The Progressive shares two accounts of dissent at the Democratic Convention - one from Medea Benjamin: I went onto the floor of the convention on Tuesday night when Teresa Heinz was speaking and opened up a banner that said, 'End the Occupation of Iraq.' It was maybe three feet by two feet. Pink, of course. I was immediately surrounded by police, who tried to take it away from me. They said, 'Only official signs are allowed.' I stood my ground, and they started pulling me and pushing me and asked me for my pass, and I showed it to them. They said, 'But she's not press, she shouldn't be here, we've got to get her out.' I was in front of the Colorado delegation, and some of them were saying, 'Free speech. Let her stay.' And others were being told that they should get up and surround me and stick their Kerry signs over mine, which they dutifully did. And then I heard Teresa Heinz say, 'The true patriot is one who speaks truth to power,' so I started speaking truth to power, and I started yelling, 'Will John Kerry bring the troops home? Will John Kerry take an anti-war stand?' - and the other from delegate Vincent Lavery: The next day, I was at an anti-war event that the AFSC was putting on, and I picked up five 'Say No to War' signs, which had three-inch sticks on them. I took the stick off one and put the sign in my pocket. As I went through the inspection at the convention, they took the four away from me. So I took out the last one, the one without the stick, from my pocket, and wrote on the back, 'DNC would not allow this sign!' I then moved around almost the entire convention, standing in front of each delegation. In many cases, the reaction was complete apathy, a few gave me a frightened thumbs up, and some said sit down and stop being disruptive. When I started walking around, the DNC sent out two employees who surrounded me with Kerry/Edwards signs to block me. I said, 'The two of you should be ashamed of yourselves.' I asked one of them, 'Why are you doing this?' 'We have to keep signs away from the TV cameras.' I said, 'Who instructed you to follow me?' His answer was, 'I can't say.'