Washington D.C. police appeared at the home of Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin on Wednesday to threaten her with jail time for an assault allegation that she claims is the exact opposite of what took place.
Alarm! DC police are trying to arrest @medeabenjamin for allegations of assault at the Venezuelan Embassy over the summer and she is broadcasting it live on Facebook. Huge number of police at her house. This is outrageous.
— Tim Shorrock (@TimothyS) November 13, 2019
Benjamin talked with journalist Ford Fischer of News2Share about the ordeal she had to go through because of her anti-war activism. She claims it happened after she was accosted while protesting a bipartisan press conference led by Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-CA) in favor of regime change in Venezuela.
“When I came home, my house was surrounded by police. They were going backwards on a one-way street, and coming in with these big police cars and then coming in on motorcycles and surrounding the house, and I was scared to death,” she explained.
Law enforcement informed her that she was being accused of assaulting a member of Congress, and that she could either surrender herself now or wait for them to produce a warrant. Understanding her rights, she chose to wait for law enforcement to get the warrant.
“They said there is a detective coming, and I called a lawyer and they said don’t go if they don’t have a warrant, and so we waited and waited, and then, umm, all of a sudden they said you’re free to go,” Benjamin said.
Medea just called me again to say that they actually left. This is what she’d posted before.
My eta there is 20 minutes, I’ll try to have a livestream / interview with her to discuss what happened. pic.twitter.com/7ryAGIgZwF
— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) November 13, 2019
Benjamin believes that law enforcement saw the actual footage of the event and could ascertain that she committed no crime. Still, she is shaken up and traumatized by the entire experience.
“I think it shows how closely… the Democratic Party and the Republican Party work hand-in-glove with the Venezuelan opposition who are very aggressive,” she said.
Benjamin pointed into aggressive treatment anti-war protesters received from Venezuelan coup supporters over the summer, when protesters were spit on and attacked at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington D.C. and law enforcement refused to charge the perpetrators after the fact.
“Our government, the security forces, are working with the Venezuelan opposition just like our State Department is, our White House is, and it’s very scary to know that you as a citizen have no protection in your own country because your government and all the security forces it has are working with a foreign group that wants to overthrow a foreign government,” she said.
The Ron Paul Institute of Peace and Prosperity has explained in detail how the U.S. is working for neoliberal regime change in Venezuela against the will of the nation’s own people.
The attempted U.S.-backed coup in Venezuela has failed miserably up to this point, but that doesn’t mean that Washington D.C. will stop in their belligerent attempts to meddle in the oil-rich nation that has been ravaged by socialism.
