How 4People (3 activists, one minister, and a program administrator) Helped a Hour Rep. to co-sponsor 333 to Impeach Cheney

I want y'all to know it's possible. You may find your own ways to do it. Just don't give up. In the 4 DAYS since we met with Rep. Yvette Clarke in DC on Tues. June 5, SHE cosponsored 333, REP. WOOLSEY did too, and REP. LEE did too! Probably we can't take credit for the whole thing but every effort counts and adds up!

Here is the process that culminated in our Rep. making the call to cosponsor the bill to impeach Cheney:

1 - I went to DC to see my new Rep.Yvette Clarke, sworn in the first week of 2007. Had never met her, but I hung out in her office and met her supporters, staff, campaign advisors. Went into the celebration room in the Capitol where we saw her cermonial swearing-in. I introduced myself as a constituent interested in participatory democracy. Networked. Met her scheduler.

2 - Back home, I called her scheduler, trying to set up a meeting. In late Feb. the scheduler agreed, and asked if the Rep. could come to MY home. I set up a meeting with 35 people, including 3 Christian ministers I know (I work part-time in a church and have met some liberal clergy), a couple of people who have run for local office, a couple business owners and just neighborhood folks.

3 - With just 2 other activists in my neighborhood, we had multiple weekly lobbying contacts with her office focused on the Lee bill, all the Iraq Supplemental votes, and Impeachment, esp. after H. Res. 333 came up (in the form of emails and calls).

4 - Meanwhile we periodically emailed all who had attended the Feb. meeting, apprised of our contacts with her and encouraged them to lobby her during crucial vote times. Some did.

5 - One of the ministers we kept in the loop turned out to know the Congresswoman, and was also quite concerned about the Iraq moral crisis, the constitutional crisis, and the gathering of political power almost exclusively in the Unitary Executive branch. We spoke at some length, and we set up a meeting in Washington to meet with her and her Chief of Staff.

6 - We prepared a 45-page packet for Clarke including our agenda for the meeting, letters from 5 other clergy urging her to take the lead on peace and accountability issues, plus extensive documentation on our issues; i.e., Supplementals, Oil Benchmarks, Unitary Executive powers, and H.Res. 333 for Impeaching Cheney. (Three of us local grassroots activists had researched and prepared this packet over several months.)

7 - During the course of the meeting, Rep. Clarke authorized her Chief of Staff to notify Kucinich's office that she wanted to cosponsor H. Res. 333. The phone call was made and it was done. She listened to us and she did it!

We have plans to continue our in-district networking with other faith-based groups and keep building on this relationship with our Representative, continuing to advocate for peace and accountability and impeachment.

We also will talk and network with folks (from liberal groups, faith-based groups, demos or wherever we find them) in nearby districts, recruit them to do their version what we've done with their Reps, and plan to go to Washington en masse to go visit each Brooklyn Rep's office in a round-robin set of meetings in one day, advocating for peace and impeachment!

Anyone from Brooklyn who is called to get in on this kind of advocacy, please contact us.

Anyone from anywhere who wants to talk to us about having already done similar actions, or wants to ask us any questions or get encouragement, please get in touch with us! We are serious about this but also have some laughs, and it is satisfying to get some results once in awhile!