Report from Seattle Constitutional Crisis Event

[The Blue Flower]

This is an email report sent to the progressive lists in WA state of an event that took place in Seattle last week. A followup event will take place tomorrow (Monday) night at 7 pm at Trinity UMC in Ballard.

Greetings friends, I thought I would share some notes I took at a gathering in Seattle on the constitutional crisis we are in with this administration.

On July 31st, several hundred other concerned citizens responded to a call to action sent by a pastor in Seattle who wrote one of the most powerful statements I've read about the bush administration. He described the grave constitutional crisis we're in "with a President who seemingly wants to be king, and a Congress unable and unwilling to oppose him. This administration is building, plank by plank, the framework for military dictatorship.... Our politicians are fiddling while democracy burns...they have betrayed us....We are dealing with a spirituality of tyranny; an unleashing of ruthless, arrogant power that corrupts all it touches. It's time to get angry and cast out this unclean spirit from our land. Such a statement can now get me arrested, disappeared, and stripped of all assets. Is this America?....."

Rev. Rich Lang, Pastor, Trinity United Methodist Church
After singing with great gusto the Woody Guthrie song "This land is your land,this land is my land...", we listened to a reading by two young people of the Declaration of Independence. The list of grievances brought groans and nods of recognition that our own circumstances are similar in many ways to what made our country's founders revolutionaries.

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.... The history of the present King... is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations....He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices...He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people...He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures...He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power...He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution...imposing Taxes on us without our Consent....transporting us beyond Seas...and waging War against us....(he) has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts...and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation....whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people..... http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/

Following was discussion of impeachment as the basis and foundation of our rule of law that is mentioned in our Constitution 6 times. Of our state elected officials, only Jim McDermott has signed onto Dennis Kucinich's House Resolution 333.

The topic changed to what can we do on the upcoming anniversary of September 11th.
This was the purpose of the gathering - to see if there is energy, commitment, the will to break out of the trance that keeps us from being any different than good German citizens who didn't oppose the Nazis. This year, September 11th falls on a Tuesday, and the discussion revolved around appropriate ways to resist our own "empire" and one way to memorialize the tragedy is to have a city wide series of direct actions, a "Day of Democracy".

We imagined bold actions of civil disobedience, possibly thousands of participants with taped mouths representing the muzzling of our voices and the silencing of Democracy. Hundreds, thousands of nude bicyclists streaking through the city, reminding everyone that this administration has stripped us of our civil rights. School kids walking out of class; a general strike; the police force calling in with the "blue flu"; masses of people assembling to 'Celebrate Democracy" and ridding ourselves of the fear of tyranny. We would not be paralyzed... we would be a model for the rest of the country and reestablish our national self respect. The actions need to be nonviolent, and in the next month, several more meetings will be held to brainstorm more ideas.

Small groups formed and returned with other ideas to share: Deliver petitions for impeachment to Senators Murray and Cantwell and other elected officials and hold sit-ins at their offices; attend sporting and other events with 6 friends and hold up signs that say I M P E A C H; write the Bill of Rights on the pavement in front of FOX news and other corporate media; surround media buildings and bring noisemakers, pots and pans and circle 7 times to exorcize demons; tie up traffic with packs of bikers; block freeways and on/off ramps; wear orange in opposition to the Bush administration; send stacks and stacks of faxes to member of Congress; hang banners from buildings. Other ideas that percolated in the crowd were to wear black burquas and carry plaster skulls and leave a mound in front of major media and elected officials' offices; enlist churches so that mainstream America is seen as standing up; and begin to actively create a coalition of revolutionary thinkers.
Sources for information are the Astroid Cafe in Seattle, the newspaper Real Change and posted on the website "Livingfaithnow.org" which will include the full statement that Pastor Rich Lang wrote. The next meeting will be Monday Aug. 6th at 7 pm at the Trinity Church in Ballard. Interesting interviews and programs are on KKNW 1150AM radio on Fridays at 2 pm and are archived at www.livingfaithnow.org

When the faith based community came out during the WTO protests in Seattle, it gave the week's actions legitimacy and probably kept the police oppression from being worse. This recent evening was one of the most dramatic and courageous calls to action I've seen since the Vietnam era, and to hear it within church walls gives me hope that some in mainstream America truly know that we are in the midst of a crisis that needs to be addressed or we will lose our democracy.

After participating in the Impeachment March on the Pentagon March 17th of this year, I believe we can use highjinks; wear Code Pink's bright pink or resisting-authority orange to show opposition to the war; carry and become huge puppets representing the gang of thieves inhabiting the white house and attorney general's office; bang pans as Molly Ivins also suggested; do street theater; show the rest of the country that the Northwest is brave, awake, and not going to let our constitution be further trampled.

Peace, love and revolution,