by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
"...right now the two procedural roadblocks
to impeachment, the two people with the most say in the matter are
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressman John Conyers."
On July 23, four hundred
people showed
up at the
office of Detroit Congressman John
Conyers.
They demanded that as chairman of the powerful House Judiciary
Committee he initiate impeachment proceedings against Bush, Cheney,
Gonzalez and others. They delivered to his office a petition with one million signatures demanding impeachment. After conferring briefly with a few of
them, including former CIA agent Ray
McGovern,
congressional candidate Cindy
Sheehan,
and the Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president of the of the National
Hip Hop Caucus,
Conyers announced that despite his prior public statements,
impeachment would remain “off the table.” The demonstrators
sang, prayed, and sat down in the congressional office, refusing to
move. Forty-five of them were arrested.
Since
then, Larry Pinkney over at Black Commentator, our former home on the
internet, has penned two consecutive columns of junk political
science and wacky analysis in defense of the Congressman from
Detroit. In the first, Pinkney displays
his tenuous grasp of current public opinion and procedure on
impeachment:
“It
should be clearly understood that no politician, Democrat or
Republican, can, if the overwhelming majority of the masses actively
demand it, put the issue of impeachment off or on the table."
Wrong.
Impeachment is not a revolution. It's legal process, one that a
majority of the American people favor, if available polling
data is to
be believed. But as long as the officials with the legal power
to push that paper refuse to carry out the popular will, nothing will
happen. Nada. And right now the two procedural roadblocks
to impeachment, the two people with the most say in the matter are
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressman John Conyers. They and
only they can begin the legal process which might result in a
takedown of the most lawless administration in US history. And
they won’t.
Pinkney also labels David
Swanson "arrogant" and "racist" for no other
evident reasons than his whiteness and his public disagreement with
Conyers on the issue of impeachment. In a follow-up column the
next week, misleadingly labeled an "Impeachment Strategy
Debate," Pinkney repeats his weak, but alarming defense of the
Detroit congressman:
"...Black
youth, have far too few publicly known and respected progressive
Black men and women as it is; publicly attacking Rep. Conyers was ill
conceived, unnecessary, and divisive.... he... has only one
vote. To have publicly targeted him and not the other Committee
members... was... 'tactically and strategically incorrect.' Whether
intended or not, it gave the distinct impression of active white
racism."
Whoa. It’s wrong
for black folks to put Conyers on the spot because there are too few
known and respected black progressives? Committee chairmen are
just another vote? And whites who publicly disagree with
Conyers are pretty much automatically racist? Brother Pinkney is probably
a smart guy, but what he’s saying is dumb and dangerous.
John Conyers was not sent
to DC for twenty-two terms so the young folks would have somebody black
to look up to. He was sent there to carry the political will of
black and progressive Detroit, of black and progressive America to
the halls of power, whether the powerful were ready to hear it or
not. Indisputably, over forty years in Congress Conyers has
served ably and well. But everybody knows Congressional power
is based on seniority. His constituents re-elected him twenty-one
times in the hope that with seniority he would gain the power to
someday act decisively on their behalf. This is the season when
that bill has finally come due. The phone is ringing now, and
the collection folks are at the door. And sadly, John Conyers
is ducking and hiding.
"John Conyers was not sent
to DC for twenty terms so the young folks would have somebody black
to look up to."
To be fair, this does not
erase any of the great work Conyers has done over forty years.
Neither do those good works excuse what looks for all the world like
a betrayal of the congressman’s own words, a contravention of his
black and progressive constituents’ clearly expressed will on the
issue of impeachment. No constituency is as heavily in favor of
impeachment as Black America, and Detroit is arguably the blackest
big city in the nation. This should be the high point of
Conyers' career
Furthermore, despite what
Mr. Pinkney at Black Commentator would have us believe, pointing
these facts out, if you’re white, does not make you a racist.
