marble buildings. They see San Francisco.
The final vision is by far the most damaging and the reason why anyone even mildly perturbed by domestic and international injustice should shun this organization. Fitting into Nixon’s liberal portent of “acid, amnesty, and abortion” or the rural hysteria purporting the Democratic leadership is trying to turn America into 1969 Haight Ashbury is the opposite of what the progressive movement wants or needs. When suburbia shakes its head and Congress simply draws the blinds on such boisterous displays, Code Pink and their spawn are frustrating those who protest the same issues, but do so with a modicum of respect for their gravity.
To allow Code Pink and modern American protest writ large to devolve into a plumage war is to cede defeat to the roadblocks to change. At this point, protest becomes an exercise in buffoonery when the often grave subject matter and impetus for demonstration is degraded to the level of an excuse for a costume party.
As an activist, I call upon this organization to halt its activities. It is an insult to the brave actions of historical resistance from Amritsar to Selma and to those who hold the banner of dignified civil disobedience for you to continue such trite political masturbation. Save the pink for community theater. Wear your best suit to protest.
