Judiciary Committee members receiving “nonstop” impeach calls

[IFP received this email update from Brad Newsham – founder of the ‘Beach Impeach’ projects]

A Short Sweet Impeachment Story

Every day I try to do one thing, usually small, to forward
impeachment. Here’s the story of yesterday:

My friend Cynthia Papermaster sent me an email with the names and
phone numbers (below) of the six Democratic members of the House
Judiciary subcommittee who have waffled on Kucinich’s “Impeach Cheney”
bill. It’s been sitting in their subcommittee since last April. So I
started dialing. Each time a staffer answered I would say something
like this: “I’m calling to ask (the congressperson) to please move
forward on the Impeach Cheney bill. You do know the one I’m talking
about?”

All six staffers had near-identical responses: “I certainly do!”

Me: “You’ve been getting a lot of calls on this?”

Them: “Oh, I think it’s plenty safe to say that, Yes, we have indeed
been getting a LOT of calls on this.”

Me: “Is (the congressperson) going to move on it?”

Them: “Well, s/he’s certainly listening to all the input.”

The sixth call, to the Honorable Melvin Watt of North Carolina, had a
surprise ending. When I asked the staffer if he’d been getting a lot
of calls, he said:

“In all the time I’ve been here, we have never gotten as many calls
on any subject as we’re getting on this one. It is nonstop!”

“Really!”

“Oh, I can’t tell you…”

Me: “So, is there any hope?”

“You know,” he said, “I wish I had something to tell you. But I’m
really just a cog in the wheel.”

“Oh, I’m a cog in the wheel, too,” I said. And then, since we were
now just two humans talking, I just threw this out there: “You know, I
live out in the San Francisco Bay Area, and last year I organized four
‘Beach Impeach’ events where…”

“You’re kidding!” he said. “I’m sitting here right this minute
looking at a picture of one of them!”

“Really!” You spend as much time and energy and money as I did, as we
all did, on making those events happen, and in the end it’s easy to
think they made no difference at all. And then this! My whole body was
instantly tingling. “Oh, that’s fantastic!”

He says, “Oh, yeah — this is great, man! That’s a lot of people —
you organized that?”

“I did. How’d you get the picture?”

“Well, I first saw it in the news way back when. And now people send
us the postcards all the time. I’ve got a couple more here on my desk
somewhere. People send them with their emails, too. Someone sent us a
blowup photo, and that’s what I’m looking at right now.”

Our conversation went on for a while, but that was the important
part: You never know. You never know what sort of ripples, what sort
of difference all our little (and big) acts will create. Although it
can often seem that we’re nothing but a bunch of crazy dreamers, and
although it seems that the media has been aggressively ignoring us for
years now, there are a LOT of us out here, and if we just keep it
up… Less than two years before I watched Nixon’s helicopter fly away
from the White House for the very last time, he was reelected in a
historic landslide. You just simply never know. (If you’ve got a few
minutes to make calls, or even a single call, the numbers are below.)

Keep the faith.

Beach Impeach 5 is happening on April 26, at Ocean Beach in San
Francisco. Helicopter(s) overhead at 11 a.m. sharp. Details being
arranged. Stay tuned.

Brad Newsham
4096 Piedmont Av #723
Oakland, CA 94611
[email protected]
415-305-8294

Six waffling Democrats on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the
Constitution:

John Conyers (Michigan) — 202-225-5126
Jerrold Nadler (New York)– 202-225-5635
Artur Davis (Alabama) — 202-225-2665
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Florida) — 202-225-7931
Robert Scott (Virginia) — 202-225-8351
Melvin Watt (North Carolina) — 202-225-1510

PS — While I was typing the above, an email arrived from World Can’t
Wait. Bush is sneaking into the Bay Area tonight to attend a
fundraiser in Hillsborough at which 105 Republicans will donate $1.5
million dollars ($140,00 per plate?). The exact address is not known,
but World Can’t Wait’s best guess is that it will be at a mansion at
565 Remillard Dr, Hillsborough, CA 94010-6739. Mapquest says it’s a
40-minute drive from my house. I may try to rearrange my schedule to
go over and find a spot to stand with an “IMPEACH AND IMPRISON”
placard. Sounds pointless, but you never know. See you there?