Right-wing churches bankrolled Prop. 8 in Calif.
Imani Henry, Workers World, Nov. 14, 2008
The election victory of Barack Obama will go down in history as a triumphant step forward in the struggle against racism and national oppression in the U.S. Unfortunately, it was also an election where more than 10 million voters in Florida, Arizona and California supported right-wing ballot initiatives to deny marriage rights to lesbian, gay, bi and trans people.
Thirty states now have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage. A proposal in Arkansas was also passed to stop gay men and lesbians from adopting children.
The struggle around California’s Proposition 8, which amends the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry, garnered national attention. Prop. 8 was the highest-funded campaign in any state and exceeded every other electoral campaign in spending except for the presidential race.
Prop. 8 was launched by ProtectMarriage.com to counter the California Supreme Court’s May 15 ruling which deemed unconstitutional a 2000 ban on same-sex marriage. “Vote Yes on Prop. 8” forces raised $35.8 million. The ban won 52 to 48 percent.
The coalition of right-wing organizations that supported Prop. 8 included the Roman Catholic Church, Knights of Columbus, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, American Family Association, Focus on the Family and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon).
The Utah-centered Mormon Church actively organized support for Prop. 8 and raised significant funds in both that state and California. Every congregation was read a letter in support of the bigoted ballot measure and urged to donate and raise funds. About 45 percent of donations to ProtectMarriage.com from outside California came from Utah, much more than any other state. (Mercury News, Oct. 24)
Prop. 8 marriage ban ignites protests
On Nov. 4 across the country, LGBT people of all nationalities gathered to watch and then celebrate Obama’s victory. But on Nov. 5—with the announcement of the passing of Prop. 8—a new firestorm of protest was ignited. LGBT political and legal organizations immediately started an appeal process.
An estimated 10,000 people rallied, marched, sat down in the streets and/or shut down traffic in Los Angeles and San Francisco. On Nov. 6, the protests spread to more cities, including San Diego and Westwood, Calif. More than 3,000 people protested on Nov. 7 in downtown Salt Lake City at the Mormon temple and church headquarters.
Actions took place throughout California on Nov. 8, including a march of 13,000 in Los Angeles and 10,000 in San Diego. On Nov. 9, the California Highway Patrol was forced to close two state highway traffic ramps for 13 hours, as 350 people protested outside the largest Mormon temple in Oakland.
Saturday, Nov. 15, has been called as a national day of action against Prop. 8. In California, protesters are planning massive rallies at city halls all across the state. Legal and economic campaigns have been launched throughout the country to strip the Mormon Church of its tax-exempt status. An economic boycott is being discussed.
According to the Associated Press: “Utah’s growing tourism industry and the star-studded Sundance Film Festival are being targeted for a boycott by bloggers, gay rights activists and others seeking to punish the Mormon church for its aggressive promotion of California’s ban on gay marriage. It could be a heavy price to pay. Tourism brings in $6 billion a year to Utah.” (Nov. 6)
Don’t blame Prop. 8 win on Black community
In a despicable effort—played heavily in the media—to deflect attention from the rich and powerful religious right, California’s Black communities have been blamed for Prop. 8’s passage. The media falsely concluded that the high voter turnout of Black people resulted in the measure’s passage.
The LGBT movement has been erroneously depicted as entirely white and middle class, and Black communities as politically conservative, highly religious and heterosexual.
But LGBT communities and movements in the U.S. are overwhelmingly multinational and working class in character, and neither Prop. 8 nor the oppression of LGBT people originates from the African-American community. The millions in donations raised by the anti-LGBT forces did not come from the pockets of Black churchgoers.
A new study released by the University of California, Los Angeles-based Williams Institute indicates that more than 7,400 Black men and women in California are in same-sex relationships. Fifty-five percent of Black women and 11 percent of Black men are raising children within these couples, the study found. It also found economic disparities among Black same-sex couples and their heterosexual counterparts.
