Close Guantanamo Protest 6-26-13

Close Guantanamo Protest 6-26-13 © Jo Freeman

Jo Freeman writes: “Most of the press seems to have overlooked this protest in front of the White House. The Supreme Court decisions had been released only two hours previously, so they were elsewhere.” Freeman, though, was there. Here is her report, illuminating a persistent protest against the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in solidarity with the camp’s hunger strikers . -Jeff

Code Pink co-founder Diane Wilson climbed over the White House fence on Wednesday as part of the ongoing campaign to get President Obama to close Guantanamo. Once over, she stood about five feet from the fence as three armed uniformed Secret Service approached with rifles and a snarling dog. Told to GET DOWN, she was handcuffed and hauled off to jail. The audacity of her feat was enhanced by the fact that she is in the 57th day of a fast in solidarity with the Guantanamo hunger strikers. Unlike the 104 men refusing to eat at Guantanamo, Wilson is not being force fed.

This is not Wilson’s first challenge to White House security. On May 10th she had her neck attached to the White House fence with a special bicycle lock during another Code Pink demonstration. It took the cops two hours to free her neck from the fence. She was arrested, fined $70 and released.

Her latest feat occurred after a noontime rally put together by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture in Pennsylvania Plaza. The backdrop to the speakers featured sympathizers in orange jump suits holding the names of those still being held in Guantanamo.

After the rally, participants and observers congregated on the sidewalk in front of the White House for a street theater re-enactment of an “enteral feeding.” Tighe Barry of CodePink pretended to strap “Shraf Masud” of Yemen into a chair and feed him (actually her). Barry usually gets . . .

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