Obama interrupted by singing protesters

Ten protesters broke into President Obama’s speech Thursday, singing “We’ve paid our dues / Where’s our change?”, at a private breakfast fundraiser in San Francisco.

The protesters, who were attendees at the event held by the Democratic National Committee, treated the president and other guests to several verses of a song that, while pledging support for Obama, upbraided the administration for the treatment of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning.

{mosads}Manning, 23, is accused of leaking sensitive Defense Department documents to an unauthorized source, and is allegedly the person who transferred massive files of classified documents to WikiLeaks, who made them public. He has been held in military confinement for more than eight months and has not yet been tried.

Manning is currently in the process of being moved by DoD from the maximum-security brig at Quantico, Va., to the Joint Regional Correctional Facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Human-rights activists and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) have criticized the Obama administration and DoD about Manning’s pre-trial incarceration.

“Alone in a 6×12 cell sits Bradley 23 hours a day,” the protesters sang.

The incident began when a woman stood while the president was talking and said that her group had written a song.

According to a pool report, Obama then looked over to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and asked if the singing was her doing. Pelosi indicated that it was not.

The singers referenced the controversial Florida preacher, Terry Jones, who recently burned a copy of the Quran — much to the chagrin of the U.S. military command, the administration and many others — contrasting Jones’s liberty to do the “shameful” deed with Manning’s situation.

The singers also passed around signs featuring a photo of Manning with the text “Free Bradley Manning.”

After they finished, the woman who had introduced the song was escorted from the fundraiser.

“That was a nice song. Now where was I?” Obama said, and returned to his remarks.

“Over the last two-and-a-half years, change turned out to be tougher than we expected,” Obama said.

The interruption isn’t the first one for Obama. Last year, gay-rights protesters interrupted his speech at a fundraiser, also in California, for Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).
 
The entire song went as follows:

Dear Mr. President we honor you today sir
Each of us brought you $5,000
It takes a lot of Benjamins to run a campaign
I paid my dues, where’s our change?
We’ll vote for you in 2012, yes that’s true
Look at the Republicans — what else can we do
Even though we don’t know if we’ll retain our liberties
In what you seem content to call a free society
Yes it’s true that Terry Jones is legally free
To burn a people’s holy book in shameful effigy
But at another location in this country
Alone in a 6×12 cell sits Bradley
23 hours a day is night
The 5th and 8th Amendments say this kind of thing ain’t right
We paid our dues, where’s our change?

–This story was updated at 4:14 p.m.

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