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...but the 2004 campaign, and the election of John Kerry, is one of the most magnificent American political events in the last half a century, and it may be the best of them all. That is why the theft of this election by Bush Inc. is such a tragedy--and why I have done nothing else since Nov. 2 but work to expose it, and reverse it.
The first political event in which I participated was the John F. Kennedy campaign in 1960, when I was sixteen. So I have seen quite a lot--the '60s civil rights movement, the '60s antiwar movement, the women's liberation movement, the gay liberation movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, men walking on the moon, the end of the Vietnam War, the birth of religious ecumenism and the liberalization of the Roman Catholic Church (a movement that had a large American component), the Nixon impeachment, the end of Apartheid in South Africa and the freeing of Nelson Mandela after 30 years in prison (and his election as president of South Africa!)--which was vitally aided by an American students' movement--the end of US-supported terrorist governments in South and Central America, the end of the US CIA assassination program, and more.
In 44 years of political life, I have never seen anything as amazing as this year's American political movement to oust Bush Inc., the American public's ability to see through Bush's B.S. despite an almost total corporate media propaganda machine in his favor, our determination to oust him and to put a decent and intelligent human being in the White House, and the incredible coalition of grass roots groups and the Democratic Party establishment that accomplished it, against all the odds.
You do realize that Kerry won, don't you? If you don't, you should visit the DU 2004 Election Forum, familiarize yourself with the evidence (it is overwhelming), and perhaps get involved in helping the groups in Ohio that are challenging the election, and the House Democrats (led by John Conyers) who will challenge it on Jan. 6 (when the matter comes to Congress).
In 2004, the American people woke up--after more than 30 years of largely being asleep (probably caused by the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, and the oil cartel ouster of Jimmy Carter). One of the most important forces that woke people up, and that also got them organized, was the Internet bloggers. It was through Internet information systems that Bush's lies about Iraq (and so much else) were exposed. The Internet helped truth seekers find each other. And at least half of the money raised to oppose Bush was raised here in small donations (really, a miracle of fundraising).
Very unfortunately, indeed, Bush supporters got control over the central electronic vote tabulation machines, with proprietary rights over the secret source code that counts all our votes, and being the conscienceless dogs that they are, used it to manufacture a Bush win. Their plan was four years in the works and also involved Tom DeLay blocking a paper trail provision, and not letting it out of committee, so that about one third of the vote cannot be re-counted, and is very difficult to audit (although there are other means, including the Exit Polls, to determine what happened). Their plan also included severe and criminal suppression of Democratic, minority and poor voters in Ohio and Florida.
I know people who never voted before in their lives getting registered so they could vote against Bush--and I've heard this story from numerous people. Everybody seems to know somebody who never voted before coming out THIS TIME. Another common story is rightwing relatives turning against Bush (because of the war and the federal deficit, and all his lying). I know of whole buildings full of elderly Republicans who thought Bush was nuts. (Cliff Arnebeck has evidence that a lot of Republican votes for Kerry were stolen in southern Ohio.)
We know what we did. The volunteers, the grass roots groups, know what we did. There was never such a determined political movement--not in all of American history.
And the hard evidence that has been gathered supports our intuitive feeling about this election, and all the anecdotal evidence. We won!
Even if we hadn't won--and even if we cannot get justice now--the movement itself, the first broad spectrum grass roots democracy movement that I have seen in this country in my lifetime, is a terrifically positive development.
The '60s civil rights movement was specifically to achieve black voting rights and to end segregation, whereas the current movement involves the rights of all Americans. The two are connected, in that black voters took the biggest hit of vote suppression by Republican election officials in Ohio and Florida. But white voters' votes were also stolen, and Republican votes (for Kerry), and, in addition to that, all sorts of broad spectrum rights are being violated--by the Patriot Act, by arbitrary military service (a backdoor draft), by corporate control of government policy, by tax cuts for the rich, by the outsourcing of jobs, etc.
There are many ways that people are fighting back. One that springs to mind is the vote in Inglewood, in Los Angeles, to keep Wal-mart out of their town--led by a coalition of unions, church groups and others. Another is the Internet--which is so similar to the "Committees of Correspondence" in the early phases of the American Revolution.
There are many, many heroes--of the campaign to oust Bush, and of the continuing democracy movement--people with incredible courage, whistleblowers like Joseph Wilson and Richard Clark, and the people who exposed Abu Ghraib, people with a lot to lose including their lives, war resisters like Jeremy Hinzman and Camilo Mejia, and people with incredible tenacity, like Cliff Arnebeck, the Alliance for Democracy, the Green Party and the volunteers in Ohio.
You should be very proud of your country! American democracy is alive and well, despite every effort to kill it! And we shall not be moved. And we shall overcome.
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