“We’ve been kicked out of John Conyers’s hearings just for wearing pink,”

Thursday, September 6, 2007 by The Progressive | Overcoming Censorship | by Ruth Conniff
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Part of the problem is that we’re used to living in such a mediated climate that even activists have acquiesced to protest pens with Orwellian names like “Free Speech Alley,” where dissenters are conveniently walled off from the main event at both major party conventions.
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Code Pink got a lot of press coverage last spring, Benjamin notes, from the Fox News Channel to the Washington Post, after one of its protesters appeared prominently on camera during the Valerie Plame hearings. CNN did a piece about the group.

Afterwards, Benjamin says, “They got very sophisticated about cutting us out of the hearings. They [Congressional staffers] even got C-SPAN to change the camera angles to cut us out.”

Code Pink protesters have since arrived at Congressional hearings to find all the seats within view of the cameras blocked off.

“We’ve been kicked out of John Conyers’s hearings just for wearing pink,” she says. “We have to fight with the Democrats and the police-not just the media.” ...