This year, in the face of horrendous violence at home and abroad, CODEPINK has been a beacon of advocacy, action and inspiration for a peaceful world. Donate to keep CODEPINK going.
PRESIDENT 4 PEACE
All year we have been bird-dogging the candidates and calling for a President for Peace. We’ve disrupted Trump events to expose his misogyny, racism and xenophobia because we know that hate leads to war. We have protested outside Clinton events to spotlight her support for despotic regimes and militarism while calling her to take a stand against big money in politics. At the Republican National Convention, we made a huge splash dressed as Lady Liberty to welcome immigrants and refugees, we flaunted fancy outfits as billionaires to highlight corporate greed in our political system, and we held a satirical beauty pageant to show that there is no beauty in GOP hatred. We spoke truth in the face of power and disrupted three of the four nights at the convention during speeches by Senator Jeff Sessions, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump himself. A video of CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans’ disruption went viral, with millions of views! At the Democratic National Convention, we called for feminism, not militarism, campaign finance reform, and the right to boycott without being blacklisted until Israel ends its occupation of Palestine.
NO WEAPONS TO SAUDI ARABIA
We kicked off the year with a ground-breaking campaign to push the U.S. government to reevaluate its ties with the brutal government in Saudi Arabia, which is using U.S.-made weapons to commit war crimes in Yemen. We convened the first ever summit to challenge the dangerous relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, with experts, activists, academics, and more. It was so powerful, the Saudi government tried to sabotage it! Since the summit, the coalition we formed has ramped up pressure on Congress and the White House to stop sending weapons to Saudi Arabia and achieved a partial victory when the administration put a halt on the sale of cluster bombs. We have protested outside of the Saudi Embassy in DC, vigiled weekly outside the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles, and marched through the halls of Congress demanding an end to U.S. support for the Saudi war on Yemen. We’ve lifted up the voices of Yemenis suffering from U.S.-made bombs by featuring their stories on a video series. Medea wrote a groundbreaking book, Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection, and has traveled across the country on a book tour, building the movement.
JUSTICE FOR PALESTINE
CODEPINK activists protested RE/MAX’s annual shareholders’ conference and dozens of local offices around the country. We took a huge step when RE/MAX’s CEO announced his intention to stop profiting from the sales of homes on stolen Palestinian land. In October, we hosted Palestinian human rights defender Issa Amro of Youth Against Settlements, traveling with him from the halls of Congress to talks around the country to highlight the real human costs of occupation. We also joined the Women’s Boat to Gaza as it tried to break the siege, but it was intercepted by the Israeli military and the women aboard forcibly deported. We joined our coalition partners calling out AIPAC, Airbnb, Fidelity Investments, Hewlett-Packard and other companies that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
LOCAL PEACE ECONOMY
Through it all, we were building connections and bringing people together to grow their local peace economies and rebuild the peace movement. Around the country, local communities came together to hold Pop-ups for Peace, knit and donate items to Syrian refugees on the Macedonian border, share ideas, create people-powered solutions and grow the alternative to the war economy. This movement is still growing, and we encourage you to get involved on our website!
JUSTICE FOR LATIN AMERICA
We’re also exposing the cost of militarism outside of the Middle East. We took delegations to Cuba to celebrate the exciting diplomatic opening and to start a relationship with one of the many new worker cooperatives. We visited Honduras to oppose the murder of activists such as Berta Caceres and will continue to oppose U.S. support for the Honduran regime in the coming year.
COMMUNITIES ORGANIZE TO DEMILITARIZE ENFORCEMENT
In May, we celebrated Mother’s Day with a feminist peace festival in front of the White House. This year, we called for demilitarization of the police and an end to the police brutality and mass incarceration. We continue to stand in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives and are in full support of the platform they put out earlier this year. We raised our voices for the demilitarization of society at a powerful overnight vigil at the NRA in the wake of the tragic mass shooting in Orlando. The vigil brought together over 100 activists from the LGBT, Muslim and other faith communities, as well as gun violence victims, family members, and allies. In the morning, we staged a die-in for gun control legislation and over a dozen people were arrested. In December, we are hosting a gun violence prevention summit in Washington, DC with an emphasis on intersectionality.
MOBILIZATIONS AROUND THE WORLD
We went to Creech Air Force Base in Nevada to protest the U.S.’s use of drones, Japan to advocate for the shutting down of U.S. military bases in Okinawa, and Germany to accept the Wilhelmine Tolerance Prize. We took on being a force for healing the Iraq War by opening a safe house for Yazidi women who have been used as sex slaves in Iraq. We also took part in Democracy Spring, one of the biggest acts of civil disobedience in Washington, DC’s history, in support of sweeping big money—including military-industrial lobbying money—out of politics.
IRAQ WAR TRIBUNAL
On December 1 and 2, we’ll hold the People’s Tribunal on the War in Iraq in Washington, DC. The Tribunal will gather the global anti-war/peace movements with other justice movements by uplifting testimonies of the costs of this war—and war itself. The Tribunal will bring the lies that created the war on Iraq into public awareness, while demanding Obama act on them. We hope to build and inspire the anti-war movement that we will need after the elections are over. We will need a strong and vibrant anti-war movement in 2017 to counter the ideas and values of the next administration. The advisors and lobbyists rely on preaching that war leads to peace, but we know that’s a lie. Your support will make it possible for CODEPINK to continue to counter the message of these cheerleaders for war and build a global peace movement that our world needs now more than ever.
With gratitude, Alice, Alli, Aniqa, Ariel, Bushra, Chelsea, Ciara, Faith, Janet, Jodie, Mariana, Martha, Max, Medea, Nancy K, Nancy M, Paula, Sam and Samira