That’s a cowardly, baseless and craven defense of what is otherwise
indefensible. And it seems to be the only card in Brother
Pinkney’s deck. We wonder if Pinkney thinks the Rev. Lennox
Yearwood of the HipHop Caucus, a predominantly black organization,
who took part in and was arrested at Conyers’ office is racist too?
For what
it’s worth, Pinkney has some white company --- white guys ready to
co-sign the notion that any public disagreement with African
Americans automagically makes them racist. Check out Mark
Solomon in Portside:
“…a
statement by a prominent leader of the protest that Conyers "is
no Martin Luther King" is racist. As many have noted, that
statement is a crude reflection of the historic practice of empowered
whites to arrogantly select and define Black leadership. By linking
Conyers to King, the impeachment controversy was framed in racist
terms -- terms that insulted both Conyers and King. The statement by
another protest leader that Conyers "betrayed the American
people" is more subtle in its negative implications, but perhaps
no less racist. It reflects a historic posture of dominant white
entitlement in commanding prescribed behavior from African
Americans.”
Here’s a news flash.
John Conyers really is NOT Martin Luther King. Think about it.
One is a living elected official, the other a leader of a broadly
based popular movement martyred forty years ago. One passes
legislation and leads election campaigns. The other led often
illegal boycotts, demonstrations and marches of all kinds. The
elections that one of these guys engages in are time-limited,
decorous legal exercises bound by centuries of custom and regulated
by libraries of case law, statute, administrative regulation and lots
of corporate cash. The political mass movement that the other
was part of existed outside and often in defiance of the law, and
like any mass movement continued until some of its objectives were
achieved, some of its the leaders betrayed their followers, and until
the balance of social forces which gave birth to it changed.
"John Conyers has been an exemplary congressman up
till now. But he is not now and never was a Martin Luther
King."
I feel the need to say
that again. John Conyers has been an exemplary congressman up
till now. But he is not now and never was a Martin Luther
King. For that matter, if Martin Luther King had been elected
to the US Congress, he wouldn’t be Martin Luther King either. 
It's high time we, as
African American progressives, stopped confusing elected officials
with movement leaders, and conflating our voter registration drives
and electoral campaigns with mass movements like the historic Freedom
Movement of the fifties, sixties and early seventies. They just
aren't the same thing, and participation in neither one buys you a
pass from criticism. Dr. King took his lumps from all sides.
As a former member of the Black Panther Party and the
Republic of New Africa back in the day as his bio says, Pinkney almost
certainly co-signed some radical critiques of Dr. King's life and
work. How can he tell us now that Congressman Conyers is beyond
principled criticism?
"Even our political giants sometimes have
little clay feet which must be held firmly to the fire..."
Conyers himself has on
many occasions told audiences that it's up to all of us to hold him
accountable, that it's up to us to write him, to fax him, to email
him, to buttonhole and to visit him and let him know what he'd better do --- just
like every other elected official. We should take John at his
word. That's what Rev. Lennox Yearwood, the Hip Hop Caucus and
the 400 demonstrators at Conyers' door last month were doing.
And it's what we all must continue to do. As Yearwood said:
"The
Hip Hop community and the Hip Hop Caucus are making a visible
stand for impeachment. We invite Congressman Conyers to
come back home, and to rejoin his constituents and long-time supporters on this vital issue.
"We
urge everybody with access to a phone, an email account or a fax
machine to call Chairman Conyers at (202) 225-5126. Tell him
that thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced after Katrina
were enough. It's time to impeach. Email him at
John.Conyers@mail.house.gov
and tell him that illegal wars and war crimes are enough. It's
time to impeach. Bush-Cheney might even give us a new war in the months
they have left. Fax Chairman Conyers at (202) 225-0072. Tell
him this is why we sent him to Washington, this is why Democrats were
elected to Congress. Tell John Conyers that his place in
history is waiting, and so are those of George Bush, Dick Cheney and
Alberto Gonzalez. It's time to send them there."
We at BAR think that Rev.
Yearwood has it about right. This is the time to put the heat
on John Conyers. Even our political giants sometimes have
little clay feet which must be held firmly to the fire until they turn into something more solid.
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