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Medea Benjamin
Elaine Brower
Steering Committee, World Can't Wait, mother of U.S. Marine
Tim Carpenter
Director, Progressive Democrats of America
Noam Chomsky
MIT
Marjorie Cohn
President, National Lawyers Guild
Elizabeth de la Vega
Former federal prosecutor and author of U.S. v. George W. Bush
et. al.
Jane Dugdale
Coordinator, Bryn Mawr Council of MoveOn/Operation Democracy
Bob Fertik
President, Democrats.com and ImpeachPAC.org
Brad Friedman
Creator of the Brad Blog and co-founder
of VelvetRevolution.us
Elizabeth Holtzman
Former Congresswoman, member of House panel that voted to impeach
President Nixon, author of The Impeachment of George W. Bush.
Rob Kall
Editor and Publisher, OpEdNews.com
Jonathan Lethem
Writer
Dave Lindorff
Author of The Case for Impeachment
Dennis Loo
Co-editor of Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and
Cheney
Cynthia McKinney
Former Congresswoman, author of impeachment legislation in the 109th
Congress
Bill Moyer
Executive Director, Backbone Campaign
Brad Newsham
Founder, The Beach Impeach Project
John Nichols
Washington correspondent, The Nation, and author of The
Genius of Impeachment
Jacob Park
A28 National Coordinator
Peter Phillips
Director, Project Censored, Co-editor of Impeach the President:
The Case Against Bush and Cheney
Cindy Sheehan
Director, Camp Casey Peace Institute
David Swanson
Co-founder, AfterDowningStreet.org coalition
Howard Zinn
Author of A People's History of the United States
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To Eli Pariser,
MoveOn.org Executive Director:
With more than 3 million members, MoveOn plays a vital role not
only in shaping public policy, but in educating the American public
about the most important political issues of the day. With this
power comes a responsibility to engage with these issues in as forthright
a manner as possible.
Until now, MoveOn has declined to call for the impeachment of George
W. Bush or Dick Cheney, citing a purported lack of interest among
its membership. But, as many frustrated members have pointed out,
they have not been asked. It has recently come to light that MoveOn
is quietly conducting an online poll on the question among a small
group of its members. We applaud this encouraging first step but
hope that MoveOn will go further by soliciting feedback from its
entire membership. When asked why the poll was not taken of all
members, a MoveOn organizer explained:
Rarely do we send out a survey like this to the whole membership
(we work very hard to send no more than one email to our members
per day; the more they receive the less likely they are to open
any of them, there is also an issue of bandwidth capabilities).
We generally only do that when we have to act immediately or when
we are acting on very specific legislation.
We feel confident that the membership of MoveOn will forgive the
organization a single e-mail about a question of such urgency and
importance. And we would remind MoveOn that specific legislation
on impeachment already exists. H Res 333, introduced by Rep. Dennis
Kucinich (D-OH), and cosponsored by Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO)
and Rep. Janice Schakowsky (D-IL) calls for the impeachment of Vice-President
Cheney on the grounds that he manipulated intelligence "to
deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States by fabricating
a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use
of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq."
Few will dispute that lying the nation into a disastrous war that
has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 Americans and hundreds
of thousands of Iraqis rises to the level of "high crimes and
misdemeanors" and that these allegations merit serious examination
by Congress. On April 28, 2007, Americans in more than 125 locations
around the country took to the streets to demonstrate their support
for impeachment. That same weekend, delegates to the annual convention
of the California Democratic Party, the largest state chapter of
the Democratic Party, overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling
for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Two days later,
speaking on NPR, leading antiwar Congressman John Murtha (D-PA)
pointedly said that impeachment was "on the table" in
Congress.
The time has come for the Bush administration to be held accountable.
We respectfully urge MoveOn to exercise leadership on the question
of impeachment and to begin an open dialogue with its members about
the issue. As MoveOn likes to say, "Every member has a voice."
Contact: MoveOnToImpeachment@gmail.com
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