The Right Reverand Lennox Yearwood Jr.
Posted on 08/29/2007 12:34:31 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The national antiwar-impeachment group, World Can’t Wait, drew 150 people, representing the range of the city’s cultural milieu, to the San Francisco Main Library’s Koret Auditorium Sunday to “drive out the Bush Regime” and reverse its slide toward what many see as an imperial presidency.
The meeting was one of at least 11 such events around the country this month and last, from New York to Los Angeles, mobilizing public sentiment for impeachment, despite the repeated insistence by Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party leadership that the issue is “off the table.” An American Research Group poll last week found half of all voters wanted Cheney impeached with slightly fewer favoring the same for Bush.
Hip Hop activist Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., journalist and World Can’t Wait board member Sunsara Taylor and KPFA producer and co-host of the investigative news show Flashpoints Dennis Bernstein variously denounced what they called “war crimes,” “treason” and “crimes against humanity” by the Bush administration and warned of further damage should they remain in office for the rest of their terms.
“If Bush is not impeached,” Taylor said, “everything he’s done becomes codified,” referring to such Bush doctrine elements as pre-emptive war, the use of torture and denial of habeas corpus, the use of signing statements to circumvent laws and domestic spying. “Everything stays with us, no matter who becomes president.”
Moreover, they warned that Bush and Cheney continue to actively hatch plans for attacking Iran and even imposing martial law in this country.
Yearwood, the “Hip Hop Rev,” opened with a stemwinder of a speech that echoed the dramatic cadence and recurring phrases of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Sporting a clerical collar and a New York Yankees ball cap, he compared Bush to the host of the television game show “Deal or No Deal.” Rising to a crescendo, Yearwood demanded over and over that people refuse to make deals with torture and spying. “I’m not gonna allow torture and spying! No deal!” he cried.
Thirty-seven years old, Yearwood interned in the Clinton White House, then graduated from Howard University Divinity School as a Church of God in Christ minister. Joining the Air Force as a chaplain candidate, part of the “Poor People’s Draft,” as he explained, he mustered out in 2003.
He quickly rose in the political Hip Hop movement, organizing, with Russell Simmons, the first “Hip Hop Team Vote Bus Tour.” He worked for P. Diddy’s “Citizen Change” and Jay Z’s “Voice Your Choice.”
Since then, he has organized benefits for Katrina survivors, been arrested in the Senate, and helped organize the “Save Tookie Williams” campaign. He continues to work closely with Cindy Sheehan – “My mother in the movement” – the most visible face of the antiwar movement and a presumptive candidate for Congress from San Francisco against Pelosi.
Recently, Yearwood’s antiwar activities brought retaliation from the Air Force, where he still holds the rank of officer in the Reserves. In March, he was told he would be forced out as a “national security risk.” The case is pending.
Yearwood berated the Congressional Black Caucus for “trembling like chihuahuas under the gaze of House Speaker Pelosi. If the Democrats have their way, no president will ever face punishment for crimes against humanity.”
Next Monday, July 23, Yearwood, Sheehan and other antiwar-impeachment activists will march from Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., to Rep. John Conyers’ office, where they plan to sit in, read the Constitution aloud and wait to be arrested, if necessary.
Bernstein was next up. He spoke quietly of the historical pedigrees of Bush’s architects of the Iraq War. “Six-time convicted Iran-Contra felon” Eliot Abrams, pardoned by George H.W. Bush in 1989 for lying to Congress, is now the deputy national security advisor, responsible for “advancing Bush’s strategy for ‘promoting democracy’ abroad.” John Negroponte, former ambassador to Honduras, who in the 1980s directed the military campaign against the newly elected Sandanista government, has been Bush’s ambassador to Iraq and director of national intelligence.
“We have to do our own critical thinking,” Bernstein said, addressing the largely youthful audience. “Study history. Become an amateur historian. History follows us right into the future. Fight back with information. Information is power!”
Sunsara Taylor, 29, from New York, perhaps the most visible face of the World Can’t Wait organization, has written and spoken extensively about the Iraq War, revolutionary politics and women’s reproductive rights. She has twice appeared on Fox TV’s O’Reilly Factor, reducing a stumped Bill O’Reilly to calling Taylor a “loon” and “hysterical” for her insistence on withdrawing American troops from Iraq.
“The problem is not that protest isn’t working,” she said Sunday. “It’s that there hasn’t been nearly enough of it. The people in Iraq can’t see our letters to Congressmen. We have to be visible in the streets, in mass numbers.” She announced a national “Declare Yourself — Wear Orange” campaign to make orange an antiwar symbol.
Meanwhile, the potential for an attack against Iran, she said, is “probably the biggest emergency facing us. The Bush administration wants to radically reshape the Middle East as part of creating an unchallenged and unchallengeable force there.”
Taylor compared the current challenge for the antiwar-impeachment movement to a basketball game pitting overwhelmed amateurs against the cream of the NBA. “It’s the third quarter and we’re getting whomped. Every time we get our hands on the ball, the refs call us foul. We realize the game is rigged. We look up at the crowd. There are thousands of fans. They want us to win but they’re also becoming resigned to the prospect of losing. What do we do?
“We have to stop playing the game by their rules,” she said. “We want everyone from the stands to get your a** down here. We’re going to overwhelm them. No more passive observers!”
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The San Francisco chapter of World Can’t Wait, www.sfbaycantwait.org/Home.html meets on the first and third Thursdays of each month. Call or write for information at SF World Can’t Wait, 2940 16th St., Room 200-6, San Francisco CA 94103, (415) 864-5153, sf@worldcantwait.org
Hell, in San Francisco it should be only 150 that didn’t show up. Evidently the pre-meeting press release confused the potential attendees.
Stick your head in the toilet and flush.
When I ran anime clubs, we had bigger crowds for Miyazaki premieres.
On what planet?
150 seditionists.
150 arrests.
150 convictions.
150 sentences commensurate with U.S. Statute Code.
During wartime, the sentences might be a little harsher.
:)
World Can’t Wait is a front for the Revolutionary Communist Party. Anyone who pays any attention to these psychos is a fool.
If they can throw his arse out of the Air Force...why is jack murtha still in Congress?
Wouldn’t impeaching Bush and Cheney put Pelosi in a good position?
History shows that Communism, socialism and variants have killed something like 100 million people just in the last century. Do you really want to study history, REAL history?
Don’t these morons have jobs?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Yep... that’s right huh.
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