AfterDowningStreet.org
By Dave Lindorff
If Rosa Parks had lived two years longer, what happened today in the halls of Congress might have killed her. It certainly would have broken her heart.
Rep. John Conyers, venerable member of Congress, finally chair of the House Judiciary Committee, a man who worked with Parks in Alabama and then hired her on his staff after he won election to Congress in Detroit, today had several dozen impeachment activists, including Gold Star Families for Peace founder Cindy Sheehan, Iraq Veteran Against the War activist Lennox Yearwood and Intelligence Veterans for Sanity founder Ray McGovern arrested for conducting a sit-in in his office in the Rayburn House Office Building.
Nicely said Heidi
Well behaved women rarely make it into the history books. A well behaved woman, Speaker of the House Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, armed with only a B.A. from Trinity College, made the uneducated decision to go down in the history books as saying “Impeachment is off the table.”
Within only her first 100 hours in office, she made women all around the country question, “Can she really do that?” As Speaker of the House, has she been granted enough power to take away the voice of the other members of Congress (and the American people for that matter) and decide that President Bush and Vice President George Cheney are protected from impeachment? Who put her in charge of our agenda?
I had to sit down. It was just too much to take in. I want women elected to high positions of power to represent us, but do I really want them to take away the voice of the people? Maybe not. Congresswoman Pelosi, please give me back my voice.
In fact, why not just listen for a change? Listen to us, the power of the people, that are horrified that because of this unjust war, we are now $58 trillion dollars in debt. Ooopppsidaisey, I stand corrected, $59 trillion dollars in debt. You know, I’m not sure if we are $58 or $59 trillion dollars in debt. Nancy, would you mind checking up on that number and getting back to me? I’m not even one of your constitutents that you have failed to listen to or represent their ideas, I’m just one of the millions of tax payers in this country that believe it is intrinsically wrong that Dick Cheney’s wife should be on the Board of Directors of Lockheed Martin while this corporation stands to benefit the most from the war in Iraq. There seems to be a conflict of interest there that the writers of our precious Constitution probably didn’t see coming down the pike when they were drafting it. I mean who dreamed back then that women would ever make it onto the Board of Directors?
Or would become Speaker of the House for that matter? Fortunately, the rules are firm and clear enough in the Constitution that when our leaders abuse their power they can be removed from office by impeachment, as in the case of President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney; or by being voted out of office, as in your case.
GO GET HER CINDY SHEEHAN! RUN AGAINST HER! NANCY PELOSI IS NOT LISTENING TO US!
Cindy Sheehan, Rosa Parks, Helen Keller, Shirley Chisholm…what do these women all have in common? They all had a desire to protest. Remember that well behaved women rarely make it into the history books.
I am certain that the name of Cindy Sheehan will go down in the history books as one of the greatest women in America, right up there with Rosa Parks Helen Keller, and Shirley Chisholm. It’s too bad no one has created the time machine yet. If Shirley Chisholm were around today, she would not have let this go by without making a loud, impossible to ignore statement against the arrests of protestors. Rosa Parks and Helen Keller would have been right up there with her.
It’s always interesting to me that the true background of Rosa Parks was not more publicized. She met Dr. Martin Luther King at the Hylander Folk School, founded by Myles Horton. He was the creator of the Citizenship Schools that taught African American citizens to read the constitution so that they would be able to pass their literacy test and finally be able to vote. She was SYSTEMATICALLY TRAINED to be a protestor and when the right opportunity became available, she protested loud enough that when she passed on, she was the only woman ever to be honored to rest at state in the rotunda of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Yet she remains to this day be described in Americana as a seamstress too tired to move to the back of the bus. She was a highly skilled protestor.
Maybe we should open Citizenship Schools for our esteemed leaders in Washington and teach them how to read the Constitution of the United States? Perhaps then they will remember to allow us to have Freedom of Speech as protected by the Constitution and our right to gather and protest that which is wrong.
I am also surprised that the true history of Helen Keller’s radical socialist politics is rarely revealed. “Always a voice for the voiceless, Helen Keller championed women’s suffrage. Her position at the head of this 1912 demonstration shows her celebrity status as well as her commitment to the cause.” (From James W. Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong, p. 21)
It was Helen Keller (1880-1968) that said, “One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.” Our government is dragging us through the mud, soiling our name as our military creeps through the backyards of the innocent people whose countries we decided to invade. How did our oil get under their soil? If we ever want to see this country soar again and be honorable and just, we had better listen to the voices of those protestors Rep. John Conyers arrested that are trying to get this country back on track.
Rep. John Conyers has already earned his place in history. Publishing What Went
Wrong in Ohio, his own involvement in marching and protesting in the Civil Rights Movement, and his awesome effort to hold the feet to the fire of our spineless leaders when they allowed the 1 million votes of African American voters not to be counted in Florida’s 2000 presidential election, the list goes on…
I hope that Rep. John Conyers will deliver on his promise, find three more congress people to sign on for impeachmen of Pres. Bush and Vice Pres. Cheney, and begin the impeachment process, and LEAVE THOSE PROTESTORS ALONE! They have taken everything else away from us: our news media and anchors like Walter Cronkite have been replaced with Bill O’Reilly types and corporate media monsters such as Rupert Murdoch that lie. At least let us use our own voice to say what our leaders will not.