Nancy Pelosi, Rudely Interrupted

by Alexa Pichert
Denver, August 27, 2008

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, walked into the Buell Theater Monday afternoon to be welcomed by a standing ovation. While all this was happening a group of women dressed from head to toe in pink wearing beauty pageant sashes and tiaras that were pink as well ran to the front of the stage holding up pink banners and screaming “YOU LIED TO OUR FACES NANCY!”, “WHY ARE YOU KILLING OUR SONS IN IRAQ?!”. They were quickly escorted out by security and I assumed it was all over.

I was wrong. Pelosi (and I can only hope to look half as good as she does by the time I’m nearly 70) attempted to tell the audience about her experiences being the first woman as the House Majority Leader was continuously interrupted. The women from the organization Code Pink would randomly stand up from their seats and shout out anti-war comments. Each person who did this was escorted out of the building but there were so many women from the organization there that it wasn’t until Pelosi was nearly done talking that they had all been escorted out. By the end of all this, the audience had grown so annoyed with Code Pink that people began yelling back at them for their random out bursts and booing them as they left the building.

Pelosi for the most part ignored their shouts and interruptions but did stop a few times to say she was going to talk about her opinions on the war toward the end of her speech. I’m definitelly not the most informed person in this city about politics but to me it didn’t make sense for them to be protesting Nancy Pelosi. As far as I could tell, she was against the war too. She said in her speech she voted against it and had never wanted us to go into Iraq. Unless Pelosi is lying or there was something that I missed out on, it didn’t make sense to protest at her speech.

I felt it was very inappropriate of Code Pink to get their message across the way they did. They turned people off to their cause because of their over-the-top actions. They continuously interrupted a speech by someone I thought was very interesting; I had been looking forward to hearing what she had to say.

Code Pink along with several other protesters here in Denver seem to be almost provoking the public and the police into anger. If they are protesting for peace, why are these people saying and doing things that insult other people? Insulting Nancy Pelosi and not letting her speak did nothing to get us to peace.