[wmv 49.7M]Speech given by Sunsara Taylor, World Can’t Wait advisory board member and writer for Revolution newspaper, at “Voices for Impeachment” at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, January 4, 2007, sponsored by World Can’t Wait.
Every generation, each period of history, puts its stamp on
the world. But not every generation
lives through pivotal epoch-shaping events.
The generation that rose up and abolished slavery — the generation that
lay down in the face of the Nazis. These
are among the generations that are celebrated or scorned.
The Nobel Prize winning British playwright Harold Pinter
said last year, “The Bush Administration is the most dangerous force that
has ever existed. It is more dangerous
than Nazi Germany because of the range and depth of its activities and
intentions worldwide.”
Driving out the Bush Regime before 2008 must be the mission
of all of living in this country today, or else everything that Bush has done
continues no matter who becomes the next president.
Will we be remembered as the people who sat back and passively
accepted the wholesale murder of Iraqi people even though we knew the whole
premise of the war was lies?
Will we be the people who accepted a new doctrine of
pre-emptive war that spreads this to other countries?
The people who allowed all forms of torture: sleep
deprivation, beatings, water-boarding, dogs, sexual violence to become legal?
Who allowed habeas corpus — a cornerstone of the rule of
law that prevents arbitrary, indefinite detention — to be revoked?
The people who learned to accept government surveillance of
emails, of phone calls, of bank accounts and students” records”
The people who accepted signing statements…no-fly
lists…and the jailing of journalists?
Will the movement that has made such strides in restricting
abortion get what they”re after next: ending birth control, preaching virginity
as a girl’s worth, and child-bearing and submission to their husbands as a form
of worship after that?
Will the fact of evolution and a scientific understanding of
the world be buried, the next generation disarmed of the ability to think
critically, to stop global warming, and to simply be awed at the wonders of the
natural world?
Will history be re-written — as it already has been in
Christian fundamentalist textbooks and as is being attempted in a different way
on college campuses by academic hit-men like David Horowitz — to erase and
excuse the horrors of slavery and lynchings, the genocide of the Native
Americans, and conquest of foreign lands?
Catherine Crier, a former Republican judge from Texas,
writes of a movement that “would like to see the United States under biblical
law. Comparable to countries like Sudan,
Saudi Arabia, and Iran”a nation governed by Old and New Testament scripture. Born-again Christianity will supplant the
Constitution.” She ends this passage
with this, “For all of those Americans who believe that our democracy is
safe, you are wrong. Today, the radical
Right is winning, and they know it.
Sooner rather than later, we may be living in a very different country,
a country that had been ours, a country that will be theirs.”
These are the huge changes that we are living through. And they are a lot further along than most
people realize.
THIS is the direction that was not derailed or even
challenged in the 2006 elections.
There were no ads that showed the bodies of Iraqi children
in town after town shot down by U.S.
troops, promising to immediately withdraw from Iraq. No ads that showed the photos of Abu-Ghraib,
and implored you to vote out everyone who approved the Military Commissions
Act. No ads that railed against
candidates who favor criminalizing abortion, who oppose birth control, or who
are promoting discrimination and a culture of intolerance towards gay people.
Through this election and since, there is a yawning chasm
between what people want and what they actually got. Despite millions turning out at the polls
largely motivated by their deep opposition to the war on Iraq and the Bush
program as a whole, Nancy Pelosi has insisted impeachment is off the
table. Now, it is a sobering indicator
of what has initiative in politics that John Conyers, one of the most liberal
members of Congress who has done more to expose the impeachable offenses of
George Bush than almost anyone and who has even participated in the World Can’t
Wait, has recently come out and said its time to give impeachment a rest.
What are the reasons that Conyers gives? The Metro Times on December 20th covered a
speech he gave in Detroit where he outlined three reasons.
For one, Conyers argues that instead of focusing on
impeachment we should focus on getting a Democrat in the White House in 2008.
But let us be clear: if George Bush is not impeached and
removed from office for his crimes, then everything his regime has done — the
doctrine of preemptive war, the torture, the assault on the separation of
church and state, the undermining of the rule of law — all of this is
legitimized and will continue, no matter who becomes the next president.
Conyers also argues that we should not tie up Congress with
impeachment proceedings for months, but instead should be putting attention on
Iraq. But, George Bush has made it
abundantly and redundantly clear: the troops will not be withdrawn on his
watch. Impeaching the president and
driving his regime from power is entirely bound up with ending this illegal
war.
Let’s remember, as even George Bush is acknowledging in the
eulogizing of Gerald Ford, that near impeachment of Nixon flowed out of a
period of “turmoil,” “one of the most divisive moments in our
nation’s history.”
