Honoring Oaths of Office – Part I: The Minneapolis City Council
by Mikael Rudolph with Natalie Morrison
Over the past couple of months members of the local chapter of the Minneapolis-based national organization ImpeachforPeace.org have been attempting to dialogue with the Minneapolis City Council and with Mayor R.T. Rybak in order to encourage the council to consider passing a resolution calling upon Congress to consider impeaching President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
With the Detroit (Michigan) City Council last week becoming the largest of dozens of cities and towns across the nation having passed similar resolutions, and doing so in a unanimous vote, the opinion of the Minneapolis city council is of great interest to the rapidly growing number of impeachment, peace and justice activists around the country.
The suggested resolution focuses upon the misleading of the U.S. Congress and the American people through the suppression and manipulation of intelligence leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq as well as upon illegal domestic spying, illegal torture and illegal detention. These issues were chosen from among the multitude of impeachable crimes and misdemeanors committted by the Bush Administration as documented on the IFP evidence page.
The resolution template forwarded to the council was downloaded from www.impeachbush.tv as part of a coordinated effort along with multiple national peace and justice activism groups organized by the Progressive Democrats of America.
A packet containing a copy of the evidence page and sample resolution mentioned above along with a list of other city councils around the nation who have passed similar resolutions was mailed to each member as well as to Mayor Rybak. A brief six question e-mail followed asking each member to clarify their position on impeachment as well as a separate personal appeal sent via e-mail. Finally a round of follow-up phone calls was made to each council member.
The responses to this grassroots appeal, and lack thereof, ran the gamut.
Cam Gordon, the only Green Party member on the council, has been lobbied heavily to sponsor the resolution by fellow “˜Green’ and IFP member, Minnesota senatorial candidate Michael Cavlan. Gordon is supportive of the effort as is Gary Schiff, but agrees with Schiff, who says: “We don’t have the votes”. Neither is eager to sponsor a resolution destined to fail and Gordon encouraged citizens to lobby their peers on the council to drum up more support.
Gordon said that he thought many of the Bush Administration’s actions do warrant impeachment but he was concerned that an actual impeachment could make Bush a “victim”, which was taken to mean that he feared Bush would be made into a sympathetic martyr.
Any single council member can introduce the resolution, but it would take a simple majority of seven votes from the 13 member council for it to pass.
When told that members of IFP fear that without fully addressing the current damage to our constitution that America may not be able to totally recover and go on with business as usual, Gordon said: “Yeah… I wonder… I hope so”.
The Green Party of the United States has publicy supported impeachment efforts and passed an impeachment resolution of their own in July of 2003.
Paul Ostrow, who said that “the current President […] may very well go down as the nation’s worst” and Ralph Remington who according to a staff member “agrees personally with the resolution” hold the curious position that passing such a resolution would be out of the pervue of the council. Betsy Hodges agreed in saying: “I do not think this is an issue to be addressed at the municipal level”.
Having recently co-sponsored an admirable resolution calling for an end to the Iraq War and thus weighing in on national foreign policy decisions, Remington’s claim that a resolution dealing with domestic political and legal matters is out of their reach is an interesting self-imposed restriction – especially when the oaths of office sworn by each council member specifically call for them to protect the U.S. Constitution from exactly these sort of domestic enemies to that self-same constitution.
Ostrow, Hodges, Barbara Johnson and Lisa Goodman abstained in the “Bring the Troops Home” resolution passed by the council on January 26th of this year. Feeling that it was outside of the defined role of the council was repeatedly noted as a factor for those declining to vote on the anti-war statement as well as justification for not wanting to support an impeachment resolution.
Remington, Gordon, Schiff, Diane Hofstede, Don Samuels, Robert Lilligren, Elizabeth Glidden, Scott Benson and Sandy Colvin Roy supported the anti-war resolution.
Arguments to each council member that their oaths of office made them duty bound to defend the Constitution of the United States of America against these domestic enemies who have abused their executive authority to wage a comprehensive war against the rights and freedoms we citizens are promised did not seem to initially affect the positions of each council member.
The questions e-mailed to “Esteemed City Council Members of Minneapolis,” were as follows:
1. Do you personally support this resolution?
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2. If yes, will you, as a member of the city council, champion this resolution by bringing it to the table and entering it as a motion to be voted upon?
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2. If not, why?
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3. Do you believe that President Bush, Vice President Cheney and members of this administration have subverted our Constitution, broken U.S. and International laws and abused the powers of office through illegal war (intentionally milseading Congress and the public regarding the threat from Iraq to justify war), illegal spying, illegal breaking of the Geneva Conventions (conspiring to commit torture), illegal detention, illegal release of classified information, illegal freezing of accounts and restriction to freedom of assembly?
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4. If not, why?
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5. What actions, if any, will you be taking to hold the President and this administration accountable for their crimes and abuses of power?
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6. Are you willing to sign a petition for impeachment as a private individual, not representing the Minneapolis City Council?
A “thank you” followed as well as a reminder that “this is a national crisis and that we, as a nation cannot afford to proceed with any business, personal or political, until we address and correct the violations to our Constitution and the crimes of President Bush and his administration”.
Ironically, Hofstede’s terse seven word reply: “I will not be answering the questions” appeared to be at odds with her office staffer who said on the phone: “The letter was wonderful” and that the staffer “personally supports it one hundred percent!”.
According to an Ipsos poll last October, 50% of Americans agree that impeachment should be considered if Bush lied about the war in Iraq based upon this question asked:
“If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him.”
The traditionally Democratic-voting and predominantly liberal/progressive 5th District of Minnesota (Minneapolis) just resoundingly elected a representative who has been consistently supportive of holding Bush and Cheney accountable through the process of impeachment in Keith Ellison (D-MN), and the district is highly likely to be much more supportive of impeachment than the national average of 50%.
This begs the question of whether the Minneapolis City Council accurately represents the will of those constituents who entrusted them with this office or whether they are out of touch, rather, with the wishes of their constituency on this issue, as well as in denial of the solemnity of the oath they swore upon being elected.
An even more strident and slightly grammatically confused Goodman responded to this appeal from a group of her constituents in an e-mail reply: “I’ll make it simple for you. I do not have the time to reply to this set of questions or to chat about this on the phone about this issue [sic]”.
Despite multiple appeals, including at least four phone calls and three e-mails to each member, council members Johnson, Samuels, Lilligren, Benson and Colvin Roy have yet to reply to this on-going constituent appeal. Schiff’s reply only came in person when IFP members spoke with him at the May Day Parade shortly before speaking with Mayor Rybak about impeachment of Bush & Cheney.
The fact that Minneapolis’ 5th District Representative Keith Ellison (MN-D) reaffirmed his support of impeachment in a meeting with IFP last month along with last week’s news of the Detroit City Council’s resolution has encouraged IFP to push for a Town Hall meeting on the topic of impeachment, which has been tentatively scheduled by Ellison’s offices for Sunday, September 23rd. An earlier date was requested but Ellison’s schedule would not allow it.
All council members will be invited to this town hall meeting, as will the mayor.
ImpeachforPeace.org would like to ask them why we should continue to trust office holders such as themselves who seem to be comfortable proving by their inaction to be supportive of pervasive criminal activity devastatingly detrimental to our inalienable rights and constitutional protections by other public officials who swore an almost identical oath at the beginning of their terms of office.