Nirenberg, 60, an Air Force veteran who says he’s “not a
movement person,” and who is not part of any organized impeachment
campaign, said he had simply grown disgusted with the continuation of a
criminal war in Iraq, with reports of officially sanctioned torture by
American soldiers and guards of captives in Iraq, Afghanistan and in
the so-called “war” on terror, and with the ongoing abuses of power by
Bush and Cheney. “I decided I had to do something about it,” he said,
simply. His answer: to just start walking. With a goal of 15 miles a
day, and the support of impeachment and anti-war advocates all along
his chosen route — Highway 1, the so-called Boston Post Road —
Nirenberg hopes to make Washington before the end of the month and the
start of the next Congressional session, and to bring his personal call
for a start to impeachment hearings to the office of House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, who has been blocking impeachment since taking the
speaker’s gavel last November.
While his trek for impeachment was covered in Boston by local media
there, and by the Associated Press nationally, as well as by New York’s
Village Voice
news weekly, his arrival in Philadelphia, home of the Constitution and
its impeachment clause, went completely unheralded in the local media.
None of the city’s major media sent reporters or even a photographer.
Nirenberg and some hardy locals, at the end of a rally on Independence
Mall, took an impromptu walk for the 14 blocks to the offices of the
Philadelphia Inquirer and
Daily News,
Philadelphia’s two daily papers, and there Nirenberg offered editors at
both city desks an easy interview. Although cheap news and press
handouts are the papers’ stock and trade in these days or staff
cutbacks and shriveled editorial staffs, neither obliged.
Nor
did any radio or TV reporters show up at the Philadelphia event, though
they have regularly covered far less significant events involving far
fewer people at the same location.
Local police from the Philadelphia Police Civil Affairs unit were on
the job though, energetically protecting the local citizenry and the
Inquirer building from Nirenberg’s “threatening” free speech
activities. Two members of the department, a man and a woman, dressed
in plain clothes and wearing no police identification, showed up in the
Inquirer building lobby at the security guard’s desk within moments of
Nirenberg’s arrival there and began questioning him about his plans.
They made no mention their police department affiliation until asked
directly if they were reporters.
It was a sorry commentary on the sorry state of civil liberties and of
the Constitution, as well as on the sorry state of the nation’s media,
that Nirenberg’s remarkable one-man protest — a march from Boston to
Washington, DC in the dead of winter to petition Congress — would be
met in Philadelphia by no elected officials and no press, but rather by
the police.
Nirenberg, in the
blog on his trek website, writes:
“Rather than end the rally after the moment of silence, we decided that
since the news media hadn’t come out we would take the story to them.
About 20 people marched through Philadelphia to City Hall, turned west
and ended up at the Philadelphia Inquirer offices where we failed to
get their interest but stirred Gar Joseph, (Sunday) City Editor of the
Daily News, to think twice before dismissing the movement and my walk
through town. We’ll know in a day or two if we made any sense to him
but he seemed to awaken to the fact that this isn’t a partisan issue
but an historic one.”
Nirenberg’s plan is to walk straight to the office of Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, and there to demand that she stop blocking a hearing on Rep.
Dennis Kucinich’s H. Res 799 Cheney impeachment bill. He would also
like to see a bill calling for Bush’s impeachment, and an end to
funding for the Iraq War.
Nirenberg says the abuses and crimes of the Bush administration, and
the abject failure of the Democratic-led Congress to act led him to
“activate my citizenship,” and begin his one-man march.
In a letter to Speaker Pelosi, announcing his intention to march from Boston to her Washington office, he wrote:
“Your repeated statements that impeachment is off the table have sent
the message, intentionally or otherwise, that no basis for impeachment
exists. Consequently, succeeding Presidents can assume that they, too,
have the powers that Mr. Bush claims under the contrived construct of
`a unitary executive.’
“If Congress does not utilize the Constitutional remedy of impeachment,
which was designed for precisely this kind of situation, how can Bush
and Cheney be held accountable for any of their lies and crimes? If
Congress does not open impeachment hearings, if no act of censure is
introduced, then the courts, the people, and history will clearly
assume that Congress approved of the entire spectrum of illegal acts,
abuses, and immorality perpetrated by this administration.”
To date, Pelosi’s office has not told Nirenberg, or announced publicly,
whether the Speaker will meet with the one-man demonstration.
Those interested in supporting Nirenberg’s effort, in following his
progress, or in meeting him at any of his remaining stops along the
way, should visit his website:
www.MarchInMyName.org
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