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It's Time for MoveOn to Start
Talking about Impeachment
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Medea Benjamin Elaine Brower Tim Carpenter Noam Chomsky Marjorie Cohn Elizabeth de la Vega Jane Dugdale Bob Fertik Brad Friedman Elizabeth Holtzman Rob Kall Jonathan Lethem Dave Lindorff Dennis Loo Cynthia McKinney Bill Moyer Brad Newsham John Nichols Jacob Park Peter Phillips Cindy Sheehan David Swanson Howard Zinn |
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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