Report by Jamilah Hoffman
Five hundred people gathered on a Monday night (April 9) in Houston to listen to
speakers engage around the question of Impeachment. I should write that again. Five hundred people. Impeachment.
Texas. It“s
a good thing that impeachment is breaking into broader society, especially in “Bush Country.“ And while there are strides that
are being made in the impeachment movement, much more is needed. Much more
coherency around what it means to impeach and how that will happen and what
will happen after that fact.
As an organizer of this event, working with a coalition of
various progressive and peace groups in Houston, we knew it would be important
to have someone from World Can“t
Wait speak to impeachment. Debra Sweet
gave a great speech explaining to the crowd that petitioning Congress was not
going to work, that impeachment will happen as a result of the people coming
together and demanding it. I learned
later that she had adapted her speech in response to others who had spoken
before her. It seems that there was a
dividing line in the speeches and that line stretches across into the broader
debate around impeachment and further into the anti-war movement. What is the role of the people? Are we to protest to push and cajole congress
into action, or is our protest our form of action? Do we the people realize the power we do have
when we come together or do we give our power away to those who use it to
manipulate society into a direction directly opposed to the people?
There were impassioned speeches that night including one
from Diane Wilson, a former shrimper from Seadrift,
Texas, whose activities range from taking on
polluters who dumped toxins in her small Texas
town, to the Union-Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal. She recounted her days as an Army
nurse in Vietnam and
witnessing the destruction of that war on the soldiers as well as the people
and country of Vietnam; she
made the correlation between that war and the current war in Iraq. She explained how she was in Iraq before the
war started. How she could get lost in
Baghdad and walk through dark alleys alone and when she was approached by
Iraqis, they only helped her, saying how they understood how it was not the
American people, but it“s
government that was causing all this trouble.
She said how now, that feeling of understanding is gone. How that was a tragedy of this war. She
pointed to a poster collage of the carnage of the Iraq war hanging on a wall, the
pictures of missing limbs and bloodied bodies, of tragedy and despair and
stated, “That is why George
Bush should be impeached!“
However, there were other speakers who did not fully grasp
the political situation we are living in today and why impeachment in
necessary. One point that was spoken to
was the need for grassroots and local issues to come first. While there is a
need for grassroots building, what can come from it if Bush is still in power?
Or what is just as dangerous is if his program remains intact. His program
promotes Christian Fascism, the subjugation of women and racial minorities, and
a whole culture of greed, bigotry and intolerance that is a slap in the face to
most people who are working in various grassroots organizations. The only way
to fully accomplish those grassroots goals would be to drive out the Bush
regime.
Another point spoken from the stage was that impeachment
would be good, but that it“s
unlikely to happen. And why should we
stop at Bush, we should impeach Cheney, Rice, Gonzales, Congress, the Media,
and so on and so forth. It was a great
line and it got the crowd excited, but this is not how we are going to bring
about change and it dilutes the serious crimes that George Bush has
committed. George Bush is guilty of war
crimes and crimes against humanity! And
while there are others who are culpable and should be held accountable, the
only way that can happen is if what the Bush regime is trying to keep hidden is
brought to light. This can only happen
when the people get fed up and demand change.
Not if we look at impeachment as simply a more radical slogan and not
something that is a just response to the crimes of the Bush regime.
Impeachment is possible.
It“s not easy, but it“s possible. But we have to start speaking up and out
about it. We have to make impeachment
the topic of conversation around the whole country while remaining steadfastly
confident that it is the people that will be the driving force in driving out
the Bush regime. And on a Monday night
in Texas,
impeachment became a real possibility for a lot of people.