On September 24, 2008, Code Pink and other American peace groups met for two hours with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York. The meeting was coordinated by the interfaith peace group the Fellowship of Reconciliation and occurred a day after his appearance at the United Nations General Assembly.
As a result of that meeting, Code Pink's Jodie Evans is, at the moment, en route to Iran to meet with Iranian peace groups, possibly to meet with Ahmadinejad again.
Air America's Richard Green, CLOUT, has an interview with Evans the day before her peace mission to Iran:
http://airamerica.com/...
According to Evans the meeting on September 24 was civil and amicable. The first hour of the meeting was taken up in fielding questions from the American groups, the second hour was spent by Ahmadinejad responding to the questions.
From the CodePink press release:
At the meeting at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, coordinated by interfaith peace group the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the peace activists talked to Ahmadinejad about their desire to strengthen people-to-people ties between the two countries. They presented several proposals for the Iranian government to consider and copies of a petition signed by 50 U.S. mayors all over the country calling for diplomatic engagement with Iran, not military action. The petition, promoted by CODEPINK, illustrates how local U.S. leaders are anxious to move national resources away from military intervention and into reinvestment in infrastructure, schools and health care. CODEPINK proposed taking a delegation of U.S. Mayors to Iran to create "sister cities."
"U.S. government officials are quick to stir up hostilities with Iran, but the American people are tired of war," said Benjamin, co-founder of the nonpartisan women’s peace group CODEPINK. "The peace movement represents the sentiment of the majority of Americans who want our two countries to find ways to work together and improve relations. We are modeling the behavior we want to see our government adopt."
The CODEPINK women proposed inviting American and Iranian artists to build a "peace park" in Tehran, a memorial dedicated to people-to-people commitment to peace and diplomacy between our two countries.
They also proposed a plan to invest funds in an Iranian business, one that produces green and sustainable products, such as bicycles. This grassroots investment would be the opposite of efforts by the Bush administration and Congress to tighten sanctions, a move which CODEPINK thinks would only hurt ordinary, everyday Iranians. Such a symbolic CODEPINK investment in a green, sustainable business would challenge U.S. regulations blocking trade with Iran and would show how diplomacy and trade are preferable to war and sanctions.
http://codepink4peace.org/...
The issue of the treatment of women was raised. Ahmadinejad joked that very likely the next president of Iran would be a woman (his two vice presidents are women), 70% of the students in university are women, that essentially the entire Iranian treasury is composed of women staffers -- and he highly recommends similar staffing in the United States to help our nation out with its economic problems.
Unfortunately, there appears to be absolutely no MSM coverage of this meeting and trip and my sources for this item were limited by that lack of coverage.
The current watchword of CodePink is:
War Is So Over!
And, I'm thinking of getting a CodePink T-shirt, although I hate the color pink. I wonder if they have any with long sleeves.