{news} Cynthia McKinney's Call to Action

[Clifford Thornton]

Cynthia McKinney's Call to Action in Support of Dennis
Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment Against Bush 

>From Cynthia McKinney, Presidential Candidate

June 19, 2008, the Black Commentator

http://www.blackcommentator.com/282/282_mckinney_kucinnich_articles_impeachment.html<http://www.blackcommentator.com/282/282_mckinney_kucinnich_articles_impeachment.html>

(This statement is also posted on the website of Cynthia
McKinney's Power to the People presidential campaign)

With great satisfaction I learned of the courageous action
taken by Congressman Dennis Kucinich on Monday, June 9th. On
that day, on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives,
he rose to introduce House Resolution 1258, containing 35
Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush. The
litany of documented High Crimes and constitutional abuses by
the Bush administration took over five hours to recite.

I wish to take this opportunity to thank and commend Rep.
Kucinich for his courage and tenacity, for the
comprehensiveness of his research, and for the leadership he
exhibited to press forward the democratic demands of the
People for accountability and justice.

Under House Rule 9, which Rep. Kucinich invoked in
introducing H.Res. 1258 -- "a question of the privileges of
the House" -- the full House of Representatives was compelled
within 48 hours to bring the matter to a vote. Consequently,
two days later, on Wednesday, June 11th, our Congressional
Representatives voted overwhelmingly (by a 251-166 margin) to
refer the matter to the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by
Congressman John Conyers. Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment
effectively lay out the case against a lawless, degenerate
regime that places corporate power and profits above the good
and welfare of the U.S. Citizenry. In great detail they show
that Bush & Co.:

     * manufactured a fraudulent case for the Iraq war, lying
    to Congress and the American People; 

     * invaded Iraq illegally for the purpose of occupying a
      sovereign nation indefinitely and expropriating its
      public oil reserves and other natural resources for
      their billionaire cronies of corporate America;

     * negligently failed to provide protective gear to our
    troops;

     * outsourced the functions of the U.S. military and
    created a no-bid, private-contractor mercenary force
    which killed Iraqis with impunity and looted the
    treasuries of both the Iraqi and U.S. governments; 

     * tore up the United Nations Charter, the Geneva
    Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
    and other binding international treaties to which the
    U.S. is signatory;

      * retaliated against government whistleblowers attempting
    to shine a light on corruption, malfeasance and
    unconstitutional abuse of power; 

     * began illegal detentions without trial or access to
    counsel of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals alike; 

     * countenanced kidnapping and torture; 

     * created secret laws; 

     * unconstitutionally spied on American citizens without a
      court order; and the list goes on and on.

Each fact exhibited in Rep. Kucinich's 35 Articles of
Impeachment is true beyond dispute, and each by itself is
sufficient to demonstrate the need to remove this criminal
President and his gang of thugs from the Executive Branch --
not least of all because most if not all of the crimes are
still ongoing.

But, as a Black woman from the South familiar with the
struggle against discrimination and racism, I am moved most
profoundly, in particular, by three of the Articles of
Impeachment that I think serve to point out the real sickness
of this regime -- the fact that for Blacks, for Latinos, for
Native Americans, for all peoples of color, and for much of
the white working class, democracy has never really existed
in the United States, and that today the limited gains in the
direction of "a more perfect Union" that were won in struggle
two generations ago are now being reversed through the
deliberate, illegal policies of the gang that has taken over
the government.

I'm referring to:

     * Article 28 -- Tampering with Free and Fair Elections,
    Corruption of the Administration of Justice; 

     * Article 29 -- Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights
    Act of 1965; and 

     * Article 31 -- Katrina: Failure to Plan for the
      Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to
      Respond to a Civil Emergency.

Therefore, I am hereby putting out an urgent call to all the
progressive forces throughout this country -- including first
and foremost the democratic forces of the Black community,
together with my supporters in the Green Party, organizers of
the Reconstruction Party, and most especially Katrina
survivors -- to mobilize specifically around these three
Articles.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, one thing we have
learned through Barack Obama's success in capturing the
Democratic Party nomination -- when everyone knows Hillary
Clinton had been anointed by the Democratic Party apparatus
-- is that the People, when they mobilize at the grassroots,
can "flip the script" on the Power Structure.

This past Monday, backed up by the sustained pressure of a
persistent mass movement for impeachment, Dennis Kucinich
succeeded in "flipping the script" on the House Democratic
leadership, and now the Articles of Impeachment are before
the Judiciary Committee -- precisely the result that the
impeachment movement has been fighting for over the last five
years!

Today we find that the ball is back in our court. It's up to
the People now to "flip the script" once again. A massive
grassroots movement of the People must coalesce very quickly,
which can move Chairman Conyers and the House Judiciary
Committee to hold hearings on H.Res. 1258.

I call upon all the forces of the Black movement nationwide
-- whether they currently support my presidential bid or the
candidacy of Senator Obama, along with all my Green and
Reconstructionist supporters, Katrina survivors and their
supporters, the election protection movement, and all
progressive forces -- to organize a mass mobilization to push
the House Judiciary Committee to move on the 35 Articles of
Impeachment, with an explicit emphasis on the Black demands
for fairness, equality and justice as laid out in Articles
28, 29 and 31.

I propose that all these social movements immediately combine
in their local Congressional districts to organize street
demonstrations, send delegations to their Congress members,
and take any and all other steps necessary, including the
formation of ad-hoc action committees, to publicize Articles
28, 29 and 31 and convince their representatives to co-
sponsor H.Res. 1258. Time is of the essence, brothers and
sisters; it's necessary that we all swing into motion now.

Such efforts must especially focus on our Black members of
Congress. Most important, activists in districts represented
by the Black members of the House Judiciary Committee must
most energetically target their representatives: Chairman
John Conyers of Detroit; Bobby Scott of Richmond, Virginia;
Mel Watt of Western North Carolina; Sheila Jackson-Lee of
Houston; Maxine Waters of Los Angeles; my own distinguished
successor in office, Hank Johnson of Atlanta; Luis Gutiérrez
of Chicago; Artur Davis of Black-Belt Alabama; and Keith
Ellison of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

In the coming days and weeks, I will be announcing some
concrete steps I intend to take to assist in the development
of the mass movement it will take to ensure that
accountability and justice are imposed upon the lawless Bush
gang. Immediately, I am instructing my campaign staff to
assist by setting up internet resources through my campaign
website, RunCynthiaRun.org, that will be useful to local
activists in conducting their organizing.

We have seen in this very election cycle how the mobilized
masses, with Black America as their indispensable animating
force, can "flip the script" on the Powers That Be. The time
is now for us to do it again.

Keep the faith, my beautiful, powerful People!

To read more of Cynthia McKinneyâ?Ts writings, please visit
www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com<http://www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com/>.

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