It’s Time for MoveOn to Start Talking about Impeachment:
To Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org Executive Director:
With more than 3 million members, MoveOn plays a vital role not only in shaping public policy, but in educating the American public about the most important political issues of the day. With this power comes a responsibility to engage with these issues in as forthright a manner as possible.
Until now, MoveOn has declined to call for the impeachment of George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, citing a purported lack of interest among its membership. But, as many frustrated members have pointed out, they have not been asked. It has recently come to light that MoveOn is quietly conducting an online poll on the question among a small group of its members. We applaud this encouraging first step but hope that MoveOn will go further by soliciting feedback from its entire membership. When asked why the poll was not taken of all members, a MoveOn organizer explained:
Rarely do we send out a survey like this to the whole membership (we work very hard to send no more than one email to our members per day; the more they receive the less likely they are to open any of them, there is also an issue of bandwidth capabilities). We generally only do that when we have to act immediately or when we are acting on very specific legislation.
We feel confident that the membership of MoveOn will forgive the organization a single e-mail about a question of such urgency and importance. And we would remind MoveOn that specific legislation on impeachment already exists. H Res 333, introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), and cosponsored by Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO) and Rep. Janice Schakowsky (D-IL) calls for the impeachment of Vice-President Cheney on the grounds that he manipulated intelligence “to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq.”
Few will dispute that lying the nation into a disastrous war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and that these allegations merit serious examination by Congress. On April 28, 2007, Americans in more than 125 locations around the country took to the streets to demonstrate their support for impeachment. That same weekend, delegates to the annual convention of the California Democratic Party, the largest state chapter of the Democratic Party, overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Two days later, speaking on NPR, leading antiwar Congressman John Murtha (D-PA) pointedly said that impeachment was “on the table” in Congress.
The time has come for the Bush administration to be held accountable. We respectfully urge MoveOn to exercise leadership on the question of impeachment and to begin an open dialogue with its members about the issue. As MoveOn likes to say, “Every member has a voice.”
Contact: [email protected]
Original signers:
Medea Benjamin
Elaine Brower
Steering Committee, World Can’t Wait, mother of U.S. Marine
Tim Carpenter
Director, Progressive Democrats of America
Noam Chomsky
MIT
Marjorie Cohn
President, National Lawyers Guild
Elizabeth de la Vega
Former federal prosecutor and author of U.S. v. George W. Bush et. al.
Jane Dugdale
Coordinator, Bryn Mawr Council of MoveOn/Operation Democracy
Bob Fertik
President, Democrats.com and ImpeachPAC.org
Elizabeth Holtzman
Former Congresswoman, member of House panel that voted to impeach President Nixon, author of The Impeachment of George W. Bush.
Dave Lindorff
Author of The Case for Impeachment
Dennis Loo
Co-editor of Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney
Cynthia McKinney
Former Congresswoman, author of impeachment legislation in the 109th Congress
Bill Moyer
Executive Director, Backbone Campaign
Brad Newsham
Founder, The Beach Impeach Project
Jacob Park
A28 National Coordinator
Peter Phillips
Director, Project Censored, Co-editor of Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney
Cindy Sheehan
Director, Camp Casey Peace Institute
David Swanson
Co-founder, AfterDowningStreet.org coalition
Howard Zinn
Author of A People’s History of the United States
The atrocities and injustice of this administration should be recognized before Bush leaves office.
you all wish you can impeach Pres. Bush. I will tell if that bitch gets in or that niger gets in. that counrty that I love will be so fucked up. it will take 20 to 50 years to fix it. the bitch want high taxes,socialized medicine, and etc. the niger will do the same ,but we will be eaten more chicken and more watermelons then ever. so vote for a republican. thank you
IMPEACH NOW!!
This is my email to Rep. Velazquez at the fighting 12th District:
Dear Representative Velazquez,
I have lived in Williamsburg for 9 years. I was working at the Borders bookstore at 5 World Trade Center when the 9/11 attack took place. I got away unharmed, thank God, but I have been concerned by the course Bush administration took after essentially botching the action in Afghanistan, letting bin Laden get away, and getting distracted by the war in Iraq. I appreciate your own statements in opposition to the this war and agree with you. This email is to ask you to support Dennis Kucinich’s proposal to impeach Vice President Cheney. I lived in Cleveland, Ohio for most of my adult life. I moved there when Kucinich was mayor and I am aware of that his idealistic efforts are sometimes, perhaps, quixotic. Even so, the charges are serious, and I hope you consider them seriously. I think this Administration is incapable of learning from its mistakes and homeland security, as well as foreign policy, will continue to decline until Cheney and Bush are removed from office.
thank you,
Lawrence Swan