Hearings and Tera the Terrible with a smile!

Today we attempted our best to sit in on the hearings about money for the Iraq war.

It was very discouraging to see the predominantly old white male group of well-groomed men talking as if the escalation in Iraq is a done deal.

I stood up twice to interrupt their reprehensible mundane ‘questions’ that shouted ‘war, war, war – more, more, more’.

The first time I implored them to listen to the will of the people – we want them to END WAR NOW!

Shortly after I sat down, a womon police officer came over to inform me that I was doing something illegal and that I could not do it again without risking arrest.

I informed her that these men were doing things much more illegal and we need to arrest them.

Lori stood up and said “Sticking with Bush is sticking it to the troops” in response to someone suggesting we ‘stick w/Bush’.

The second time I stood up, one of the members had asked Gates when the war was going to be over, how much more money, more soldiers, more time did he need to be able to say the war would be over.

I stood up and said “The war will be over as soon as you stop funding the war”.

The chair told me to sit down and if I interrupted again, I would be removed from the room.

A police officer came over to Medea, grabbed her arm, and dragged her out of the room. She had been silent, not wanting to risk arrest, but had stood in solidarity with me and had attempted to hold a sign “defund the war” hastily magic markered on 8 ½ x 11 paper!

Another police officer came over and asked me to leave with him. I pointed out to him that the chair had said I could stay. He said he needed to talk with me and asked me again to leave the room. I told him he could talk with me right here. I asked him if he heard what these men were saying. He told me he did and he was also horrified but he wanted to talk with me outside. I asked him if he would allow me to return if I went out with him. He promised he would.

When we got outside, Medea was there talking with her cop, I was talking with mine, and Lori had joined us to observe.

After much scolding and scowling, we thought we were going to be allowed back into the room when the womon cop – the one who had orchestrated the action in McCain’s office – came huffing and puffing, and smiling, into the hallway.

She announced she’d arrived and was talking over our punishment. She decided we were not going to be allowed back into the hearing. We tried negotiating, we tried returning for our things, we tried reasoning, we tried informing her the chair did NOT ask them to remove us - she shouted as she grinned ear-to-ear she was in charge, no one else & she was ordering us to leave.

When we finally got our things & had given up getting back in at that moment, she decided she was going to “76” us – which meant she was going to run our id’s. Medea did NOT want this to happen, in case that same bureaucratic glitch that had ended her in the D.C. jail for 26 hours earlier this week had not been rectified yet.

We were moved to another small hallway behind private doors, our id’s were taken and run, and we were permitted to make phone calls and talk freely.

After several minutes and several lectures later, we were told the computers were down so they couldn’t really check our records and if we were not in the building when they came up, we would not be arrested.

Off we went to the Rayburn building to view our technological advances in warfare.