Not that McKinney is out of step with the broad American public on the issue of impeachment. Rather, as David Swanson, of the excellent website AfterDowningStreet.org writes:

“…she alone has spoken for the 51 percent of Americans who Newsweek says want Bush impeached. A considerably higher percentage of Americans would, if asked, almost certainly acknowledge that the abuses with which McKinney charges Bush et al. have, in fact, been committed by them and are impeachable offenses. That is to say, there are those who recognize the grounds for impeachment but don't want to see them pursued. There are even those who want impeachment pursued but wish it were not being pursued by McKinney.”

But in all these long years since Bush’s criminality has become plain to everyone with a brain, no one in congress but Cynthia McKinney stepped forward to say, “The Emperor is a Gangster, and must be deposed.”

Even before the March, 2003 Iraq invasion, many progressive hopes for impeachment were hitched to Detroit Congressman John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and veteran of the Nixon impeachment proceedings. If any federal legislator deserves a lifetime achievement award, it is Conyers, who has maintained a sterling record of progressivism since his freshman year, 1965. Finally, in late 2005, it seemed the “Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus” was ready to make his move. McKinney and 36 other congresspersons joined Conyers in co-sponsoring a resolution to create “a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.” It sounded like the impeachment train was about to roll.

Then, just before the midterm elections, The Dean definitively folded his the tent, caving to Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s command from on-high: “Impeachment is off the table.”

Everybody’s table, that is, but the irreplaceable lawmaker, Cynthia McKinney.

A Matter of Principle

Progressive congresspersons have been effectively muzzled under Pelosi, ironically a former co-chair of the Progressive Congressional Caucus. What’s left of the progressive wing of the Congressional Black Caucus has been reduced to an unprecedented state of disarray, incapable of finding its own voice, and constantly warned to avoid association with its most independent Member, McKinney. With the slavish assistance of outgoing CBC chairman Mel Watt (D-NC), Pelosi succeeded in isolating McKinney from many of her Caucus peers. Facing possible indictment on charges of striking a Capitol Hill policeman, McKinney was left to twist in the wind for most of her unsuccessful 2006 primary re-election campaign. Pelosi’s unspoken admonishment to Black lawmakers: don’t upset white voters in the run-up to midterm elections through any display of solidarity with the besieged Member from Georgia.

But Black voters have never been repelled by Cynthia McKinney’s brand of politics. She won an overwhelming share of the African American vote in 2002 and 2006, despite losing both primary elections. There can be no doubt that her impeachment resolution was met with approval by the vast majority of Blacks, the most staunchly anti-Bush bloc in the nation, by far.

“Black voters have never been repelled by Cynthia McKinney’s brand of politics.”

Perhaps most emblematic of her consistent, principled political behavior, was McKinney’s inclusion of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as deserving of impeachment, along with her bosses, Bush and Cheney. House Resolution 1106 reads:

“Condoleezza Rice, in violation of her constitutional duty to share and provide accurate and truthful intelligence information with the Congress, as former National Security Adviser to the President, did play a leading role in deceiving Congress and the American public by repeating and propagating false statements concerning Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction program…. Whereby Condoleezza Rice…did commit and was guilty of high misdemeanors against the United States of America.”

Less than the “high crimes” charged against Bush and Cheney, but sufficient.

Condoleezza Rice, for no good reason, is far less despised among African Americans than Bush and Cheney. But principle requires that Rice should also face congressional indictment. How many members of the Congressional Black Caucus would buck the historical Black current that celebrates “Black faces in high places,” no matter what their crimes? One, that we can be sure of: Cynthia McKinney.

In their eternal quest to erase independent Black political expression, corporate media, corporate Democrats and corporate mercenaries of all varieties seek to portray legitimate African American activist/politicians as “crazed,” “overly emotional,” and “out of step with the Black mainstream.” In reality, these hostile forces attempt to dry up the stream of Black militancy by separating African Americans from their own authentic voices.

