[Peace-discuss] Nov. 3rd

Wed Sep 22 14:35:53 CDT 2004

This is an excellent discussion to start having on this list. I was out of 
the country in 2000, but I was sick to realize that the election was 
obviously stolen and no one got up and hollered until Inauguration Day, 
which was way too late. Friends explained later that no one really felt like 
Gore was good enough to get out in the streets for, which may be true, but I 
think the point is NOT who is in charge but how. And it doesn't matter what 
our feelings are on Kerry before the election, we must ensure that our votes 
are counted. We need to go Argentinean if this happens again, and we need to 
do it the minute the Supreme Court stops the counting of ballots. So, 
what're we going to do to stop the dictatorship from closing in?

Pots and pans out to the Brookens center? Whistles in our neighborhoods? 
Pots and pans to Washington? National strike? Local strike? Direct action to 
shut down the city?

what do people think? are people up for it?
-meghan

----Original Message Follows----
From: <ppatton at uiuc.edu>
To: Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.cu.groogroo.com>
Subject: [Peace-discuss] What will we do?
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 18:57:33 -0500

To Catch a Thief
by Barbara Ehrenreich

We were six toasts into the wedding dinner when the
conversation turned, as conversations usually do, to the
possibility of a Republican theft of the election in
November. "That's when we hit the streets!" declared the
Cuban American community organizer from Pennsylvania. "Yeah!"
bellowed the retired union president from Long Island, and we
all pounded the table and raised our glasses yet
again: "Everybody hit the streets!"

The streets must be feeling pretty threatened by this time,
because the idea of a Republican-engineered election fraud is
no longer the property of the kind of people who think George
W. designed 9/11 and that John Kerry is a Halliburton-
supplied bot containing batteries set to run out on October
15.

Following the wedding, I took an absolutely unscientific poll
of friends and relatives, asking what they planned to do, and
what they thought others should do, in the event of a 2000
election hoax rerun. Everyone seemed to think this is a real
possibility. My sister, for example, an office worker in
Colorado, e-mailed to say, "Funny, I've been thinking about
that . . . Ever since [2000], I've thought, 'How could we let
this happen? Why didn't we--the majority--hit the streets in
indignation?' "

Not everyone wants to rush outdoors with a picket sign. One
nephew, who manages a fast food joint in Oklahoma, writes
that the answer is "one word: RECALL." But my brother, a
realtor in Missouri, doesn't want to bother with any more
voting machines. In the event of massive fraud, he
writes, "It would be time for a 'New Revolution'! . . .
Hopefully peaceful, but I wouldn't rule out anything."

Steve Cobble, a D.C.-based political operative who's worked
for Jesse Jackson Sr., told me, "We have to have plans to
research the [election] results ASAP, while hitting the
streets immediately." Among my activist friends, the only
exception to the hit-the-streets line has been Bob Borosage
of Campaign for America's Future, who says, "As for stealing
the election, I think we better win it first."

Yes, of course, by all means. But no matter how many people
we register and drive to the polls, the possibilities for
monkey business are numerous and arcane. Among them:

* Computer fraud, especially in places offering touch screen
voting without a paper trail (although a paper trail is no
guarantee of accuracy if it's generated by the same screwed-
up software as the touch screen votes). It's particularly
worrisome that at least two of the companies that provide
computerized voting machines--Diebold and InterCivic--have
strong ties to the Republican Party.

* Selective discouragement of easily identifiable Democratic
voters, i.e., black ones, such as occurred in Florida in
2000. Already, John Pappageorge, a Republican state
legislator in Michigan, has urged his party to take measures
to "suppress the Detroit vote." Plainclothes officers from
the Florida state police have been trying to intimidate
elderly black voters by going to their homes and
interrogating them about their status as voters.

* Relying on the Pentagon to forward e-mail votes from troops
in combat zones to their local election offices, as Missouri
and North Dakota are planning to do. As The New York Times
has editorialized, this creates a situation "rife with
security problems."

* And, the most lurid of all, declaring a red alert and
postponing the election, a possibility already floated as a
trial balloon by Tom Ridge.

In the weeks remaining to us, prevention may be the best
medicine, and all sorts of groups are gearing up to guard
against a coup. Common Cause and People for the American Way,
among others, are mobilizing to oppose touch screen voting
and to increase the ranks of poll watchers. The Democratic
Party has lined up 2,000 lawyers in case of dodgy-looking
results and is bringing the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor our election for the
first time ever. Taking the foreign monitor theme one step
further, the feisty folks at Global Exchange have invited
their own twenty-eight nonpartisan foreign observers. All
over the country, local Democrats and citizens' groups like
Count Every Vote 2004 are preparing for a heavy presence at
the polls.

But if the preventive measures fail to produce a credible
election, don't expect the Democratic Party to lead the fight
for democracy. The most painful scene in Fahrenheit 9/11--and
there are quite a few contenders for this title--is the one
in which members of the Congressional Black Caucus speak to
the Senate, one by one, pleading for just one Senator to join
them in stopping the Supreme Court's selection of Bush. When
faced with a truly revolutionary situation--an electoral coup
from the right--Al Gore folded like a lawn chair. As for
Kerry: He may have had some backbone thirty years ago, but
too many years spent sitting in the Senate have rendered it
the consistency of Play-Doh.

So we're on our own, folks--those of us who still hold to the
idea that our leaders should be elected rather than
perpetuated by fraud. In addition to all the poll monitoring,
touch screen protesting, etc., we need two things. First,
some agreed-upon group to declare the election fair or
fraudulent. This may not be an easy or obvious call,
according to my friend the political scientist Frances Fox
Piven: "If this election is stolen, it will be stolen at the
most local level, and we won't know right away." Maybe the
OSCE can be relied on to pass judgment, or maybe the ACLU
should be appointed to do the job, with MoveOn spreading the
word.

Second, we need a plan of action for the all-too-likely event
that the election is determined to be tainted. "Hitting the
streets" sounds good, but if we each do it on our own, the
neighbors will just conclude that we're taking out the
recycling or assessing our leaf-raking issues. Asked what we
should do, Linda Burnham, of Count Every Vote 2004, suggests
people start planning now for local demonstrations at
election boards. Piven recommends nationwide protests that
are both "nonviolent and disruptive," possibly on
inauguration day. John Cavanagh, director of the Institute
for Policy Studies, writes: "On February 15, 2003, over ten
million people in over 600 cities around the world took to
the streets to say no to Bush's [war on Iraq.] Another stolen
election will require coordinated efforts like this, on a
larger and more sustained basis, until the stolen goods are
returned. Mega-networks like United for Peace and Justice,
which played a central role in February 15 as well as the
recent mass march at the Republican Convention, will need to
retool so they can play a central role."

All this sounds good to me--local planning for local
responses and national coordination by a trusted group like
United for Peace and Justice. But we have to get started,
well, last week. Democratic voters need to be assured that
some of us won't take another coup lying down. And Republican
dirty-tricksters need to start feeling the first shivers of
fear. If all the people who are saying they're willing to hit
the streets actually do so, there won't be a lot of people
left indoors to wait tables, teach school, or pay taxes
during W's second term.
__________________________________________________________________
Dr. Paul Patton
Research Scientist
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-344-5812
homepage: http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ppatton/www/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
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