Christopher Ramos, the study’s co-author, noted: “These analyses break stereotypes about gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, like the idea that they are all wealthy. We find that gay and bisexual [African-American] men in California have household incomes that are 44 percent lower than their heterosexual counterparts.” (L.A. Reporter, Oct. 23)
In a statement, Kathryn Kolbert, a reproductive rights attorney and president of the pro-LGBT People for the American Way, countered the divisive news coverage: “[We have looked] at the basic numbers and concluded that it is simply false to suggest that Prop. 8 would have been defeated if African Americans had been more supportive.
“The amendment seems to have passed by more than half a million votes, and the number of black voters, even with turnout boosted by the presidential race, couldn’t have made up that difference. ... Republicans and white churchgoers, among many other groups, voted for Prop. 8 at higher rates than African Americans. ...Who’s really to blame? The religious right.” (www.pfaw.org)
The right-wing campaign of lies and deception during the campaign included “robocalls” directed at Black households that falsely portrayed Obama as a Prop. 8 supporter. In fact, it was Black communities and religious leaders who mobilized to counter much of the right-wing efforts.
The California NAACP sent mailers opposing Prop. 8 to 140,000 Black households. In October the campaign in the Black community against Prop. 8 ranged from an evening of preaching against Prop. 8 at a predominantly Black church in San Francisco to a press conference held on the steps of Oakland’s city hall by prominent African-American leaders.
While John McCain was a supporter of Prop. 8 and Obama publicly opposed it, both candidates voiced opposition to gay marriage. Obama is only for the right of civil unions for LGBT persons, which do not confer the same rights and benefits as marriage does.
According to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force: “The 1,138 federal benefits and protections of marriage are only available to couples that are allowed to legally marry. These include Social Security survivor and spousal benefits, the ability to file a joint tax return, immigration rights, and coverage under the Family and Medical Leave Act. To date, civil unions are not ‘portable,’ meaning that when a couple moves to another state, none of the benefits, rights or responsibilities coming from civil unions move with them.”
At the heart of the Prop. 8 and marriage equality struggle is the right to health care and employment benefits that all workers of every nationality, gender and sexuality should have. LGBT marriage is essentially about workers’ rights. This is why organized labor has fought the bosses to have domestic partner benefits in their contracts. Prop. 8 is a setback to the entire progressive movement for social and economic justice.
It is not surprising during this capitalist economic crisis that the right wing poured millions of dollars into a campaign to deny benefits to LGBT workers. At the heart of their efforts is an attempt by the entire ruling class to pit workers and oppressed communities against each other in the hope we won’t unite to fight back against them.
The struggle to overturn Prop. 8 will continue. A multinational, multisexuality movement will be a powerful force to turn back all the economic attacks coming down on the working class in this period.
Showing posts with label 2008 election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2008 election. Show all posts
The U.S. presidential election—A NEW POLITICAL SITUATION
Rife with potential for working class solidarity and workers’ struggle
Larry Holmes, Workers World, Nov. 6, 2008
There is a new political situation in the U.S. and in the world. Even though Barack Obama’s sweeping electoral victory was not entirely unexpected, now that it has happened—the reality of it—the way in which it demonstrated to the world that something big has changed about the working class in the U.S., is so stunning that many still find it hard to believe.
The long history of racism in the U.S. seemed to preclude for the foreseeable future the election of an African-American president. The meltdown on Wall Street and the gravest capitalist crisis in 75 years beat back the bigotry that could have stopped Obama’s victory.
A record-breaking turnout on the part of African-American and Latin@ voters, and a tidal wave of young voters, cemented the multinational electoral coalition that made history.
True, much of the U.S. ruling class had concluded that Obama might be the radical makeover that their government needed to deal with the crisis ahead. But that fact cannot negate the role or the feelings of the masses in this phenomenon.
In the African-American communities from Chicago to Harlem to the still Katrina-devastated New Orleans there is elation over the outcome of this election, even a feeling of liberation from a measure of the racism born out of slavery, then cultivated into an unofficial second-class status, enforced by terror at the hands of the police, prisons or the KKK.
