Billboard Urging 'Impeach Trump' Goes Up Near Bay Bridge
OAKLAND (KCBS/KPIX) -- Drivers crossing the Bay Bridge from Oakland to San Francisco were seeing an in-your-face political statement Monday morning.
It's a billboard that calls for the impeachment of President Trump.
The digital ad bears a giant photo of a brooding Donald Trump with the word 'Impeach' in huge yellow letters. It also has a URL, demandimpeachmentnow.com.
The billboard is the work of a group called Courage Campaign whose president says it's time to get the country behind the removal of Mr. Trump. They want to pressure the Republican-controlled Congress which, so far, has shown no inclination to impeach President Trump.
"We are a grassroots organization. If we are not calling for impeachment, given what has happened, who is?" says the organization's president and executive director, Eddie Kurtz.
He points out that more than a million people cross the bridge everyday, so it's an incredibly strategic place to have a billboard.
Courage Campaign is a progressive, grassroots organization, probably best known for its fight for gay marriage during the Proposition 8 battle. Its websites says it focuses on economic justice, human rights and corporate and political accountability.
"There's this pattern that seems to repeat -- Trump does something absolutely unacceptable, unethical, just the thing you could never imagine even the worst of our previous presidents doing," says Kurtz. "There's this wave of outrage – it happened after Charlottesville, it happened even before he was elected when he admitted to sexually assaulting women -- and then it settles down and his base is still with him."
Saint Mary's College political professor Dr. Steve Woolpert says it's unlikely that President Trump would be impeached without some finding of significant legal wrongdoing. But then again, just getting elected was something that few people expected to happen.
"This is an unusual moment," says Woolpert. "It's fraught with both opportunity and peril, largely because so many people didn't see it coming."
Now Kurtz says the campaign is spending $1500 for the billboard and an online petition drive that's already nearing 100,000 signatures.
"It really is going to take an overwhelming of political energy, of grassroots energy, to demand impeachment, as well as having a legal case," he says. "So our piece of the fight is to mobilize and educate grassroots progressives about the case for impeachment."
Kurtz isn't worried about distracting drivers. He says the ad falls within the Bay Bridge Billboard Guidelines. He says with every new outrageous statement by the president, the petition drive wins more support.
The billboard will stay up through Sunday, October 1, and perhaps longer if there are enough donations from the public.
