Cindy Sheehan was invited by Rep. Lynn Woolsey to attend the State of the Union, a spectacle of unmitigated gall and unqualified greed, a pep rally for imperialism led by an over-the-hill, hapless cheerleader that was queasily enjoyed by the slimy bureaucrats who stuff their own piggy banks with the spoils of illegal, permanent war and the tax dollars of the working poor.
One of the few people in the audience who represents the will of the people who want to pull the curtain back and challenge this charade was pulled out of her seat and taken to jail by Capitol Police for wearing the shirt in the picture.
This is the state of the union.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk to people who are afraid, afraid of being blacklisted or whitelisted, if you will, from your own experience? What did that mean? I mean, here you were the Calypso King. You were the first one to sell a million albums, way ahead of Frank Sinatra, all of them, but you were willing to risk it all. And what did it mean? What did it mean to be blacklisted in this country?
HARRY BELAFONTE: Actually, upon hindsight, it meant that I was doing something right, and regardless of any doubts that I may have had in the beginning, in wondering where this was all going, I’ve come to find that men like Paul Robeson and women like Eleanor Roosevelt and Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker and so many noble warriors that were in the Civil Rights Movement, also those noble people in Africa, many who waged a vigorous resistance to colonialism, foremost would be Nelson Mandela, when our correspondence started while he was in prison and then ultimately to see the A.N.C. come about and bring a transition to a rather oppressive experience, one of the most in that century, and to do so nonviolently, to transform this government without firing one shot, all of these people stand as torches to my – to the validation of what it was that we did, as the principle, as the clear voice of what people have to do. And I would say to my colleagues, ‘If it is the economics of your life, when will you have enough? And at what price do you sell your soul when you know what the truth is and refuse to embrace it at the price of losing our democracy?’