-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 25, 2007 11:32:16 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fwd: Office Arrests: The Shame of John Conyers
After nearly an hour of talking with Conyers, an angry Cindy
Sheehan emerged
together with Yearwood and McGovern, and announced to the waiting
throng in the
hall that Conyers had told them "impeachment ISN'T going to happen
because we
DON'T have the votes." Sheehan said Conyers insisted that the best
thing was
to focus on the 2008 elections, i.e., getting Democrats like
Conyers re-elected.
To a loud and angry chorus of boos and hisses, the three went back
inside
Conyers' office suite, where they were joined by some 30 other
supporters -- and
all were subsequently arrested, at Conyers' request, by Capitol
police, who
cuffed them and walked them off for booking. Several of those who
sat in refused
to walk and were carried or dragged out of the Rayburn Office
Building, as the
activists in the hall chanted "Shame on Conyers! Shame on Conyers!"
Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL.com.
From: "Jim S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: July 25, 2007 12:42:06 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Office Arrests: The Shame of John Conyers
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18065.htm
*Office Arrests: The Shame of John Conyers*
By Dave Lindorff
07/24/07
"ICH" -- 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
48 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.
The three, together with several hundred other impeachment
activists who packed
the fourth floor hallway outside Rep. Conyers' office, had come to
press Conyers
to take action on impeachment, and specifically to start action on
H.Res. 333,
the bill submitted nearly three months ago by Rep. Dennis Kucinich
calling for
the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.
After nearly an hour of talking with Conyers, a clearly angry
Sheehan emerged
together with Yearwood and McGovern, and announced to the waiting
throng in the
hall that Conyers had told them "impeachment isn’t going to happen
because we
don’t have the votes." Sheehan said Conyers had insisted that the
best thing was
for Democrats to focus on "winning big in 2008."
To a loud and angry chorus of boos and hisses, the three went back
inside
Conyers' office suite, where they were joined by some 30 other
supporters, and
all were subsequently arrested, at Conyers' request, by Capitol
police, who
cuffed them and walked them off for booking. Several of those who
sat in refused
to walk and were carried or dragged out of the Rayburn Office
Building, as the
activists in the hall chanted "Shame on Conyers! Shame on
Conyers!" and "Arrest
Bush, Not the People!"
It was a thoroughly disgraceful scene wholly unworthy of a dean of the
Congressional Black Caucus.
Before returning to sit in the Judiciary Chairman’s office and
await arrest,
Sheehan publicly announced her intention to run in 2008 as an
independent
candidate for Congress against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and she
called on
Americans everywhere to run not just against Republicans in 2008,
but against
Democrats too.
Yearwood, who is a chaplain in the Air Force, said that Conyers had
been a mentor
to him, but he declared that he now felt betrayed and that
Americans needed to
take back their government. As he was led down the hall to his
arraignment, the
handcuffed Yearwood pointedly sang "We Shall Overcome!"
This reporter subsequently called Conyers' press office for an
explanation of
Conyers' true position on impeachment. Only a few days earlier,
the congressman,
visiting a San Diego meeting on health care reform, had told
members of
Progressive Democrats of America that it was time to "take these
two guys (Bush
and Cheney) out" and had promised that if just "a few more" members
of the House
signed on to the Kucinich bill (it already has 14 co-sponsors), he
would move it
forward for consideration in his Judiciary Committee. Asked how
that statement
squared with what he had told the group of activists in his office,
the spokesman
said Conyers' "must have been misunderstood” in San Diego. He said
that in view
of Conyers' statement to Sheehan and the others today, the Kucinich
bill was "not
going to go anywhere."
As impeachment activist David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org has
said, there
"seems to be two John Conyers," one who, in 2005 and early 2006, while
Republicans controlled the House, was systematically making the
case for
impeaching the president and vice president (he had even submitted
a bill, with
39 co-sponsors, which called for creation of a select committee to
investigate
possible impeachable crimes by the administration), and one who,
submitting to
the wishes of the new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was keeping
impeachment "off
the table."
Occasionally the former Conyers breaks out, saying things such as
that the
president needs to be "taken out" or, as he put it at an anti-war
rally last
spring, that "we can fire him!" But then the other Conyers comes
to the fore,
and stands in the way of impeachment action.
This time, however, it was worse than just doing nothing. The
arrest of
impeachment activists and their forcible eviction from his office
was a betrayal
of people who were doing the very kind of thing that had allowed
Conyers to make
his way into Congress in the first place: sitting in to insist on
action on their
demands for justice. It was, after all, sit-ins that helped lead
to the Voting
Rights Act which allowed African American candidates like Conyers
to finally win
seats in the U.S. Congress.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the Democratic Party --
Congressional
Black Caucus and Progressive Caucus included -- has become nothing
but a dried
out husk, living on old glories and devoid of any principle other
than returning
its elected officials to their offices and their perks, year after
year. As one
angry activist in the hallway remarked, "Where is today's (Rep.
Allard)
Lowenstein or Father Drinan. There is none!"
It's ironic that Rep. Conyers, speaking in 2005 on "Democracy Now!"
following
Rosa Parks' death at the age of 92, said her passing "is probably
the end of an
era." Certainly, with his request to have Capitol Police officers
enter his
office (the very office where Parks once had worked as a staff
member!) to cuff
and arrest peaceful protesters who were trying to defend the
Constitution, he has
made that point far more clearly than he could have expressed it in
mere words.
But as in the case of Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights movement,
arrests and fines
will not stop the national grassroots drive to impeach this
president and vice
president. With polls showing that a majority of the country now
favors
impeachment, and with Conyers, Pelosi, and the Democratic Congress
sinking deeper
and deeper into disfavor even as the president continues to add to
his list of
Constitutional crimes, something's gotta give. After all, the
Founders, in
writing impeachment into the Constitution, did not say the test was
whether
Congress had the votes to impeach. They wrote that if the
president abused his
power, or committed other high crimes and misdemeanors, bribery or
treasson,
Congress "shall" impeach.
The American public has made it clear: we want impeachment and we
want the troops
home.
If Congress doesn't act on these two key issues, they will not get
that "big win"
Conyers' called for in 2008.
Some members of the Democratic Caucus may not even be back if they
keep this up.
~~~
Dave Lindorff’s most recent book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St.
Martin's
Press, 2006). His work is available at:
www.thiscantbehappening.net ]
------------------------
"America is a nation founded on the principle that all human life
is sacred…
Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not
ethical."-- G.W.
Bush on the occasion of vetoing Congressional bill on stem cell
research…
June 20, 2007
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