CLEVELAND ― A demonstrator brought GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention speech to a brief halt Thursday night, as police attempted to remove her from Quicken Loans Arena.
She was quickly identified as Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink, a women-led peace organization. Benjamin wore a banner that read, “Build Bridges, Not Walls,” and said she was there to stand up to Trump’s hateful and divisive rhetoric.
“Scapegoating immigrants and refugees ― some of the most marginalized and powerless members of our society ― for the problems we face as a nation is deeply racist,” Benjamin said in a press release. “I rose to disrupt Trump’s ‘victory speech’ tonight to make sure that no one, whether in the arena or watching in their living room, could overlook the horrifying racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and misogyny that is at the root of Donald Trump’s ideology. We want to build bridges not walls, and we want peace and love, not hate and war.”
Benjamin is a prolific protester. She’s heckled President Barack Obama, former President George W. Bush, and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In 2004, she managed to disrupt both the Republican and Democratic national conventions to protest the war in Iraq.
Despite her track record, Benjamin seems to continue to make it past security.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims ― 1.6 billion members of an entire religion ― from entering the U.S.