A Pink Protest at the World Bank

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/04/18/a-pink-protest-at-the-world-bank/



About 20 people, some clad in pink and others carrying luggage, protested outside the World Bank at noon today, shouting, “Pack your bags, Mr. Wolfowitz, it’s time to go home!” The protest is the latest in a series calling for the resignation of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz after disclosures of a pay-and-promotion package he helped work out for his girlfriend, a World Bank employee now detailed to the State Department.

“Nepotism is not the most serious of Paul Wolfowitz’s crimes,” said Medea Benjamin, one of the founders of Code Pink, a pro-peace organization whose members showed up in mock pink police uniforms, blowing whistles and cordoning off the front of the World Bank with crime-scene tape, while World Bank staffers came and went on their lunch hour. But “didn’t they get Al Capone on taxes?” Benjamin added. “We want him out.”

“Our objective is to link the scandal to other larger issues…the lies that were told in the run up to the Iraq war and haven’t had any consequences,” said organizer Sameer Dossani, director of the 50 Years is Enough Network, a nonprofit group that monitors the World Bank’s activities. Before coming to the World Bank, Wolfowitz had been deputy Defense secretary.