An IUPUI student is expected to address the Hoosiers March for Impeachment on Saturday in downtown Indianapolis. Participants say the event is both in opposition to President Donald Trump and in support of those they believe to have been harmed by his administration.
“We want to focus on all the factions of people and groups that Donald Trump has personally attacked with his policy,” said Kim Saylor, LGBT rights activist, Indivisible Indianapolis event coordinator and organizer for the march. “I’m going to fight for my rainbow whenever and wherever I can.”
The Hoosiers March for Impeachment is scheduled to take place from noon to 2 p.m. at 200 W. Washington St. Hundreds have stated their intention to go on the event’s Facebook page.
Saylor confirmed several speakers who will address the marchers, including IUPUI sophomore and American Friends Service Committee intern Ahmed Abbas.
“For me, it's a chance to reveal what the oppressed has known all along, that Trump is simply a manifestation of something much worse,” Abbas said. “These symptoms of bigotry and xenophobia were here before Trump and will be here after him.”
Abbas is one of the founders of the Muslim Youth Collective, an organization with initiatives to combat Islamophobia such as the Islamophobia Training for Muslims, which received a $1,000 grant from Edward Curtis, the Millennium Chair of Liberal Arts at IUPUI.
“I will also call upon the separate domestic organizations that lead campaigns against police brutality, the inhumane nature of deportations, the continuing occupation of Native
American land, and the war machine our country exports internationally,” Abbas said, “to unify and create a new anti-racist coalition.”
The theme of addressing social and economic issues through the prism of the Trump administration’s actions will be continued by Terrell Parker, program director at Brothers United, who Saylor expects to address Trump’s attempted ban on transgender people serving in the military and other issues impacting the LGBT community.
Amy Armogida, the lead organizer of Central Indiana Jobs with Justice, will talk about a proposal from the Department of Labor to permit businesses to collect or pool employees’ tips, Saylor said.
Annette Johnson, the President of Pike Township Democrat Club and the Secretary of Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis, is expected to speak on the issue of voting rights.
Former president of United Steelworkers Local 1999 Chuck Jones will also speak at the event, Saylor said.
“We’re trying to do a short rally just because we want to bring awareness we’re still here and we still think he should be impeached,” Saylor said.
David Ziemba, a deputy prosecutor with the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, will be there on behalf of Indiana Lawyers for Good Government to lay out the legal reasoning for impeaching and removing Trump from office.
Saylor said of Trump, “he just keeps threatening to fire Mueller and he has no authority there, and when you’re actively trying to insert yourself into an investigation on charges against you… Most people, if we did that, we’d catch another charge.”
According to anonymous sources quoted by CNN, special counsel Robert Mueller is interested in questioning Trump in relation to his dismissal of James Comey, former FBI director.
If Trump were to fire Mueller, 47 percent of voters in a national Quinnipiac poll said they would support impeaching and removing Trump from office while 46 percent would be opposed. The
Quinnipiac poll surveyed 1,577 voters from Nov. 7-13, 2017.
According to the Constitution, the U.S. House of Representatives has the sole power to impeach the president of the United States by a simple majority. While impeachment is often used colloquially as a synonym for removing a public official from office, to impeach a president is to accuse them of a crime.
“I'm right at the doorstep of impeachment. I'm taking a wait and see approach,” Rep. André Carson, D-Ind., said in an August 2017 CNN interview.
On Jan. 19, Carson voted with 66 Democratic representatives to not postpone an impeachment resolution, which was voted down overall. Carson had earlier voted with 364 representatives, including 126 Democrats, to postpone the consideration of an impeachment resolution on Dec. 6, 2017. Carson was one of eight representatives to switch his vote on postponing impeachment proceedings in the House.
Two former presidents have been impeached by the House: Bill Clinton, on Dec. 19, 1999, and Andrew Johnson, on Feb. 24, 1868.
After the House impeaches a president, the chief justice of the United States presides over a trial in the Senate. If at least two-thirds of the Senate vote that the president is guilty of the crimes alleged by the House, the president is removed from office and disbarred from holding any future office in the federal government.
However, Abbas cautioned that impeachment is not a cure for all of the systemic problems that he believes Trump represents.
“We have to confront the question ‘what the hell is wrong with America?’ not ‘what the hell is wrong with Trump?’” Abbas said.
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