1. BAMN supports the resolution of Congressman Al Green and calls on members of Congress to vote for the articles of impeachment he has put forward. The U.S. House of Representatives has taken an important first step in saying it “strongly condemns President Donald Trump’s racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color by saying that our fellow Americans who are immigrants, and those who may look to the President like immigrants, should “go back” to other countries, by referring to immigrants and asylum seekers as “invaders,” and by saying that Members of Congress who are immigrants (or those of our colleagues who are wrongly assumed to be immigrants) do not belong in Congress or in the United States of America.”
2. Statements of this kind are not mere rhetoric; they constitute a real danger, not only to the four Congresswomen called out by name, but to the institutional integrity of Congress itself, to the Constitutional doctrine of the separation of powers, and to the American people as a whole because of its encouragement of attacks by immigration authorities and other law enforcement and Trump supporters generally against all American who belong to racial, ethnic, or religious minorities, especially Muslims who are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, or who even appear to be immigrants to someone else. It is the kind of statement that Adolf Hitler and his Nazis made against the Jews and is therefore a statement by President of the United States that history has shown ultimately sanctions war and genocide.
3. Behavior of this kind must be treated by Congress as an impeachable offense, and we therefore support Congressmen Green’s resolution.
4. We call on members of Congress who support Congressman Green’s motion and to oppose any proposal to refer it to the Judiciary Committee or any other committee, rather than put this motion to a vote by the House now, especially in so far as the actual point of such a proposal would be to prevent any immediate debate on impeachment and effectively to kill Congressman Green’s motion.
5. President Trump’s recent statements increase the danger to millions of Americans now. In particular, these statements invite and encourage more mistreatment of asylum seekers and other immigrants, including immigrant children currently confined to a network of immigrant concentration camps characterized by inhuman conditions and brutality by I.C.E. and Border Patrol agents. The House of Representatives must make clear now that any president responsible for and constantly encouraging crimes against humanity at the American border is absolutely unfit to be president of the United States and should be removed, even on these grounds alone. The statements by Donald Trump condemned by the House of Representatives on July 16th are not merely an attempt at the verbal deportation of four Democratic Party Congresswomen for daring to disagree with and criticize him. They are part of a pattern of actively and aggressively attacking the integrity and independence of Congress. President Trump’s adding an attack on the institutional integrity of Congress in these recent statements is merely underscoring the dangers to democracy of leaving President Trump in office.
6. We call on all members of the movement against Trump to support Congressman Green’s resolution and the struggle for the impeachment and removal from office of Donald Trump.