These were divisions over an unjust war in Vietnam and a
whole host of other struggles against the oppression of black people and women
and other critical questions. The
political turmoil that led to the removal of Nixon from office was completely
bound up with the process of getting out of that unjust war in Vietnam and
today, as then, the impeachment of George Bush has everything to do with ending
this unjust war.
Finally, Conyers argues that impeachment has little chance
of success. As the article puts it,
“not because there’s an obvious absence of any culpability on the part of
the president, but rather…bipartisan support would be needed…and that
support simply isn’t there.”
But here we must be very clear again: All this is saying is
that the only ones who can set terms politically are George Bush’s neo-cons and
religious fascists and that everyone else has to march along constricted by the
terms they set. No. What this makes very plain is that it is on
the people to mobilize themselves in political protest demanding the ousting of
the Bush regime that creates such a political uproar in society that those in
power feel compelled to change their positions.
Again, let’s look back at how Nixon won the presidency in a
landslide election but just two years later he resigned in shame. The U.S. war in Vietnam was going
terribly. The military was disintegrating. The whole of society was in political
upheaval — campuses were being shut down and taken over, soldiers were in
political rebellion, hundreds of thousands were out in the streets, the music
of the time pulsed with disaffection and dreams of a better world, revolution
was on the lips of many among the most oppressed — and millions more were on
the verge of losing their faith in the whole political system. It was in the face of all this that some
Republicans changed their position and voted for impeachment, that John Dean, a
member of Nixon’s own cabinet, refused to lie for him, where his subordinates
refused to carry out Nixon’s request to fire the special prosecutor
investigating Watergate and where the whole dynamic in society was radically
reversed.
Today all this is being rewritten as if this was an
unfortunate and painful period and the pardon of Nixon by Gerald Ford is being
upheld as a model for national unity and healing.
But this is a moment when the real lessons of that period
are more relevant than ever. When Nixon
said he”d end the war by escalating it to Cambodia, campuses across the nation
were shut down in the largest student strike in the history of this
country. This is something the purveyors
of war for empire fear – but this is something that people who have no interest
in today’s war should be working urgently with every resource they can command
to achieve.
World Can’t Wait is calling on all of you to help organize
teach-ins at 100 campuses this spring to bring the full truth about the crimes
being commit in our names. And once
people know, they have a responsibility to act.
The students need to be challenged to shake off all the, “What
about my grades, what about my career, will it really make any difference, what
about me?” And start thinking and
acting about the world we live in. Who
gave young people today the idea that we can’t change the world? Driving out this criminal regime must become
the mission of this generation.
Also, get the DVDs of the Bush Crimes Commission where
ex-government officials, first-hand witnesses, and recognized experts indict,
document and convict the Bush administration for war crimes and crimes against
humanity.
In the Call for the World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush
Regime, we say, “This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into
“leaders” who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious
fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to
demobilize people.”
We have to challenge and change — not accept the limits of
— the political terms that exist in the halls of power. We need to completely break with the deadly
logic that has kept so many people paralyzed and passive in the face of one
horror after another for the last five years.
Over and over again, the Bush regime proposes – or gets
caught doing something – outrageous. At
first the Democrats make some noises of opposition, then they get reasonable,
and eventually capitulate, and yesterday’s outrage becomes today’s
institutionalized horror. Again, as the
World Can’t Wait Call says, “That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop
you will learn – or be forced – to accept.”
Look what we have learned to accept.
There’s been Roberts, Alito, the Patriot Act I, the Patriot
Act II, the Terri Schiavo theocratic lunacy, the NSA spying, the Military
Commissions Act, it just goes on and on and on.
And now, we’re seeing the same thing happen – again – with the war on
Iraq. The Democrats promised a “new
direction,” but already they are accommodating, and now Bush is about to
announced sending 20,000 MORE troops.
This must stop! There
will be no savior from the Democratic Party!
There is another force in society.
There are people.
Millions and millions of people.
People who are sick of this war.
Troops who don’t believe in their mission stuck on their
second and third tour of duty.
Thousands still scattered across the country by Hurricane
Katrina and millions more whose smoldering anger at how Black people were
treated there has been inflamed again by the NYPD’s 50 shots that killed Sean
Bell.
Women and gay people whose fundamental rights are being
systematically shredded.
Rivers of immigrants who not long ago clogged the streets of
every city in this country in protest.
Intellectuals and artists who are not ready to bow down to a
king.
All the people who tried to give expression to their
sentiments through this election.
These people, totaling in their millions, are the political
force with the potential to bring all this to a halt. They have been missing from the equation –
channeled into supporting candidates and a process that offered no
alternative. This has demoralized people
not just here but all over the world who look to what is happening here and say
where are they? People who are watching
bodies be chewed by dogs in the streets of Baghdad every day can not see your
bumper-stickers — they don’t hear your gripes and complaints over dinner with
friends –they need to see millions of people in the streets driving the regime
responsible for this from power!
