"Dressed in pink, she and her sister activists are regular fixtures at congressional hearings, directly challenging those in power by interrupting them from the audienceā¦Benjamin told me that President Obama "said that I wasn't listening to him. I was hanging on every single word. I really expected to hear some major policy changes, and I didn't know whether I was going to speak up or not. If he had said something like, 'To show my commitment to GuantĆ”namo, next week we will start releasing those prisoners who have been cleared,' or if he had said, 'We're taking drones out of the hands of the CIA immediately,' or, 'We're going to immediately say that signature strikes, where people are killed on the basis of suspicious behavior, will no longer be allowed'-if he had said anything like that, I wouldn't have spoken up." I then asked her why she objected to the New York Times describing her as a "heckler." "I think a heckler is a very negative term, and I think it's a positive thing when people find the courage to speak up to leaders who are not leading. And I didn't do what I did to embarrass the president. I did it because I feel that he needs to be pushed more, that it has been over four years now of policies that have been killing innocent people with drones. It has been now over eleven years that innocent people are still being held in GuantĆ”namo and now being force-fed. These are crisis situations, and it requires more from us as citizens.""
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Anti-war activistsHuman rights activistsFeminists from the United StatesEnvironmentalists from the United StatesActivists from New York (state)
Original Language: English
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Sources
Amy Goodman Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America (2016)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Medea_Benjamin
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Medea Benjamin
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