Petitions for 9/11 Truth

The founding fathers thought the right of petition so important they included it in the first amendment of the Constitution. Unfortunately most activists in the U.S. forget this most basic right when fighting for their cause. Many see the protests of the 60s with hundreds of thousands in the streets or encircling the Pentagon and think that the petition no longer serves a use in the modern era of television and youtube. However these activists either forget or are ignorant of the fact that the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 60s were successful because they combined mass action with legislative action such as petitions and even going so far as to influence house and senate commitees and working with individual politicians on legislation.

Politicians are influenced by events in the outside world but they are far more influenced by events within their own world. That is what makes the petition so powerful.

Unfortunately in the age of the internet, people tend to assume quantity equals quality and to save time they gather thousnads of signatures on websites instead of in real life. This is unfortunate because e-petitions are not submissable to either the House or the Senate of the United States.

So how does one go about filing an official petition with the U.S. government? It is not the easiest information to track down.

Up in Canada where I live, our parliament's website has a downloadable PDF file which lays out how official petitions to parliament should be formatted. Unfortunately I could not find any similar information on either house.gov or senate.gov. I did however manage to locate a page on clerk.house.gov, the Clerk's office, where petitions are processed, to an excellent resource provided by C-SPAN about the inner workings of government and I was able to find this:

Source: http://www.c-span.org/questions/week149.asp

"Under the Constitution in the Bill of Rights (Amendment 1), all U.S. citizens are given the right to petition the government directly. The House of Representatives accepts all petitions addressed to it, signed with full name and address, and sent in care of the Clerk of the House, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. 20515. Petitions can come from a single individual or a group of individuals, or from private organizations.

The Senate accepts petitions for action addressed to it, signed with full name and address, and sent in care of the President of the Senate, United States Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510.

Both chambers refer petitions received from private citizens or organizations to the appropriate congressional committee in their chamber which has jurisdiction over the subject matter addressed in the petition. However, petitions are considered "advisory," and enjoy no special status for action. Committees of the Congress take them under advisement, and may or may not choose to act on them."

Up here in Canada a federal petition to parliament requires a minimum of 25 signatures. Not alot, but far more than the one required by your government. That's right, you can write out a grievance (e.g. the collapse of Building 7 has not been sufficiently investigated nor explained by Congress,) sign it with full name and address and submit it directly to Congress. No need to gather signatures, though there is certainly no harm in doing so. You don't even need a stamp since all citizens can send letters to congress for free. All you need is a pen, paper, envelope, and a mailbox, and even if you are out of envelopes you can simply fold the paper in half and write the address on one side. I bet it will find it's way to D.C.

You may be saying to yourself that a petition from one person won't change anything, and you are probably right. But my experience with activist groups up here in Canada has taught me that one mistake activists make is thinking that their 10,000 signature petition will suddenly solve everything. Usually when they find that it doesn't they curse all their wasted efforts and give up. I have found that it is much more effective to send off multiple petitions signed by smaller numbers of people, because politicians can ignore any petition they just get one day, but they can't ignore a petition that they get every week or even every month. Eventually, it will have an impact.

Imagine a coordinated effort by the millions in the U.S. who know the truth about the events of September 11th and want to see justice done. Now imagine that this action is made a regular weekly or monthly ritual. A simple, five minute action on all our parts would translate into thousands or possibly even millions of petitions to Congress demanding 9/11 Truth and Justice. I cannot overstate the impact an action like this would have in the country.

I submit this idea in solidarity with all my U.S. brothers and sisters fighting for this cause as an idea for the Week of Truth 2.0 post posted earlier here on 911blogger: http://www.911blogger.com/node/14812

I will attempt to submit one idea per day until the ideas are compiled and submitted.

May we all live to share the fruits of freedom our labors will eventually bear.

Petition not accepted

Sorry that I can't remember the details but I recently read a statement by a peace activist that a petition with a very large number of signatures was not accepted by the white house. If I remember more I will post it.

I would very much like...

...to see that story, though from the details of your post it seems to have been a petition to the white house, which is not discussed here. The right of petition in the first amendment applies only to the legislative branch of government, the house and senate.