Messages

Hi everyone, 

As an impeachment advocate I have missed the daily conversation we were enjoying about impeachment strategy last fall.  It seemed to die out late in the fall.  We have been wondering if we should renew the discussion for mutual support.

Barbara Ellis and I have been chatting about the obvious decrease in impeachment activity nationally and noticing that there is now little or no national conversation between groups or group leaders.  There is some communication traffic due to the fight for HR-24 in New Hampshire but overall it seems much diminished from last year.

Barbara is one of the leaders offering the Nixon Flooding Plan approach, which I solidly support.  This should definitely be part of our overall plan and local groups should probably be pushing their congressmen to get on board.

I've noticed that Impeach Meetups around the Country have been shutting down and few new ones are replacing them.  Many of the groups seen strangely quiet.  Perhaps as Barbara said it is "rage fatigue".   I hope we won't let our streak of rugged individualism be the downfall of  impeachment of at least Cheney and repudiation of all the evil that Bush has  brought upon our Country. 

If we believe we are beat, if we now believe impeachment probably won't happen, isn't that the real problem. 

If we can stay strong and focused for another six months and perhaps adapt our strategy to the political conditions and election season, we might yet prevail.   

It seems to me that Congressmen are probably more vulnerable to our pressure now than at any time since November of 2006, because they are running for re-election and some of them are in tight races.   They know we in the anti-war and peace and justice community are mad as hell at them for ignoring us since November 2006. 

Is it possible that they might just be a little afraid of us?   Is it possible that fear  could be one of our strengths?  Is their ignoring of activists a bluff, hoping we won't realize how much power we have against them?  And hoping we won't use it?

I think we should all get behind Rep. Betty Hall's bill, HR-24 in New Hampshire but we absolutely must not allow that to become a reason for giving up the impeachment campaign.   HR-24 is but one battle.  There are a few more battles yet that we can win if we pick our targets and  battlegrounds  carefully  and fight them using our strengths but playing to the weakness and fear that every Congressman has in a re-election campaign.

We would really enjoy hearing from you all.  Share with us the hopes of your group for bringing accountability to Bush and Cheney by impeachment.    And please, one last time,  let us share ideas and work together to make impeachment happen, this year, this year,   before the November election,   for it surely will not happen afterwards.

John H Kennedy, Denver, CO, organizer of
Impeach Colorado Coalition  http://ImpeachCO.com  

PS:  I created this list from messages from last fall that I had not erased.  If there are corrections needed or people I've missed should be included, please bring it to my attention and we'll add them.  I'll keep and share a master list for us.

Send updates, corrections to: John Kennedy [address removed]
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Barbara,
your experiences have many parallels with ours.  Fatigue being the big one.   We have had so little support in Colorado.  We have done over 100 impeach events in the past year and have enjoyed attendance of up to 100 once,  but mostly it is in the dozen or so range. 

It has been a little like herding cats most of the time with everyone and every member group wanting to go in different directions.  We are not a wealthy coalition ourselves.  When we mention donations most people here turn around and walk away, never to return.  Regardless ,we are doing some good and are determined to stick it out until the election.  After the election, in my opinion,  impeachment probably won't happen.  So we must work like demons for six months.

John



"Barbara G. Ellis" <[address removed]> wrote:

From: "Barbara G. Ellis" <[address removed]>
Subject: Re: National impeachment set-up
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 14:18:04 -0700
To: John Kennedy <[address removed]>

Wow, what a quick response!!  Thank you. 

On the idea you suggest: Out here in "Little Beirut," our core is made up of old Dean DFA-ers which means we've been pretty autonomous in action these last 4 years (ADS's forum lists all the things we've done). We've borrowed ideas from many groups, starting with Minneapolis' Jodin Morey and Mikael Rudolph when they lofted the Jefferson petition that David Waldeman in DC researched.  We're a rowdier/poorer bunch, say, than our Ashland colleagues down state and too busy/broke to fly to DC to demonstrate on the mall (whilst it still remains open to rallies), or to jump on a plane and go down to SF to help Golub and/or Cindy Sheehan drive Pelosi out of office (we loved the SFers' doing "Impeach" on the beach 2 blocks from her house). 

We've found it more effective to picket Rep. Earl Blumenauer's Portland office for 35 straight Thursdays from noon to 2 to get him to either co-sponsor 333/799 or hopper his own bill (the Bear Sternes one would do). His refusal to meet with constituents or care about calls/emails/snail mails demanding/begging for impeachment finally convinced us last summer that this DC pitch of "we need to hear from constituents" is baloney. We're doing what you're advocating, John: fielding a candidate against this arrogant weakling. He got 91% of the vote in 2006 and has about $500,000 in his campaign chest and the state/county party's blessing and cash. So he's doing no campaigning, but irked as hell that anyone would dare run against him. Ah, the soft, arrogant underbelly is the way to attain hubris. His failure to listen/meet has indicated to us that Pelosi/DLC has promised him a cabinet position, ambassadorship, or to bump him a couple of ranks on the House Ways & Means committee (he's 15th right now). 

I think the leaders' discussion on a national basis died perhaps because of: 

1) the streak of individualism that marks every impeachment group; 

2) we only have so much energy/cash/time?sapped perhaps by Conyers quixotic deeds on impeachment; 

3) many of our energetic South Side DFAers have dropped out because of "outrage fatigue." (However, the group has been re-invigorated by newbies who are really carrying the flag in coming up with this Nixon Flooding Plan and passing the hat to send one of our most energetic?Marcia Meyers?to be the West Coast delegate of the new We the People National Coalition for Impeachment that went to DC Feb.24-28 and buttonholed nearly 35 pro-impeachment Dems to try the Nixon Flooding Plan; they got my White Paper on the 1973 strategy, responses to Pelosi's 8-argument mantra, sample bills of impeachment either for an investigation on high crimes or a plain-vanilla impeachment bill); 

4) the main progressive blogs are so quick at tipping us to what's afoot with Cheney/Bush that each group can shape its response accordingly. For example, last summer when all signs pointed to Portland being targeted for a new 9/11 false-flag that would go real, turned us out in droves to help the PDX 9/11 group in getting up warnings that the MSM could not ignore because we were in the face of the City Council, County Commission, the FBI, HSA, etc. All that heat may have deterred plans to hit PDX. the 9/11 people are doing the same on the chemtrails that have whitened our blue skies. This morning, Portland.indymedia.com carried a post from Capt. Eric May warning of another false-flag somewhere in the U.S. this week (http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/4/374370.shtml). 

...........

Over and out for now.

Barbara

On Apr 7, 2008, at 12:08 PM, John Kennedy wrote:

Hi again, Barbara,

Last fall we were having a national conversation between impeach group leaders on impeachment strategy, goals and methods. 

The conversation got shunted off to a couple of email groups/lists where the discussion quickly died. 

I propose that we restart this national impeach groups leader conversation today. 

I have an email list of national, regional, and local impeach leaders that we can use to start it up.  I'll just put it all of the addresses in the "To" Field in the first email so everyone can see who is in on the conversation. 

I think everyone should be free to add the names and email addresses of leaders they know of who are not on the list. 

John