Five women arrested outside of Pelosi's office

My elected representative won't have a public dialogue with her constituents about peace, and Code Pink wants to know why.

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and congressional representative of my district in San Francisco, hasn't held a public meeting with her constituents about anything since Jan. 2006 -- months before she became Speaker. One could easily argue she would still be Minority Leader were it not for the dedicated work of peace activists all over the country to get Democrats elected in November ... yet Pelosi's aid has told us she has no room on her agenda this recess to publicly dialogue with any of her constituents about peace.

For this reason, I and perhaps five other people are on their 12th day on a hunger fast. As far as I know, all of us have been been taking juices and broth as well, and no one has had any serious health concerns so far. Four of us fasters were arrested in the action in front of the old Federal Building (Pelosi's local office) yesterday, along with another girl. We blocked the building with perhaps 10 other protesters, wearing pink duct tape over our mouths to symbolize our voices being silenced when it comes to peace. Has our government become so privatized the public can't expect to have a dialogue with their elected representatives anymore? Isn't the Iraq war the number one issue in our country today? Yet Pelosi has no room on her agenda for peace. And according to her, impeachment is off the table. As one of my fellow protesters said, when you take impeachment off the table, you take the Constitution off the table. This should have been much more widely covered story than appearently it was. If only I had more time to document it!

I have limited time to work with the computer these days, but here are some links to posts about our event yesterday:

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/08/23/18442934.php
http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/0824-01.htm


Here's a link about Camp Feinstein:
http://indybay.org/newsitems/2007/08/21/18441910.php

The day after those pictures were taken, Senator Feinstein surprised us by actually coming out and meeting with us. I and about 4 other campers spoke to her for about 20 minutes. She was very cordial and urged us not to continue our fast for the sake of our health, but she didn't really say anything new when I asked her why she voted for the spending bill for the "surge" in Iraq. It seemed to be a very polished and tired answer about how there wouldn't have been enough votes for cloture and we needed to fund our troops while they were there, but at least she promised to give us a formal, one hour meeting sometime after late September. We decided to leave her house early and concentrate our efforts on Camp Pelosi.

I haven't been back there since last night, but as far as I know we still have a tent pitched in the street by Madam Speaker's house. I went to knock on her door last night to ask her when she thought she *would* have a meeting with the public, but a man I presume was her husband opened the door and told me I was trespassing before I got to the front steps. Check out http://pelosiwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=195 .

Also check out my earlier blog posts on this subject at http://jpaulson.blogspot.com/ .