Online activists raised enough money in two hours Monday afternoon to fly a banner encouraging the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney over AT&T Park in San Francisco before Tuesday's baseball All Star Game.
The effort for an airborne banner began in The Nationwide Movement to Impeach Cheney and Bush group on Facebook.com and has been promoted by pro-impeachment Web site AfterDowningStreet.org. Time is short to raise the necessary money before baseball's All-Star Game Tuesday night in San Francisco.
"I'd like to see this Facebook group be empowered by actually making something happen in the world," Jacob Park, the Facebook group's founder, told RAW STORY.
As of 5:15 p.m. Monday, organizers raised the $695 needed to hire the plane from 47 donations, Park said in an e-mail. Donations are being accepted at this Web site; the announcement was posted to the Facebook group at 3 p.m. Brian H, another group member, first proposed the banner idea in a post on the site Sunday evening.
One of the group's members, Timothy Fong, said he contacted a Napa-based company that would tow a banner over the game. The banner would fly over AT&T park in San Francisco while people arrived for the All-Star game, but because of airspace restrictions put in place after 9/11 it would have to land an hour before the first pitch, Fong told RAW STORY. The game is going to be televised on Fox beginning at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
"It would be ideal in terms of citizens expressing dissatisfaction with their government to have something out there during the national anthem or during the first pitch," Fong said, but the activists are committed to following the law.
Park said he donated $50 to get the banner airborne, and other commenters on the Facebook group, which has 978 members, said they were donating as little as $5 to $10.