Activists Call for Impeachment

The organization The World Can’t Wait launched a nationwide campaign on July 25 called “Declare It Now: Wear Orange To Drive Out the Bush Regime” in several major cities, including West Hollywood, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. The campaign’s mission urges the country to show visible and vocal support for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney by wearing orange bandanas and ribbons.

“Orange Friday” consisted of three major events: a noontime rally at the National Impeachment Center, followed by a walk through the West Hollywood business community and concluding with a public speak-out at West Hollywood Park.

Speakers at the conference center included West Hollywood Mayor John Duran; Dennis Loo, professor and co-editor of “Impeach the President: The Case against Bush and Cheney”; Stephen Rohde, a constitutional lawyer, author and founder of the Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace; Wayne Kramer, former member of rock band MC-5; as well as many WCW members.

Each speaker expressed dismay and resentment with the Bush administration, urging community support for retribution and political change.

“The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come,” Rohde said. “We must act now. The future is in the balance.”

Duran compared the Bush administration to the English tyranny that spawned the American Revolution. “To me this is just a very simple common sense issue,” Duran said. “I known I could probably have a discussion with a fourth grader about civics and about what the founders meant when they declared independence from King George, that they were tired of the king coming in and searching people without a warrant, that they were tired of the king accusing people of crimes and placing them in jail without telling them what they were accused of, that they were tired of King George denying people council, denying them of court proceedings.”

He added, “Two hundred twenty seven years after we came up with these great ideas, we ended up with an executive who, in a time of what he called war, decided to suspend habeas corpus, decided not to tell people what they were accused of, decided to go out and search people without a warrant, to not supply people with council [and] to use torture.”

Throughout the speeches, three WCW volunteers dressed in orange detainee jumpsuits stood and kneeled silently with black hoods over their faces.

The “Declare It Now: Wear Orange” campaign was the brainchild of Loo in early 2007.

“I came up with the idea ‘Declare It Now’ to find a means for people to express their sentiments in a way that would be visible, so we could make what has so far been invisible … and then turn it into a real material force in this society,” he said. “I approached the WCW and I said here is my analysis, here is what I’m thinking. We can’t just keep calling more rallies and more marches because even if we get a million people in Washington, D.C., what is the mass media going to say, ‘Well you have a few thousand.’”

Loo hopes the color orange will become a symbol that “can persist and bypass the denial of the mass media, cause if people wear this in their everyday lives other people will see this,” he said.

West Hollywood was selected by WCW as the launch city in Southern California because of the City Council’s unanimous approval to pass a resolution petitioning for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney on July 16.

One week later, on July 23, Takoma Park, Md., became the eighty-first city, following West Hollywood to pass a comparable resolution.

According to Duran, the city received both praise and attack for the council’s decision. “We got a lot of email after we passed the resolution from the people of West Hollywood [who] were very supportive,” he said. “We got really nasty email from places like Texas and Oklahoma.”

Following the conference, the WCW members regrouped to pass out bright orange pamphlets, bandanas, ribbons, streamers and bumper stickers in West Hollywood. According to Nichol Lee, a WCW activist, the march was met with positive comments and curiosity by the community.

The group concluded at the park with a public speak-out. The light crowd of roughly 20 included WCW members, poetry readers, a local musician and West Hollywood residents.

Rohde concluded by saying: “The point is this. History is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they every imagined. The future is unwritten; which one we get is up to us.”

- Photo by Chuck Green