A Gathering Storm

As I've written previously on this site, the basis exists - richly exists - for an explosion of impeachment sentiment in this country. A large majority want to see Bush and Cheney relieved of office. For this flowering to occur at near its potential, however, the general call I've made in this website needs to be supplemented by an organizational component. People "on the ground" need to take this campaign out among the people broadly and spread it like a social epidemic. Thousands of individuals from all over - from close to a thousand towns and cities throughout the country - have visited this site since it was started about a week and a half ago, and this was by way of referrals from only a handful of sources.

Imagine what would happen if word spread via other sites and word spread on the ground? If even a few more people step forward to offer their help as national and city-level, town-level organizers, the movement can advance by major leaps and bounds. Do not underestimate what a handful of people or even one person can do to change the political landscape. The people who step forward to participate as organizers - on the web and on the ground - can act as the catalysts, the lattice works, the matrix, for the emergence of this phenomenon.

The numbers of people presently working as organizers is insufficient, far too few, to trigger the millions who can and need to come out and reveal themselves to the world as the partisans for another world. This means that people who have never been involved in political work, including people who've never even been in a demonstration, young people, old people, all kinds of people, need to step forward and be one of these organizers.

Unlike in the 1960s, where mass media coverage of the insurgent movements, problematic as that coverage was, helped to spread the word and popularize the movements, if you have a demonstration today of 100,000 the mass media will say there were thousands. If you have a demonstration of 1,000,000 they'll say there were hundreds of thousands - if that! There's been a sea change in the mainstream media, a fact chronicled and analyzed by many people such as Ben Bagdikian, Robert Parry and myself (see especially Chapter 2). One of the reasons why the movement today requires that people step forward as organizers on the local, regional and national level is that we cannot count on and should not expect fair and adequate media attention. Our actions need to be evident on the local level as much as possible and occur on such a wide scale that it is seen and felt as a national movement. This allows us to bypass the need to rely on mainstream media to cover us. We do not have the money that the right-wing has to create our own media empire, but what we do have is justice, truth and the people on our side. These things won't show themselves on their own. The power of the masses of people exists in embryonic form right now. The sentiments among the people need to be tapped. People need to be challenged to break out of their normal routines.

Allow me to cite a pertinent historical example. In 1953 the CIA engineered a coup of the Iranian government. Mossadegh was the nationalist Iranian Prime Minister and led the nationalization of the British Petroleum Company (then named the Ango-Iranian Oil Company) that had exclusive rights to the oil. This enraged the British and eventually led to a coup approved by President Truman. Through skillful use of propaganda and a small number of military actions, the CIA brought the Shah of Iran to power, seizing radio stations as they moved towards Tehran and creating the wholly false impression that a popular uprising was in process against Mossadegh. In fact, the CIA organized forces were tiny, but Mossadegh was fooled by the CIA's tactics and left office. Theodore Roosevelt's grandson Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. led this successful CIA coup.

Similarly, the Bush/Cheney regime seized power in 2000 and again in 2004 through elections fraud, through intimidation, and through creating the false impression that they were the majority. Radio stations have also played a key role in creating this phony impression. Today their falsehood of a popular mandate has never been greater. This duo cannot speak uninterrupted except before handpicked crowds and their visages produce revulsion throughout the land. We are the real majority, but the real majority needs to show itself. And this needs to happen not in one fell swoop, but as a gathering storm that builds over time. We are not looking for the knock-out blow at this point. We need to grow and grow until we become an irresistible force.

We can make a start of this, a wonderful start of it, this week, beginning tomorrow, when people who have gotten the word wear their politics on their sleeves. It can help to build word and momentum for National Impeachment Day, April 28, and it can be a kind of dress rehearsal for what remains to come in the coming weeks and months - impeachment summer. We can use this start as a foundation to take it further and spread it widely. We have only ... a planet to save!