Stunts

Some people wonder what point there is for Code Pink to engage in their usual "stunts" during Obama's inauguration next month.  Oddly enough, there is a precedent provided by some other uppity women:

When Woodrow Wilson arrived in Washington, D.C., on March 3, 1913, he expected to be met by crowds of people welcoming him for his inauguration as United States President the next day.

But very few people came to meet his train. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people were lining Pennsylvania Avenue, watching a Woman Suffrage Parade.

Organizers of the parade, led by suffragists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, planned the parade for the day prior to Wilson's first inauguration in hopes that it would turn attention to their cause: winning a federal suffrage amendment, gaining the vote for women.
...
Of the estimated half million onlookers watching the parade instead of greeting the President-elect, not all were supporters of woman suffrage. Many were angry opponents of suffrage, or were upset at the march's timing. Some hurled insults; others hurled lighted cigar butts. Some spit at the women marchers; others slapped them, mobbed them, or beat them.

The parade organizers had obtained the necessary police permit for the march, but the police did nothing to protect them from their attackers. Army troops from Fort Myer were called in to stop the violence. Two hundred marchers were injured.

The next day, the inauguration proceeded. But public outcry against the police and their failure resulted in an investigation by the District of Columbia Commissioners and the ousting of the police chief.

More than that, the sympathy generated even more support for the cause of woman suffrage and women's rights. In New York, the annual woman suffrage parade in 1913, held on May 10, drew 10,000 marchers, one in twenty of whom were men. Between 150,000 and 500,000 watched the parade down Fifth Avenue.

Imagine if more people pulled stunts as part of an overall strategic approach to effect change...

ntodd