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Videos: Obama Reacts to Singing Bradley Manning Protesters at Fundraiser in San Francisco

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The group Courage to Resist has a post up from the Bradley Manning Support Network about a singing protest at President Obama's fundraiser at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco. Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence specialist, is currently incarcerated at Fort Leavenworth for allegedly releasing classified documents to the website WikiLeaks.

The Bay Citizen and Huffington Post have accounts of the protest. From the Bay Citizen:

A flash mob of 10 activists protesting the government's treatment of Private Bradley Manning serenaded President Obama at a private fundraiser at the posh St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco Thursday morning.

The president was in the middle of a speech talking about "how inspired he was by the creativity of the organizers supporting him in the 2008 election," said Emma Cape, 24, one of the protesters present, when Naomi Pitcairn, leader of the Bay Area-based Fresh Juice Party, stood up and offered to sing the president a song.

Here's a video focusing on the protesters and the audience, plus Obama's reaction to the disruption afterward.


And here's one showing a long shot of the President's laughing reaction during the song.

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The Huffington Post has the lyrics:

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 6x12 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?

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