Here is Cynthia McKinney’s authentic voice, from an interview with Black Agenda Report (BAR):

BAR: In a parting shot, you put impeachment back “on the table.” Why’d you do that?

McK: It was the morally and politically correct thing to do. Everyone should be held to the standard of telling the truth and obeying the laws.

BAR: Would you have preferred that this action have been taken by a combination of congresspersons, rather than you alone?

McK: I wanted to do it back in 2002 when I left Congress the first time, but my mother pleaded with me not to do it, because of the retaliation that would surely come. So I succumbed to my mother’s wishes, and didn’t do it. It should have been done almost from the very outset of the administration. The repeated crimes against the American people, the lies, the lack of accountability, the squandering of the public treasury, left our country not only morally bankrupt but financially bankrupt as well.

BAR: During that whole period, did you defer to others in the Caucus and elsewhere in Congress, hoping that others might, or should, be the ones to introduce a resolution of impeachment?

McK: I can’t answer for other national leaders, I can only answer for my conscience. This was an act of conscience on my part, something that I thought was necessary to do. The laws of our land, the Constitution, are not the exclusive property of a private club to decide, well, this doesn’t apply to us, so therefore, we’re going to violate the people’s trust – and then, other members of the club say, that’s OK, we’ll let you get away with it. That’s not right! And that’s not what the American people expect. The American people expect that, if you pass a law, everybody is subject to the law. The Constitution is the highest law of the land. Of all people, certainly the president, the vice-president, the secretary of state shouldn’t be engaged in activity that violates the public trust.

”The laws of our land, the Constitution, are not the exclusive property of a private club.”

BAR: What was your reaction when Congresswoman Pelosi said in no uncertain terms that impeachment was “off the table,” and did you feel that that was a kind of marching order for the Democratic Caucus as a whole?

McK: It clearly was a marching order, just as “stay away from the Select Panel on Katrina” [another Pelosi directive to Democrats] was a marching order. And so you had members of the Democratic Caucus, including members of the Black Caucus, staying away from the Katrina panel, even though there was an opportunity to do good work by participating on the panel.

BAR: Now that you’re about to become a “civilian” for the second time, do you think that Pelosi’s “marching order” on impeachment will stand for the next two years?

McK: That depends on the American people. This administration obviously has not been checked, and will not be checked, by the Democratic majority in the House and the Senate. It may be tempered, but it won’t be checked. And that’s a shame. As one elected official told me, when you get elected you get the keys to the file cabinet – but you’re not supposed to tell what’s in the file cabinet. Well, I told what was in the file cabinet, but for some people it’s more important to have the keys than it is to clean out the files.

‘McKinney Democrats’

Rev. Lennox Yearwood, head of the Hip Hop Caucus, who has often collaborated with McKinney in Katrina-related activities, proudly proclaims himself a “McKinney Democrat” – a category that objectively applies to most African Americans. The masses of Blacks are as suspicious as McKinney of the Bush regime’s conduct, pre- and post-9/11. They favor an immediate end to the war in Iraq, and view the occupation in the context of historical U.S. and European adventures and usurpations in the non-white world. There is no question in most African American minds that the current U.S. regime is a servant of the rich; that Bush, Cheney (and Condoleezza) lie as a matter of policy; and that only a thoroughgoing overhaul of society can finally make things right for Black folks. Black public opinion most closely matches world opinion, which holds that the Bush administration is a danger to mankind as a whole.

So, where do the “McKinney Democrats” – Black, white and brown – go, now that McKinney is leaving the House? Where, and Who, is their beacon, the lawmaker whose very presence tends to say, “There is hope yet, for this corrupt and racist electoral system?”

If no ready answer comes to mind, then you should understand why Cynthia McKinney is irreplaceable.

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BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford can be reached at Glen.Ford (at) BlackAgendaReport.com. Be sure to substitute @ for (at)

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