In this culture of instant gratification, a lot of people
say, “We protested the war but it didn’t do any good.”
Wrong. It did a LOT of good. The government didn’t listen —
but the world did and the people in this country did.
Before the war even began the whole world could see a very
large section of people acting against the injustice of this war. This got debated throughout society — it
opened up a whole lot more room for people to think, and planted doubts even
among those who still lined up behind the President.
And then, as events unfold, as lies were exposed and as Iraq
descended into a gruesome civil war these doubts grew. The president’s popularity plummeted from 80%
approval to below 30%.
This makes it harder for Bush to project an intimidating
strength in the Middle East and forces those in the military to really weigh
the morality and legality of the orders they are being commanded to carry out.
People don’t always get to see their results
immediately. Imagine if, after their
first march, the Civil Rights workers had looked into the hardened faces of the
Southern police and authorities and decided they had accomplished nothing and
gave up. Imagine if, after the big
moratorium in 1967 against the Vietnam War, the students and others had summed
up that because they didn’t stop the war nothing had been accomplished and all
gone home. History would have turned out
very differently.
And now, with the stakes even higher than they were in
Vietnam, is NOT the time say protest makes no difference. We should take George Bush and Cheney at
their word when they say this “War on Terror” — which is really, in essence, a
war for permanent empire — will last generations. We should take seriously Bush’s decision to
increase the size of the military in order to fight this war for a very long
time.
This war was waged pre-emptively. It is a war of aggression. Now Iraq’s morgues are overflowing, villages
have been reduced to rubble, economy and infrastructure is decaying, and
returned U.S. troops talk openly about how they were given a free-pass to
massacre civilians.
Under the rubric of the “War on Terror” Bush
demanded and Congress passed the Military Commissions Act. Now George Bush and any future president have
the legal right to disappear anyone, never press charges, never tell the
family, and to have them tortured or killed — everything we saw at Abu-Ghraib
and more — indefinitely with absolutely no legal recourse.
These things I am talking about — preemptive war and
torture — are war crimes. So is
collective punishment and targeting civilians, hospitals and ambulances. And yet, again, there was bipartisan support
for, to take one example, the decimation of Fallujah, once a city of
350,000. 70% of the city was bombed to
the ground. The whole city was cut off
from electricity or water for weeks, was pounded with more than one ton of
bombs per person, was declared a “free fire” zone, and yes, there
were U.S. snipers targeting hospitals,
children, and ambulances.
These are war crimes.
These are crimes against humanity.
So, look. As other
speakers have emphasized, there is no question that there are grounds for
impeachment. The questino is will the
people of this country politically rise up and create a political situation
where impeachment is put back on the table, where indictments and even
resignation become realistic? Or will we
be complicit in these war crimes and these crimes against humanity?
The biggest problem is not that people support the
President, but that too many people are inactive, tuned out, they don’t know
how bad it is and they don’t know how they can affect things. The only way this will change is if challenge
people around what is being done in our names.
Seriously, imagine how much further along we’d be if visible
resistance fueled a national conversation where the whole country had to take a
side: Are you for torture or are you against it? For the slaughter of the Iraqi people or
against it? For spying on the public or
against it? For preaching abstinence,
ignorance and patriarchy or against it?
For denying fundamental rights to gay people or against it? For abandoning Black people and others in
toxic floodwaters and then abandoning them against as relief and housing funds
get cut off and New Orleans remains unrebuilt.
For replacing science with religion in the public schools or against it?
For papering over global warming or against it?
It is good to stand against these crimes. It is RIGHT to stand against these crimes.
Imagine if, before the elections, hundreds of thousands of
people had protested demanding that the Bush regime be driven from power
because the world can’t wait. It would
be tremendously more difficult for Pelosi to keep impeachment off the
table. And, if she still insisted on
doing so, it would be much more likely that people would be reacting with
political protest and outcry, not passive acceptance.
The White House and Congress needs to look out and see that
the country is overwhelmingly polarized against them and they need to seriously
fear that if they don’t put a stop to this whole direction that the political
resistance is going to escalate and that they are going to lose the allegiance
of millions of people.
This is what it is going to take to get Nancy Pelosi to put
impeachment back on the table.
Key in getting this dynamic going is the distribution of
more than a million copies of the World Can’t Wait Call to Drive Out the Bush
Regime. This Call boldly speaks the
truth about where society is h eaded and what kind of struggle we are called
upon to wage to stop it. Email this to
your friends, handing it out at bus stops, school, and religious services,
donating to get this published as ads in newspapers, read on the radio, posted
on websites, plastered on walls as posters and all throughout society.
So, I want to say again: every generation, every period in
history, puts its stamp on the world.
What will ours be?
The final words of the World Can’t Wait Call are this,
“History is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought
against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of
people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror
beyond what they ever imagined. The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP
TO US.”
The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime!