Cynthia McKinney

six term Member of Congress, Green Party Presidential candidate

The most courageous Member of Congress, the only Representative willing to talk about 9/11 foreknowledge

Six term Democratic member of Congress from Georgia

Defeated in 2002 for daring to question Bush too much

Re-elected to Congress in 2004 for the 2005 - 2006 session

Introduced a bill to impeach Bush and Cheney, no member of Congress dared co-sponsor it.

Defeated 2006 with voting machines and a media smear campaign from the Democratic and Republican parties.

2008 Green Party presidential candidate

Cynthia McKinney's websites:
www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com (personal site)
www.cynthiaforcongress.com (Congressional campaigns)
www.runcynthiarun.com (2008 Presidential Campaign)

related site:

judgeforyourself.org - website of John Judge, an assistant to Cynthia McKinney in her final term in the House of Representatives. John Judge is one of the best "alternative historians," expert in the deep politics of the empire, one of the very few independent investigators of 9/11 who makes a serious effort to differentiate real claims from BS. His writings are archived at
www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/

McKinney was featured in the documentary American Blackout from Guerrilla News Network, which includes McKinney quizzing War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the 9/11 war games, the missing trillions of dollars, and military contractors engaged in child prostitution.

American Blackout (movie)
featuring Cynthia McKinney
www.americanblackout.com

www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/030105_mckinney_question.shtml
"Mr. Chairman, I have a question"

On-the-Record: Representative Cynthia McKinney Rocks Rumsfeld on War Games

and a follow-up: www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/031505_mckinney_transcript.shtml


A short comment on the 2008 "election"

ideally, the Greens could have had a McKinney-Nader unity ticket, but perhaps this failure reflects broader problems with dissent in the United States.

If you live in a state where the voting machines will clearly be indicating a "win" for Obama or for McCain, there is no excuse for a supporter of peace and democracy not to cast a protest vote for Cynthia McKinney. However one chooses to "vote" the real efforts to demand accountability and sincere sustainability are everyday efforts, not merely something to do on "Election" Day.

In December 2008, Cynthia McKinney was part of a humanitarian effort to bring medical supplies and doctors to the besieged population of Gaza, then under severe bombardment by the Israeli military. The Israeli Navy rammed the small yacht that she and others were on, and probably avoided death because there was live media coverage of the expedition (and the Israelis still have some concern for how their behavior looks in Europe and the US). The freegaza.org website has numerous articles about this event, including links to McKinney's narratives of her experience.


www.democracynow.org/2008/11/5/green_party_presidential_candidate_cynthia_mckinney

November 05, 2008

Green Party Presidential Candidate Cynthia McKinney Responds to Obama Win

We speak with Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney. National results indicate McKinney placed sixth in overall voting behind Barack Obama, John McCain, independent candidate Ralph Nader, Libertarian Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party.

Cynthia McKinney, Green Party presidential nominee. Former Democratic congresswoman from Georgia.

AMY GOODMAN: As we finally turn now, with Manning Marable, to Cynthia McKinney, Green Party presidential candidate, joining us from California. National results indicate McKinney placed sixth in overall voting, behind Barack Obama, John McCain, independent candidate Ralph Nader, Libertarian Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party.

Last night, former Congress member McKinney held an election party along with antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, who ran against the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Your thoughts today?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: Well, of course, I take the opportunity to congratulate Senator Obama, the people of this country and, honestly, the people all over the world who are waiting for a change, a significant change, and who are rejoicing in the fact that the wicked Bush administration will soon end.

But what will come in its place? What kind of change are we really going to have? I wish we could assume a break from the special-interest orthodoxy that seems to have a grip on Washington, D.C. It is this special-interest orthodoxy that has led to war and occupation, civil liberties attacks, social injustice, unemployment, poor yet very costly education and healthcare.

So, we have a lot of work to do. The people of this country have a lot of work to do. The incoming Obama administration is going to have a lot of work to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Where you differ with Barack Obama most, Cynthia McKinney? I mean, you, too, to say the least, broke barriers as the first African American woman to win a congressional seat in Georgia.

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: I reject the continuation of the occupation of Iraq and, of course, reject any surge into Afghanistan. There was silence over the most recent US raid over Syria, the incursions into Pakistan, the virtual blaming of Russia for a provocation that actually was initiated by Georgia, the push to include NATO membership for countries that are right up to the border of Russia and China. Then, of course, I would never have been for the bailout, put out my own fourteen points with respect to the bailout, would never have supported FISA, the illegal spying, the unwarranted spying on US citizens, and at the same time granting of immunity to telecoms that were complicit in that. There are many areas of disagreement with the Obama administration.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have a minute, but I wanted to—we only have a minute, but I wanted to ask Manning Marable, a big supporter of Barack Obama, how you feel about what Cynthia said and what she represents and Barack Obama did not.

MANNING MARABLE: I think Cynthia McKinney has shown throughout her entire career the kind of courageous leadership and progressive vision that we desperately need in America’s political system, that we shouldn’t be surprised that the left of the possible within the political system that we have in this country produces a progressive liberal like Barack Obama.

It is a breakthrough, in terms of Obama being the first African American, the first person of color, being the nation’s chief executive. But it still falls short of the kind of politics that Cynthia embodies, that I also share, that this is not—Obama’s victory is a victory over racism, but it is not a victory of the left. And progressives will be—have to challenge the Obama administration on all of these issues.

acceptance speech
Green Party convention, July 12, 2008

Cynthia McKinney
Acceptance Remarks
Green Party Convention
Chicago, Illinois
July 12, 2008

Let me introduce to you my family and your Power to the People Committee!

My mother and father, Billy and Leola McKinney.

My son, Coy, who just graduated from college in Canada!

I want you to know that there is no way I could do this without their love and support.

Your Power to the People Committee members who are with us today:

You've all shared e-mails with her and heard her lovely voice on the telephone: Lucy Grider-Bradley, the campaign manager of my 2004 comeback campaign and FEC Compliance team leader for the Power to the People Committee!

I've known him all of my political life. You've known him for years if you're a Green party member. Hugh Esco, website man with the Power to the People Committee!

In two long road trips from Georgia to Maine, one trip through California, Oregon, and Washington, and by way of numerous e-mails, you all have come to know my friend, personal assistant, proud Haitian-American activist, et aussi, l'homme avec qui je pratique mon français, David Josué, standing firm against the occupation of Haiti.

John Judge is my friend. He shared U.S. government COINTELPRO documents with me that few except researchers have ever seen. John Judge is an expert on the murders of Malcolm X, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, COINTELPRO, other government covert operations directed at certain U.S. citizens, and what really happened on 9/11. Maybe John can tell me how our military and intelligence infrastructures failed four times in one day after the taxpayers invested trillions of dollars in them.

Janet Young, proud accountant for the Power to the People Committee! Learned the true meaning of politics when she saw what happened to me after I put impeachment on the table.

I am also joined on the platform by members of the Reconstruction Movement who have come into the Green Party to support our Power to the People campaign! The Reconstruction Movement came into being as a result of dissatisfaction around government failures and unmet needs of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita survivors and the many communities across our country in need of reconstruction.

The RunCynthiaRun visionaries from California who are responsible for bringing me to the Party's Presidential process!

All of the Green Party candidates who are running for election in 2008!

And Rosa Clemente, your Vice Presidential nominee!

Thank you all for being here and standing with me today.

In 1851, in Akron, Ohio a former slave woman, abolitionist, and woman's rights activist by the name of Sojourner Truth gave a speech now known as "Ain't I a Woman." Sojourner Truth began her remarks, "Well children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter." She then went on to say that even though she was a woman, no one had ever helped her out of carriages or lifted her over ditches or given her a seat of honor in any place. Instead, she acknowledged, that as a former slave and as a black woman, she had had to bear the lash as well as any man; and that she had borne "thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And Ain't I a woman?" Finally, Sojourner Truth says, "If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!"

As it was in 1851, so too it is in 2008. There is so much racket that we, too, know something is out of kilter. In 1851, the racket was about a woman's right to vote. In 1848, just a few years before Sojourner uttered those now famous words, "Ain't I a Woman?" suffragists met in Seneca Falls, New York and issued a declaration.

That declaration began:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government . . . But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled."

Two hundred sixty women and forty men gathered in Seneca Falls, NY and declared their independence from the politics of their present and embarked upon a struggle to create a politics for the future. That bold move by a handful of people in one relatively small room laid the groundwork and is the precedent for what we do today. The Seneca Falls Declaration represented a clean break from the past: Freedom, at last, from mental slavery. The Seneca Falls Declaration and the Akron, Ohio meeting inaugurated 72 years of struggle that ended with the passage of the 19th Amendment in August of 1920, granting women the right to vote. And 88 years later, with the Green Party as its conductor, the History Train is rolling down the tracks.

The Green Party is making history today. According to one source, 45 women have run for President in primary elections in the United States in the 20th Century; 22 have made it on the ballot in at least one state in November. Thank you, Green Party, for pulling this history train from the station.

But we make history today only because we must. In 2008, after two stolen Presidential elections and eight years of George W. Bush, and at least two years of Democratic Party complicity, the racket is about war crimes, torture, crimes against the peace; the racket is about crimes against the Constitution, crimes against the American people, and crimes against the global community. The racket is even about values that we thought were long settled as reasonable to pursue, like liberty and justice, and economic opportunity, for all. Yes, Sojourner, there's a lot out of kilter now, but these two women, Rosa and me, joined by all the men and women in this room, are going to do our best to turn this country right side up again.

And just like the women and men at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 who declared their independence from the Old Order, I celebrated my birthday last year by doing something I had done a dozen times in my head, but had never done publicly: I declared my independence from every bomb dropped, every threat leveled, every civil liberties rollback, every child killed, every veteran maimed, every man tortured, and the national leadership that let this happen. At that pro-peace rally in front of the Pentagon, I noted that nowhere on the Democratic Party's Congressional Agenda for their first 100 days in the majority was any mention at all of a livable wage, the right of return for Katrina survivors, repealing the Patriot Acts, the Secret Evidence Act, the Military Commissions Act, or bringing our troops home now. Nowhere on the Congressional Democrats' agenda was an investigation into the Pentagon's "loss" of $2.3 trillion that Rumsfeld admitted to just before September 11th. And nowhere was there any plan to get that money back for jobs, health care, education, and for veterans. Not even repeal of the Bush tax cuts that have helped to usher in, according to some, levels of income inequality not experienced in this country since the Great Depression. And instead of Articles of Impeachment to hold the criminals accountable, impeachment was taken "off the table."

And so, taking these words directly from our own Declaration of Independence, and from the Seneca Falls document "it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it."

There is no doubt that the people of this country and in the global community are suffering from Washington, D.C.'s policies today.

Even as the ice in the Arctic Ocean reportedly was melting, the United States was obstructing an international discussion of climate change goals-setting for 2020 at the recently-concluded G-8 Summit. Even while George Bush has made himself an international climate change villain by not signing onto the Kyoto Protocol, his own scientists at the U.S. Climate Change Science Program have predicted more heat waves, intense rains, increased drought, and stronger hurricanes to affect the U.S. due to the worsening effects of climate change.

Public policy can be our friend or it can be our foe in understanding and working through the immense changes our planet is undergoing. We the voters, the activists, the policy wonks, the candidates, and the elected officials all have a role to play in making public policy. As I have said so many times during this campaign for the Green Party nomination, politics is not a beauty contest; it is not a fashion show; it is not a horse race. Politics is the authoritative allocation of values in a society. Politics is about values being reflected in public policy. It is about having power over public policy. And we engage in the political process because we want our values reflected in public policy.

Had the Green Party's values been reflected in public policy since the beginnings of the Green Party in this country, the United States would have long ago implemented a livable wage; there would be no civil liberties erosion; diversity would be respected, appreciated and welcomed; education would be interesting and relevant to students' lives and no student would graduate from college $100,000 in debt in a Green Party USA because education, not incarceration and militarization, would be subsidized by the state. In a Green Party USA, health care would be provided for everyone here through a single payer, Medicare-for-all type health care system. We would have no homeless men and women sleeping on our streets and everyone who could work would have work. Rebuilding our infrastructure, manufacturing green technology, retooling our economy so that those who protect us, train us, heal us and prepare us for tomorrow are compensated in what is their true value to our culture and our society, based on their contribution to our civilization. Vietnam War-era veterans would be our last war veterans because we would never have been engaged in war and occupation against Afghanistan and Iraq. We would forego imperial designs on our neighbors to the north and south, never building any wall of division, not ever encroaching on their geographic or cultural sovereignty. In fact, if Green Party values were now reflected in U.S. public policy, our country not only would not be engaged in war and occupation, there would be peace in the Middle East based on self-determination, respect for human rights, and justice. We would strive to perfect our democracy at home through election integrity and no one would be denied their rightful place in our Union due to discrimination. Our neighbors in the global community would look up to us for our cultural and technological accomplishments. We would have apologized for genocide against the indigenous peoples of this land and the abomination of chattel slavery. Our country would have dignity on the world stage and in every international forum, and no one in this country would be made to live in fear.

Oh, if it could be true: that the values of the Green Party were reflected in the Federal Government's public policy. Let me wake up and snap out of my reverie. Yes, today's reality is harsh. Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition, lying, spying, war, stolen elections, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, New Orleans, poverty, racial profiling, Sean Bell, the San Francisco 8, Benton Harbor's Reverend Pinkney, the Holy Land Foundation, 9/11/01.

Embargo, blockade, friendly fire, depleted uranium, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, bunker busters, shock and awe.

Predatory lending, mortgage crisis, foreclosures, a country $53 trillion in debt. And while Bear Stearns gets a bailout, you and I sink or swim.

Harsh? Today's reality is harsh. But what's even harder for many to accept and admit is that our quality of life today is the making of the Democratic and Republican Parties.

What our country has become through their public policy is reflective of their values.

We will never get a United States that is reflective of different values if we continue to do the same thing. Those who delivered us into this mess cannot be trusted to get us out of it.

That's why I signed up to do something I've never done before so I can have something I've never had before: My country, made in the likeness of the values of the Green Party.

When my father first started out in the world of politics in Georgia, he began as a Republican, because Georgia Democrats would not allow blacks to vote in their primaries. Some of my father's closest friends today are still Republicans because of that history.

My father served 30 years in the Georgia Legislature as a Democrat. Because of him, I served 4 years in the Georgia Legislature, where we were the country's only father daughter legislative team. And then I went to Congress and served 12 years working with the Democratic Party and its current leadership representing the State of Georgia.

My son grew up playing on the Floor underneath my desk in the Chamber of the Georgia House of Representatives. His buddies were the legislators down there, under the Gold Dome, who were my and my father's colleagues.

My mother is the genteel Southern lady who keeps our family glued together. A nurse by profession, a nurturer by instinct, she could patch over all the times I had a political disagreements with my Dad and it ended up being discussed, not only at the family dinner table, but also on the evening news.

My father and I stumped for candidates, and helped keep Georgia in the Democratic Party fold, until on my election night in 2002, I was forced to admit that the Republicans wanted to beat me more than the Democrats wanted to keep me. Both my father and I were put out of office after being targeted by a convergence of special interests operating in both the Democratic and Republican parties. In November of 2002, after the Primary Election losses of my father and me, Georgia went Republican: the first time since Reconstruction. With all kinds of certainty, I can say that my father and I—we McKinneys—we know too well how both the Republican and Democratic Parties operate.

And that's why I know we need an opposition party in this country. With 200 elected officials already, the Green Party can become this country's premier opposition Party. One thing is clear, Democratic and Republican values are not Green Party values. And honestly, I believe, Green Party values are the values held by the majority in this country. And through our vigorous Power to the People campaign, we will proclaim our presence to every nook and cranny of this country. We are needed now, more than ever and here's an example of why.

It is hard to not hear the warning signs of a new war: a war against Iran. Dick Cheney told us to expect war for the next generation. The Republicans launched this war economy and their presumptive nominee said that we could stay in Iraq for the next 100 years and even sang a song for the bombing of Iran. The Democratic majority in Congress just voted to fund the war into 2009 and has 200 sponsors on a bill that declares war on Iran by calling for a naval blockade. A naval blockade is a declaration of war. The Democratic presumptive nominee wants to increase the size of the overused military and the budget for an already-bloated and wasteful Pentagon. I am the only candidate who has consistently voted against the Pentagon budget, voted against the war in Iraq, and I voted against the bills that funded it. The Green Party was against the war when it started, is against the war now, and is against any military action against Iran that might take place tomorrow. The Green Party is a peace party. A Green vote is a peace vote.

Not a word has been mentioned in this political season about the disparities that exist within our country with the recognition that public policy can erase them. And even though for the first time a woman and an African-American were being taken seriously in national primaries, a real discussion of race and gender has been studiously avoided on all sides. At a time when the United States is under review, itself, by the United Nations for its poor record on domestic respect for human rights, particularly in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a real discussion of race and gender is needed now more than ever. On some indices, according to United for a Fair Economy, the racial disparities that exist today are worse than at the time of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Right here in Chicago, Hull House reported that it would take 200 years, without a public policy intervention from elected leadership, for the quality of life experienced by black Chicagoans to equal that of white Chicagoans.

Women are still the overwhelming profile of the minimum wage worker in this country. 65% of all minimum wage workers are women, according to 2005 statistics. Despite the law, women still go to work every day, performing the same tasks as men, yet bring home less pay than their male counterparts. Asian-American and Pacific Island women make 88 cents for every dollar earned by men, but African-American women earn only 72 cents and my Latina sisters earn only 60 cents for every dollar earned by men. Overall, according to 2007 statistics, women with similar education, skills, and experience are paid 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. Equal pay for equal work is not yet a reality for working women in this country. And the glass ceiling is all too real.

I'm very proud of my second cousin, Shonté, whose mother, a divorcée, raised her pretty much as a single mother. Shonté's mother, Shara, understood the value of her child getting a good education and helped her as much as she could with university tuition. The rest Shonté was able to secure by working on campus and in student loans. Shonté graduated from college, and then took a one-year Master's program in Social Work, and now wants to get her Ph.D. But she's already over $90,000 in debt. It doesn't have to be this way and we don't have to accept it. In other countries around the world, higher education is valued and is made affordable to all who want it. Only a sick government would place a banker in-between a student and her teacher.

An insurance lobbyist in-between a patient and his doctor.

Lying and spying before 9/11 Truth and the Constitution.

Only a sick government would place a wealthy family and their huge corporation and its genetically-modified frankenfood peddled by force in-between us and the organic food that's healthy for us to eat and that farmers would prefer to grow.

Only a sick government would do this.

And I am no longer willing to trust the ones who are responsible for getting us into this mess to provide the solution to get us out of it.

The Green Party long ago took a stand for racial justice: against profiling, against police brutality, against discrimination of any sort, and for reparations stemming from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The Green Party long ago took a stand for gender equity.

The Green Party long ago took a stand against all discrimination.

The Green Party is a justice party. A Green vote is a justice vote.

And the day after the election, if voters have been disfranchised and don't believe the announced election results, it will be the Green Party that will be there, as it was in 2004, to demand election integrity.

It is for all these reasons and more that I redeclare my goals in the language of my sisters who convened at Seneca Falls, NY 160 years ago. They wrote:

"It is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."

That declaration not only avoids the politics of the past, it contains a kernel for the future. How can those new guards for the future be won?

Here's how:

When I was first running for Congress and it was the year of the woman, women all over the country were saying, "We want our seat at the table." And when I got to Washington, I saw that policy was really made in a room, at a table. There were real seats at the table. Well, imagine what has happened to public policy making now.

There is a real room, with a window and a door and there's two seats at the table. The window is for us to look through while our representatives make policy for us so we can see what they're doing. At the table, one seat is for the Democrats and one seat is for the Republicans. Now, we don't know who did it, but one of them put a lock on the door and slipped a key to the corporate lobbyists who can come and go at will and whisper what they want to the Democrats, and then whisper what they want to the Republicans, and the result is that we the people, who pay for those seats and determine who sits in them, want one thing, but because the corporate lobbyists can come and go at will, our values get overridden and our representatives give us something else.

That's how we end up with everyone saying they're against the war and occupation, but war and occupation still gets funding.

That's how we end up with everyone saying they're against illegal spying on innocent people, yet end up with a telecom immunity bill being signed into law.

That's how we end up with everyone saying they're in favor of universal access to health care and no one implementing what the physicians, nurses, and health care providers support, and that's a single payer health care system in this country.

That's why my cousin and so many other students in this country face staggering personal debt just to get an education, yet our elected representatives keep voting to spend 720 million dollars a day on war and occupation, war crimes, and crimes against the peace.

Now, if we can entice people who have stopped voting because they see the system as rigged, to become active again, and to vote Green . . .

If we can convince those first-time voters from the previous two Presidential elections, though they might be discouraged because they saw their vote obstructed and then not counted while neither of the big parties fought to protect them, if we can convince them to vote Green . . .

If we can convince those who see two parties, but only one political agenda, to vote Green, then it is possible for the Green Party to get 5% of the national vote.

5% of the vote makes the Green Party, not a minor party in the eyes of the federal government, but a major party.

5% confers on the Green Party major party status. And with that 5%, we can pull up another chair at the table of public policy making. It only takes 5% of those who vote, including the near majority who don't vote, to come out for a Green Party President and then we will have an official third party in this country, and public policy that truly reflects our values.

Now, I'm known for taking bold positions, based on my own research, that have put me ahead of the curve. I was there on private militaries hired by the Pentagon and our State Department long before Blackwater began patrolling the streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

I was there on corporate accountability and military contracting scandals before Iraq and Afghanistan.

I was there on enlisted members' and veterans' rights and health issues, like forced vaccinations and conscientious objection.

I was there on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita recovery and detoxification, restoration, and return issues.

I was there on 9/11 foreknowledge.

And I put impeachment "on the table."

I'm not afraid to address the issues that no one else will dare to talk about.

I'm not afraid to speak truth to empower.

Let me close with this.

Don't expect me to keep a count of the major party flip flops from now to November. I'm sure there will be many. But, in the end, that's not the important issue to understand. What is more fundamental to understand is this: the other political parties find themselves in this flip-flop predicament because they have to appear to share our values while they serve someone else's.

The Green Party doesn't have to engage in shapeshifting because the Green Party is funded by and belongs to you.

All over the world, Green Party members are working as elected leaders in government to make public policy reflect our Green values. Wangari Mathai, former Parliamentarian from Kenya, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Green Party member. Ingrid Betancourt, recently released hostage in Colombia, former Senator and Presidential candidate. Green Party member. Green Party members make public policy at the national level on every Continent, but not yet in our country.

Twenty years ago, Green party activists saw through this two-party box that voters have been put into in this country and started the Green Party here. And what we have to remember is this: whatever it is that we want in the realm of public policy, we can get if we have the right elected officials in office. Nothing for us is impossible. Politics is about shared values being reflected in public policy. And these Green party candidates standing with me are the right kind of people who will implement the right kind of public policy that reflects our shared values.

Voters in this country are scared into not voting their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations. But in Bolivia and Ecuador and Argentina and Chile and Nicaragua and Spain, and India and Cote d'Ivoire and Haiti, voters were not afraid to vote their hopes and dreams and guess, what. Their dreams came true. Ours can, too.

Every one of you in this room today and each of the individuals I've met and communicated with online across our country has made a difference in my life. And moreover, the 5% who will vote for us, will help us make a positive difference in the lives of people around the world. Who we are makes a difference. What we do makes a difference.

We are in this to build a movement. We are willing to struggle for as long as it takes to have our values prevail in public policy. A vote for the Green Party is a vote for the movement that will turn this country right side up again.

I want to invite everyone who shares our values to join our Power to the People campaign. C-Span viewers can learn more about us at www.runcynthiarun.org. I want to work with the nominees of the other small political parties so we can form a united front. I'm asking for your vote because in reality the only "wasted" vote is a vote against conscience, a vote against our dreams. Vote your dreams, Vote your conscience. Vote our future. Vote Green.

Thank you, Green Party, for granting Rosa and me this supreme honor. Now let's go out there and get busier. We've got a lot of work to do.

Power to the People!

McKinney resolution
to impeach Bush, Cheney and Rice

http://mattpascarella.blogspot.com/2006/12/congresswoman-mckinney-files-articles.html

12.08.2006
Congresswoman McKinney Files Articles of Impeachment
By Matt Pascarella

 

www.truthout.org/pdf/5.120806.HR1106_impeachment.pdf

copy of McKinney's resolution to impeach Bush, Cheney and Rice

 

Citizens Commission on 9/11 - September 9, 2004

Cynthia McKinney
Opening Statement
"The Omission Hearings"
September 9, 2004
New York City, NY

Thank you 9-11 Truth for having this important hearing.
Thank you Commissioner Khan and Commissioner McIlvaine for agreeing to serve with me on this very important Commission.
I would also like to mention another Commissioner who couldn't be with us today, but whose commitment we all know, Catherine Austin Fitts.
Today is just the beginning. Your support can ensure that we follow up with more of these hearings to flesh out all the remaining questions that experts and family members know have not been fully addressed by the official 9-11 Commission or the Bush Administration.
Of course, please forgive me, but I cannot be in the City of New York and not say "Thank you, New York City." But this time, not just for supporting me, but also for not being bamboozled into submission by questionable insider backroom characters who want to take away our freedoms, send our children off to war, and rip to shreds the social safety net for the American people.
And of course I can't say thank you to New york City without also saying thank you to Georgia's 4th Congressional District Democratic voters, and supporters of truth all over our country, who put me in a position to return to Washington, DC as Congress' sojourner for truth.
A special thanks to the small coterie of friends who kept my questions relevant by their own deep understanding of the fundamental danger posed today by forces known and unknown operating in our name at this time.
Those thanks especially include the dedicated leaders of the 9-11 truth movement whose work has spawned similar gatherings this week all over our country. For me personally, it means the thousands of people I've had the opportunity to meet who are not just against everything, but who are in the deepest sense, pro-America. Activists like our hosts here today, Kyle Hence, John Judge, and Nicholas Levis; the panelists Ms. Singh, Mr. Springmann, Mike Ruppert, and Mr. Thompson, and my fellow Commissioners.
And finally, a word of thanks to the 20 million dollar man whose movie came out just days before my election. In the face of stinging criticism about the impact that his film might have had on my election Michael Moore responded, "I'm glad Cynthia McKinney's coming back to Congress, and I'm glad if my movie helped make that happen."
Even all those thank you's don't do justice to you, the activist community. But enough with that, because now, we've got work to do.
Finally, I'm serving on a commission where it's alright to ask questions.
We have allotted time at the conclusion of the panelist presentations for audience questions. Now, I know I intend to ask a lot of questions; I hope you do, too. Because we have the experts here who have studied this tragedy and know its details backward and forward.
Hurricane Frances stormed into Florida, and to a lesser extent Georgia, and left the cleanup to us. Well, the Republican Party stormed into New York City, their words dripping with the politicization of an American tragedy. And they've left the clean up to us. Now I don't mind being a part of the clean up crew. But here, we operate with a few set rules:
Minds are open in this space.
Facts are welcome in this place.
We have no political agenda--other than the truth.
My birth city of Atlanta has as its symbol resurgens the Phoenix because out of General Sherman's Civil War ashes, that jewel city of the South rose again and even sent a plain-spoken man like Jimmy Carter to the White House.
We take no credit for Zell.
When reconstruction was truly over and all the civil rights gains from the Civil War had been wiped out through Jim Crow legislation in the South, Representative George White, the last black man serving in the United States Congress--on his way out because those laws had reached North Carolina too--rose on the Floor of the House in 1901 and said--"This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the Negroes' temporary farewell to the American Congress; but let me say, phoenix-like he will rise up some day and come again."
On one of my previous trips to New York City, I was given this beautiful poster entitled, "Truth Crushed to the Ground Will Rise Again."
Today and into tonight, we will explore the truth of 9-11. The truth about America's tragedy belongs to all of us--and can only be crushed to the ground for so long. The work of this Commission, our expert panelists, and our audience will ensure that the truth of 9-11 will rise one day.
I look forward to the intense learning about to take place during the presentations of our esteemed panelists.

 


 

ELECTION 2004
GOP politicizes 9/11 for its gain, McKinney says
By DAVID HO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/10/04

NEW YORK -- Former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney accused Republicans on Thursday of exploiting the memory of Sept. 11, 2001, for political gain and repeated her implication that truths about the attacks remain untold.

The DeKalb County Democrat, who is running to reclaim the 4th District congressional seat, was voted out two years ago after making controversial comments about the Sept. 11 attacks during a radio interview. She implied that the Bush administration had known the attacks were coming but did nothing to prevent them.

On Thursday, she chaired a hearing staged by activist groups and researchers who say the government has covered up information related to the hijackings.

"No organization, no administration, no forces, no powers that be are going to crush the truth of what happened on Sept. 11 to the ground," she vowed.

She said the New York event, dubbed the "Omissions Hearings," had "no political agenda other than the truth." By contrast, she said, the Republicans who came to Manhattan to hold their national convention last week "stormed into New York City, their words dripping with the politicization of an American tragedy."

McKinney's Republican opponent, Catherine Davis, said in a telephone interview that it is "really unfortunate that the former congresswoman from Georgia has not been able to bring herself to stand with our government, with our troops when we have an open declaration of war against the terrorists."

McKinney said she would not back off the issue just because she's trying to reclaim her former office.

"I'm not going to become a different person," she said. "It would be a betrayal to my constituents and to all of the supporters."

The hearing was sponsored by 9/11 CitizensWatch and 911truth.org, groups that say the official Sept. 11 commission report contains "egregious omissions, discrepancies and distortions." They told an audience of about 100 that the investigations must continue.

"The 9/11 commission report failed to answer the majority of questions posed by victims' family members," said Kyle Hence, communications director of 9/11 CitizensWatch. He said unanswered questions concerning the attacks include those about "multiple specific warnings from overseas, the spiking of FBI investigations, terrorist financing, the lack of defensive air response and the inadequately explained breakdown of the national chain of command that morning."

The hearing's speakers included a broad group of critics who blame the Bush administration for the attacks and the handling of the aftermath. Their positions ranged from accusations of neglect to outright involvement in the hijackings.

Hence cited a Zogby International poll that 9/11truth.org sponsored and released on the eve of the Republican convention that found 49 percent of New York City residents said some U.S. leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act."

McKinney praised New Yorkers for "not being bamboozled into submission by questionable, insider, back-room characters who want to take away our freedoms."

She said more public hearings are needed to explore issues the Sept. 11 commission and the Bush administration have failed to address.

Find this article at:
www.ajc.com/news/content/news/election/0904nation/10termckinney.html


Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
Chicago Anti-War rally
March 19, 2005

Two years ago we gathered all across America to say no to war.

We were joined by people all over the planet who know that there is an alternative to war.

But war is about the only option available when the real motive is to steal natural resources that belong to someone else.

Or to restack the deck in the Middle East with today's generation of coups and assassinations, following the likes of the US 1949 ouster of Syria's elected government, the US 1953 ouster of Iran's elected government; US 1958 landing of Marines in Lebanon; and its 1963 support for a coup in Iraq after an assassination attempt against its leader failed.

The militarism we see today is nothing new.

Even though some 14 countries have withdrawn their troops since March 2003, Bush tells the American people that he has no idea when US troops can expect to come home.

Sadly, many of them are being forced to take matters into their own hands. With filings for conscientious objector status, forced pregnancies, disappearances, seeking asylum in Canada, and leading rallies like this today all over America.

The American people, and our children over there fighting, still haven't been told the real reason the US is at war with the Iraqi people.

And against the people the US war machine has turned. Thousands of Iraqis, especially children, have been killed by our sanctions and our bombs.

This is an immoral and illegal war and we need to bring our troops home now.

Instead, they lay the groundwork to expand the war and destabilize Iran, Lebanon, and Syria.

Destroying Iraq isn't enough for them.

Nor are the million men and women in our Armed Services enough for them.

The George Bush war machine wants you, too. And your children.

Everywhere you turn the Pentagon is denying it wants a draft while at the same time lamenting that recruitment is way down.

Mercenaries will increasingly be used to fight their wars with your tax dollars.

While reinstating the draft only feeds the war machine.

In fact, we need to get the military recruiters out of our high schools; they need to stop harassing our children, and the 1 billion dollars they spend on slick radio and tv spots and friendly neighborhood offices, ought to be put in the education budget so our kids can go to college without having to go to war first.

They tell us we're at war for democracy.

But that's a joke; George Bush came to power by stopping democracy at home--denying the opportunity to vote to blacks and Latinos in Florida.

They built on that fine record last year with hackable voting machines that don't accurately tally our votes.

And in countries like Haiti where democracy was thriving, they arrested President Aristide at gunpoint and forced him out of his own country.

While they purport to cherish democracy, they really have a disdain for it.

Democracy in Venezuela, India, Spain, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay has produced proud people willing to stand up to US imperialism, coup attempts, and destabilization of their countries. 

And the good news is that this resistance will spread. The worse they are, the stronger we become.

And worse they will become because they've aimed their sights on Russia and China after they've balkanized the Middle East.

But one thing I guarantee to you and to them: we won't be fooled!

We know the truth. And we won't stop.

Stay strong, my brothers and sisters, we have a lot of work to do.


Subject: Cynthia McKinney at Project Censored! October 4, 2003; California
Cynthia McKinney
Project Censored: 2004
San Rafael, California
October 4, 2003

Thank you for inviting me to be with you this evening.

I have just one question. Who are we and who's responsible for what we have become?

They say that we were hit on September 11th because we are free. Does that mean that what we have become is the product of the desires and wishes of the American people?

And if so, are we also free to change our minds?

As I survey the landscape of the changes that have taken place literally before my eyes, over the course of my lifetime, I have to wonder where did we go wrong.

You see, I'm a child of the 60s. I saw the power possible in our country when people of all races, colors, and creeds came together to move our country forward. I also saw that, despite our history, the coming together was, indeed, possible.

It was possible for white people to walk hand in hand with black people on what could easily have been termed "a black issue"--the right to vote in the South--as well as on an American issue--peace in Vietnam.

It was possible for white people to see a black man as their leader too, and not just as someone consigned to the political margins.

It was possible for black people to join with Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, progressive whites, to improve our country and to make us live up to our noblest ideals.

Try as they may to malign flower power, it was truly star power.

So how did we get from that to this?

George W. smirks, Dick Cheney sneers, Rumsfeld jokes, Powell blusters, Rice lies. Enron and Worldcom steal; DynCorp vaccinates; Carlyle benefits; Halliburton feeds and feeds and feeds.Americans hurt. And in Iraq, Americans die.

Our national leaders insult our allies, create more foes, reward their friends, increase our insecurity through their own policies, and plunge the American people into our deepest economic abyss in a generation.

Stealing an election in Florida on the uncounted chads representing the legitimate hopes and aspirations of black and Latino Floridians, even the Democrats failed to pursue a remedy that would permanently secure the voting rights of people of color in Florida and around our country.

Massive failures all around us enter into the calculation in any answer to my original question: Who are we and who's responsible for what we have become?

From the lies to our service men and women and to all of us about Iraq, to the still unanswered questions about September 11th. The Congress has failed in its oversight of the Executive Branch and the American people have failed in their oversight of the integrity of our political system. It's abominable that Rumsfeld can say America "can afford" the extra $87 billion for more corporate outrage and human cannon fodder in Iraq while at the same time women and children constitute the fastest- growing segment of our homeless population.

The very act of our sitting Vice President taking a pay check from the American people while at the very same time taking one from a corporation that gets billions of dollars in no-bid, sole-source contracts should make us all outraged and should make our Vice President blush.

But these people don't blush because in the end, they know they can get away with it.

I believe the promise of our country was stolen two generations ago in bold and brazen acts of violence. And our failure to appropriately respond then has led to the conditions we face today.

That great experiment at togetherness and purpose that I experienced in the 60s was allowed to break down along race, class, ethnic, and religious lines. We lost our moral purpose and our national mission. We allowed others to define who we--Americans--really are. Those who stole our promise became America. Under the Bush Administration, we see war with horrific human and moral costs. We see terrible, perhaps criminal, abuse of office.

We see ludicrous leaders like Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, Ward Connerly, and now Arnold Schwarzenegger, parade across the stage and adorned with the ornaments of power while thoughtful leaders are shunned or targeted or cruelly maligned. But there was a time when that truly wasn't so. When our leaders challenged the best in us and encouraged us to shun war and invest in justice and peace.

Now, in the 1960s, when John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon, Kennedy's inaugural address set out a new vision for our country. At a time when our country held the power to extinguish poverty or to extinguish man, Kennedy chose to set our country on the path to tackle poverty and to raise the standard of freedom and liberty around the globe.

In word as well as deed, Kennedy set out to make the world safe for diversity and to make America safe in a diverse world. He embarked upon a path to respect the cries of freedom from others and to make a new world order where "the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved." He challenged our generation to space exploration, medical achievement, arms control, and to fight against "tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."

And despite what the revisionists would have us believe about him, JFK rejected war against a smaller, weaker, poorer country, began to work for détente with the Soviets, and threatened to "scatter the CIA to the four winds." Now, that was leadership for a new generation. And at that time, we had a choice; but Kennedy correctly pointed out that what we really wanted was not a Pax Americana imposed with American weapons of war; not even a peace for our time; but, instead a peace for all time.

Snipers' bullets took that America away from us. And almost in rapid succession, bullets took Martin King and Bobby Kennedy from us, too. It came to my attention during my last days in Congress that Bobby was considering King for his running mate. Now, imagine the America we might have had. But when confronted with evil back then, what did we do?

Not too far away from this very spot, Mario Savio of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement told us what to do.

Mario Savio told us that sometimes, when the machine becomes so odious, it makes us sick. And at that point, we have to put our entire bodies against the gears and the wheels and the levers. Against the entire apparatus, and we have to make it stop. And that we have to say to those who own the machine, that unless we're free, we'll prevent the machine from working at all. I put my entire body against the gears and the wheels and the levers--against the entire apparatus of the machine. And I tried to stop it.

I tried to warn the American people of the dangers that I saw emanating from this Administration. For that, a known black female Republican was advised to run against me in the Democratic Primary. Republicans fed her campaign coffers and then 48,000 of them crossed over and voted for her. Just think about it: Katherine Harris who participated in the illegal disfranchisement of innocent black and Latino voters was rewarded with a Congressional seat and I was taken out of one.

And sometimes I wonder what the progressive community in Georgia and around the country was thinking as I was running my race. Why was it so easy for national Democratic political pundits who knew me to dump on me in the same manner that Sister Soljah was dumped on by the Clinton campaign? Was it that I deserved the mischaracterizations because I had dared to hold this Administration and America accountable on the 2000 election, the missing $2.3 trillion at the Pentagon, the Pentagon's corporate sweetheart deals with political insiders, US continued use of depleted uranium in Iraq, US covert activities in Africa that resulted in genocide, clearcutting of our national forests, a return to COINTELPRO through the legislation we were passing, the treatment of black people in this country? I had tried to take money away from Lockheed Martin because I feared the rampant racism gone unchecked. I had challenged Westinghouse and their running of Savannah River Site and the numerous leakages of tritium into the river. I had tried to stop the senseless weapons transfers to dictators and human rights abusers and I authored legislation to force overseas companies to identify the names and locations of their subcontractors who might be engaging in sweatshop labor. And I had forced the Pentagon to stop sewing its PX jeans in Burmese sweatshops.

I worked with five of your Project Censored 2004 journalists, on thirteen of your 2004 issues, and on six of your 2003 issues. And despite all that, I still managed to bring home over 350 million dollars during my service in Congress.

It didn't matter.

By the time the corporate media had finished with me, my white support had plummeted. And sadly, this was even among people whom I had represented for a decade and who knew me. I was even booed at our annual Gay Pride Parade despite my lifetime 100% HRC voting record. And Atlanta's white gay and lesbian leadership refused to march with me, including Georgia's only openly gay Member of the Legislature whom I had endorsed and for whom one of my trusted staffers had worked to ensure that she won. I protected her during redistricting when other Democrats targeted her. A white lesbian that I helped get elected in a majority black district. She refused to march with me too.

Even some progressive journalists found it easier to just join the bandwagon against me rather than to simply report accurately what I actually had said and done.

But now, we have distance from that moment.

We know that this Administration will do anything to have the appearance of winning an election. Florida was round one, Georgia was round two, California, round three, Texas, round four, all building up to the big one, 2004.

We also now know that this Administration has kept many secrets from the American people: including, changing a September 11th Ground Zero environmental impact statement in order to speed up the opening of Wall Street. They have lied to us on Iraq. They still haven't told us what they knew and when they knew it about the tragic events of September 11th. And yet, they have intimidated the poor 9-11 families into giving up their right to sue the perpetrators and their supporters who helped carry out the 9-11 attacks. That's why my last piece of legislation allowed the 9-11 families to participate in the government compensation fund as well as retain their right to sue and thereby find the truth for all of us on what actually happened that day.

At the time, I even handwrote an impeachment bill I was so outraged. But my mother was more outraged at the lies in the local and national media and begged me to just leave it alone. And so I did.

If there ever was a politician Project Censored, I think I'm it.

So I'm proud to have earned my spot here at the Project Censored awards tonight. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for including me. But although we're all losers as a result of what happened in Georgia and Florida. We're really losers if a little black ink can sow hatred and division between progressive blacks and whites. Even in the South.

Now, before I sit down, I want to go back to that question I first asked: Who are we and who's responsible for what we have we become? America is us and we are responsible for what we have become. If we answer in any other way, we are content to have others define us. Even others who have proven to us that they can't be trusted.

A young teacher recently asked me what did I think she could do, to advance the cause of people who think like us; I told her that the greatest gift my teachers had given me was the ability to think; teaching our young people how to think is the greatest gift our teachers can give, for it will be those independent thinkers who will save our country.

So, my hat's off to the professors at Sonoma State University for even conceiving such a program and to the University for being committed to it. Project Censored ensures that our country will have a cadre of young people trained to think. And for those of us who care enough about our country to find out what's going on, Project Censored makes it easier for us to know enough to make for our country a better tomorrow.

Thank you to the journalists for writing the stories that you've written and thank you Seven Stories for inviting me to be a part of this wonderful occasion.