(A word from our fearless leader: Subcommandante DeWalt! – promoted by Brattlerouser)
The people of Vermont have just taken another giant step towards the day of reckoning for the G.W. Bush administration. When we were told by the Democratic leadership in the Vermont legislature that there was no chance of impeachment action being taken by them, we refused to acquiesce and instead flooded the Statehouse demanding that they listen to their constituents and honor the Constitution. We also presented our case through letters to the editor and by calling in to radio shows across the state. Our arguments convinced many prominent commentators and editors to echo our calls, and when the heat had sufficiently turned up the pressure, the Vermont Senate changed course, introduced and voted quickly for an impeachment resolution demanding that the national Congress do their job and bring charges against Bush and Cheney.
Just last week, Peter Shumlin, the Senate president pro-temp said that getting such a resolution done in a day, as I had advocated, was like saying that you were going to Mars for the weekend, and that if I could get it done, I could have his job. Of course it took a skilled politician like Mr. Shumlin to know how to do such a thing and it is to his credit that he recognized the necessity to take action. He should keep his job and remember this lesson.
There’s more…
Gaye Symington, the Speaker of the House, is still firmly stuck in the mud and refuses to reconsider her opposition to action in the House, but she has yet to feel the full force of the slings and arrows of outraged Vermonters.
It is not that we have spoken. It is that we have just begun to speak. We gain new volunteers to our movement literally every day and the legislature will soon find itself unable to consider anything but taking up an impeachment resolution as we make ourselves at home in their chambers.
I just spent a few days in western Pennsylvania, in an area where Democrats are afraid to raise their heads. And even there I saw many signs that support for this administration’s flailing and disastrous attempts to bully the world is crumbling.
Vermont is showing the nation that, even in our present system, where politicians and the media are influenced and controlled by their corporate masters, where money matters above all else, and when the American attention span has dropped to a matter of seconds, it is possible for a grass-roots peoples’ movement to change the designated course that our leaders think that they should be following, and to instead shame them to live up to their oaths of office and to do what is right and necessary.
Every American who is willing to pull his or her head out of the sand understands that we can no longer sit idly by while our “leaders” destroy the very foundations upon which this nation stands.
All of New England is beginning to unite and work together to force impeachment upon the Congress. Citizens in close to a dozen other states are doing the same. We will not cease and we will not be stopped. When the truth is on your side and the fate of the Republic hangs in the balance, all that remains is for those who understand to be willing to take a stand. That is what is happening today. While a Senate resolution from tiny Vermont will not be the stone that brings down this Goliath and its monstrous war, but we have just witnessed the first revolution of the sling.
Dan DeWalt