Last Saturday, I went to a town hall meeting on the Iraq War and impeachment in Madison, Wisconsin. This one was sponsored by Veterans for Peace. More than 150 other events around the country on January 7 were co-sponsored by Progressive Democrats of America and afterdowningstreet.org.
In Madison, about 350 people crammed into the Labor Temple to show their enthusiastic support for bringing the troops home. But what really got the crowd going was the drive for impeachment. The event opened with longtime peace activist Robert Kimbrough asking people to speak up so we all could hear them. But not for the sake of the NSA or the CIA or the FBI or the Pentagon, he said, adding that they all have recording devices that will pick everything up anyway.
Someone shouted behind me, “Bring it on!” Ed Garvey, a great Wisconsin progressive, addressed the dismissive attitude that prevails in Washington and among the cynics: that impeachment is impossible, and that we’re just wasting our time talking about. The same was said about the women’s suffrage movement and about the civil rights movement, he observed, adding that when he’s done he’d like to echo Rosa Parks, who said, after the bus boycott, “My feet may be tired but my soul’s at rest.”
I’m telling you, my friends, there’s something going on at the grassroots that the mainstream media isn’t getting.
And that’s this urgent desire by millions of Americans to defenestrate Bush from power and reclaim our democracy.
There were other overflow crowds in Sacramento, Chicago, and Livonia, Michigan, according to an inspiring report on afterdowningstreet.org. The move in Congress, headed by John Conyers, is also picking up co-sponsors here and there.
more
http://progressive.org/mag_wx011206
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
