Impeachment by the People
Zinn, Howard
By Howard Zinn Illustration by Sako Shahinian Impeachment by the People Courage is in short supply in Washington, D.C. The realities of the Iraq War cry out for the overthrow of a government...
...More recently, we recall the peace groups of the 1980s, which sprang up in hundreds of communities all over the country, and provoked city councils and state legislatures to pass resolutions in favor of a freeze on nuclear weapons...
...These hearings would be the contemporary equivalents of the unofficial gatherings that marked the resistance to the British Crown in the years leading up to the American Revolution...
...Unemployed Councils came into being, tenants’ groups fought evictions, and hundreds of thousands of people in the country formed self-help organizations to exchange goods and services and enable people to survive...
...Such hearings would bypass Congress, which is not representing the will of the people, and would constitute an inspiring example of grassroots democracy...
...The story of the American Revolution is usually built around Lexington and Concord, around the battles and the Founding Fathers...
...I know I’m not the first to talk about impeachment...
...This is especially important given the timidity of the Democratic Party...
...Impeachment hearings all over the country could excite and energize the peace movement...
...Its words, forgotten for over two centuries, need to become a call to action for the first time since it was read aloud to crowds in the early excited days of the American Revolution: “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government...
...These are the Democrats who were brought to power in November by an electorate fed up with the war, furious at the Bush Administration, and counting on the new majority in Congress to represent the voters...
...And local organizations have succeeded in getting more than 400 city councils to take a stand against the Patriot Act...
...The time is right, then, for a national campaign calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney...
...They held meetings, made plans, and set about rescuing escaped slaves who were in danger of being returned to their masters...
...But if sanity is to be restored in our national policies, it can only come about by a great popular upheaval, pushing both Republicans and Democrats into compliance with the national will...
...Still, there seems to be a special viciousness that accompanies the current assault on human rights, in this country and in the world...
...True, no government in the history of the nation has been faithful to those ends...
...Favors for the rich, neglect of the poor, massive violence in the interest of continental and world expansion—that is the persistent record of our government...
...In the desperate economic conditions of 1933 and 1934, before the Roosevelt Administration was doing anything to help people in distress, local groups were formed all over the country to demand government action...
...Howard Zinn is the author, most recently, of “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress...
...There is a logical next step in this development of an impeachment movement: the convening of “people’s impeachment hearings” all over the country...
...What is forgotten is that the American colonists, unable to count on redress of their grievances from the official bodies of government, took matters into their own hands, even before the first battles of the Revolutionary War...
...In 1772, town meetings in Massachusetts began setting up Committees of Correspondence, and the following year, such a committee was set up in Virginia...
...But all we hear in the nation’s capital, which is the source of those catastrophes, is a whimper from the Democratic Party, muttering and nattering about “unity” and “bipartisanship,” in a situation that calls for bold action to immediately reverse the present course...
...For instance, after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, knowing that the national government could not be counted on to repeal the act, black and white anti-slavery groups organized to nullify the law by acts of civil disobedience...
...The first Continental Congress, beginning to meet in 1774, was a recognition that an extralegal body was necessary to represent the interests of the people...
...The realities of the Iraq War cry out for the overthrow of a government that is criminally responsible for death, mutilation, torture, humiliation, chaos...
...The “ends” referred to in the Declaration are the equal right of all to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...
...In 1774 and 1775, all through the colonies, parallel institutions were set up outside the official governmental bodies...
...We have had repressive governments before, but none has legislated the end of habeas corpus, nor openly supported torture, nor declared the possibility of war without end...
...There are at least a half-dozen books out on impeachment, and it’s been argued for eloquently by some of our finest journalists, John Nichols and Lewis Lapham among them...
...Throughout the nation’s history, the failure of government to deliver justice has led to the establishment of grassroots organizations, often ad hoc, dissolving after their purpose was fulfilled...
...No government has so casually ignored the will of the people, affirmed the right of the President to ignore the Constitution, even to set aside laws passed by Congress...
...We have had repressive governments before, but none has legislated the end of habeas corpus, nor openly supported torture, nor declared the possibility of war without end...
...For information on how to get involved in the impeachment effort, go to www.afterdowningstreet.org...
...He has apparently been silenced by his Democratic colleagues who throw out as nuggets of wisdom the usual political palaver about “realism” (while ignoring the realities staring them in the face) and politics being “the art of the possible” (while setting limits on what is possible...
...The Declaration of Independence, revered as a document but ignored as a guide to action, needs to be read from pulpits and podiums, on street corners and community radio stations throughout the nation...
...Indeed, judging by the public opinion polls, there are millions of Americans, indeed a majority of those polled, who declare themselves in favor if it is shown that the President lied us into war (a fact that is not debatable...
...Indeed, an actual “indictment” has been drawn up by a former federal prosecutor, Elizabeth de la Vega, in a new book called United States v. George W. Bush et al, making a case, in devastating detail, to a fictional grand jury...
...Representative John Conyers, who held extensive hearings and introduced an impeachment resolution when the Republicans controlled Congress, is now head of the House Judiciary Committee and in a position to fight for such a resolution...
...Simply raising the issue in hundreds of communities and Congressional districts would have a healthy effect, and would be a sign that democracy, despite all attempts to destroy it in this era of war, is still alive...
...They would make headlines, and could push reluctant members of Congress in both parties to do what the Constitution provides for and what the present circumstances demand: the impeachment and removal from office of George Bush and Dick Cheney...
Vol. 71 • February 2007 • No. 2
