A Short Sweet Impeachment Story

A Short Sweet Impeachment Story
by Brad Newsham
(e-mail repost January 30, 2008)

Every day I try to do one thing, usually small, to forward impeachment. Here's the story of yesterday:

My friend Cynthia Papermaster sent me an email with the names and phone numbers (below) of the six Democratic members of the House Judiciary subcommittee who have waffled on Kucinich's "Impeach Cheney" bill. It's been sitting in their subcommittee since last April. So I
started dialing. Each time a staffer answered I would say something like this: "I'm calling to ask (the congressperson) to please move forward on the Impeach Cheney bill. You do know the one I'm talking about?"

All six staffers had near-identical responses: "I certainly do!"

Me: "You've been getting a lot of calls on this?"

Them: "Oh, I think it's plenty safe to say that, Yes, we have indeed been getting a LOT of calls on this."

Me: "Is (the congressperson) going to move on it?"

Them: "Well, s/he's certainly listening to all the input."

The sixth call, to the Honorable Melvin Watt of North Carolina, had a surprise ending. When I asked the staffer if he'd been getting a lot of calls, he said:

"In all the time I've been here, we have never gotten as many calls on any subject as we're getting on this one. It is nonstop!"

"Really!"

"Oh, I can't tell you..."

Me: "So, is there any hope?"

"You know," he said, "I wish I had something to tell you. But I'm really just a cog in the wheel."

"Oh, I'm a cog in the wheel, too," I said. And then, since we were now just two humans talking, I just threw this out there: "You know, I live out in the San Francisco Bay Area, and last year I organized four 'Beach Impeach' events where..."

"You're kidding!" he said. "I'm sitting here right this minute looking at a picture of one of them!"

"Really!" You spend as much time and energy and money as I did, as we all did, on making those events happen, and in the end it's easy to think they made no difference at all. And then this! My whole body was instantly tingling. "Oh, that's fantastic!"

He says, "Oh, yeah -- this is great, man! That's a lot of people -- you organized that?"

"I did. How'd you get the picture?"

"Well, I first saw it in the news way back when. And now people send us the postcards all the time. I've got a couple more here on my desk somewhere. People send them with their emails, too. Someone sent us a blowup photo, and that's what I'm looking at right now."

Our conversation went on for a while, but that was the important part: You never know. You never know what sort of ripples, what sort of difference all our little (and big) acts will create. Although it can often seem that we're nothing but a bunch of crazy dreamers, and although it seems that the media has been aggressively ignoring us for years now, there are a LOT of us out here, and if we just keep it up... Less than two years before I watched Nixon's helicopter fly away from the White House for the very last time, he was reelected in a historic landslide. You just simply never know. (If you've got a few minutes to make calls, or even a single call, the numbers are below.)

Keep the faith.

Beach Impeach 5 is happening on April 26, at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Helicopter(s) overhead at 11 a.m. sharp. Details being arranged. Stay tuned.

Brad Newsham

Six waffling Democrats on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution:

John Conyers (Michigan) -- 202-225-5126
Jerrold Nadler (New York)-- 202-225-5635
Artur Davis (Alabama) -- 202-225-2665
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Florida) -- 202-225-7931
Robert Scott (Virginia) -- 202-225-8351
Melvin Watt (North Carolina) -- 202-225-1510

For more on Beach Impeach go to: