CODEPINK has Pizza with Jerry McNerney

Pizza with Jerry McNerney
By Janet Weil, Kathy Greene, and Nancy L. Mancias

"I would like to see the President removed." –J. McNerney

Congressman Jerry McNerney, a freshman Democrat, is home this week to meet with constituents in places where they already shop, eat and recreate in a program called Congress at Your Corner.

Inside Aladino’s Pizza Parlor in Discovery Bay, California, CODEPINK activists and a crowd of 40 were given the opportunity to informally speak and question McNerney on a wide range of foreign policy issues including the war in Iraq.

Before taking questions, McNerney addressed the crowd by saying, “There’s a lot we need to do to end the Iraq war, the President wants to keep us in Iraq, the House passed another bill that gave the President leeway, I voted against it (War Funding Bill) because I couldn’t give the President a blank check.”

After an Iraq war veteran unsupportive of McNerney’s vote questioned him about the lack of troop funding, McNerney replied, “we are involved in the middle of a religious war, the longer we stay, the more violence will take place.”

When asked about impeachment he said, “the bottom line is we (Democrats) don’t have the votes to impeach the President, Congressman Waxman is looking into allegations, let the Committee of Oversight do their job, I would like to see the President removed.”

With the issue of Guantanamo and restoring Habeas Corpus, he suggest we need to make sure we get back on track, and prevent this country from committing torture.

After the group discussion, CODEPINK activist Janet Weil met with McNerney and introduced herself as the aunt of a young man who has just joined the Marines. She told him, “It makes me sick to think of him dying for a war for oil profits.” She further urged with McNerney to expose the Oil (Theft) Law, saying that in her opinion it is the core, structural reason for the war/occupation of Iraq. She also brought up the issue of war profiteering, particularly Halliburton and Blackwater USA – “nearly half the boots on the ground in Iraq,” as she told him. He acknowledged that he’s just learning about what he called, “These oil laws,” but promised to work on it. Very sincerely he assured her more than once he would work hard and expeditiously to end the war in Iraq.

While at the pizza parlor Congressman Jerry McNerney acknowledged and remembered the very reason he won his seat in the November 2006 election, which was to end the war in Iraq.

Overall the CODEPINK women were impressed with the Congressman’s intelligence, sincerity and attention to a wide range of constituents’ concerns and points of view, including a boy of about 11 who did a short interview with him after the discussion.