Indeed hundreds of thousands of people everywhere, for the most part spontaneously, took to the streets after Obama was declared the winner and the first African-American president of a country built on African slave labor.
And the celebrating was by no means exclusive to the African-American community. Everywhere, both within and beyond the borders of the U.S., people of every race and nationality poured into the streets crying, yelling and embracing strangers as if a long terrible, reactionary, life-stifling occupation, exemplified by the Bush regime, had finally come to an end.
Will this election restore people’s faith in the U.S capitalist system and government at the very time that exposing the system and government is so critical to forging the mass struggle against capitalism? Perhaps for a little while, but it won’t last long.
In the coming days and months, the mass suffering brought on by the deepening of the worldwide capitalist economic crises, and the reality of the continuing U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, will betray the truth of what has or has not changed as a result of the presidential elections.
The inevitable revelation of how much change the incoming U.S. government represents, and how the mass of working and oppressed people in the U.S. and everywhere react to that revelation, will to a large degree provide the content of the world struggle against U.S. imperialism over the next period.
In lieu of that revelation, something has already changed. Only time will tell how deep and meaningful that change is. The people by the tens of millions have awakened and they have desperate expectations. The people want the U.S. capitalist government to end its wars abroad, stop layoffs and home foreclosures, provide healthcare and education.
Will the new government end the wars? Or will it withdraw troops from Iraq only to send them to Afghanistan?
Will the new Democratic Party government, with an even larger majority in Congress, bail out the workers who are losing their homes and jobs? Will it take the side of labor against capital?
One of the issues that is likely to come before the new Democratic government is a long-standing, simple, proposed law that would require a majority of workers at a workplace to sign union cards in order to get union recognition. The labor movement has been waiting for this law to pass. Will it be signed?
The people want the government to come to their rescue instead of Wall Street’s. It’s a dangerous thing to wake people up and arouse the expectations.
Now that the people are awake they may organize and fight for what they want and need. More than anything else, it is this potential that portends a new political situation in the U.S. and the world.
The feeling on the streets of cities large and small across the U.S. on election night was that now, anything is possible, and it is.
Larry Holmes, Workers World, Nov. 6, 2008
There is a new political situation in the U.S. and in the world. Even though Barack Obama’s sweeping electoral victory was not entirely unexpected, now that it has happened—the reality of it—the way in which it demonstrated to the world that something big has changed about the working class in the U.S., is so stunning that many still find it hard to believe.
The long history of racism in the U.S. seemed to preclude for the foreseeable future the election of an African-American president. The meltdown on Wall Street and the gravest capitalist crisis in 75 years beat back the bigotry that could have stopped Obama’s victory.
A record-breaking turnout on the part of African-American and Latin@ voters, and a tidal wave of young voters, cemented the multinational electoral coalition that made history.
True, much of the U.S. ruling class had concluded that Obama might be the radical makeover that their government needed to deal with the crisis ahead. But that fact cannot negate the role or the feelings of the masses in this phenomenon.
In the African-American communities from Chicago to Harlem to the still Katrina-devastated New Orleans there is elation over the outcome of this election, even a feeling of liberation from a measure of the racism born out of slavery, then cultivated into an unofficial second-class status, enforced by terror at the hands of the police, prisons or the KKK.
Indeed hundreds of thousands of people everywhere, for the most part spontaneously, took to the streets after Obama was declared the winner and the first African-American president of a country built on African slave labor.
And the celebrating was by no means exclusive to the African-American community. Everywhere, both within and beyond the borders of the U.S., people of every race and nationality poured into the streets crying, yelling and embracing strangers as if a long terrible, reactionary, life-stifling occupation, exemplified by the Bush regime, had finally come to an end.
Will this election restore people’s faith in the U.S capitalist system and government at the very time that exposing the system and government is so critical to forging the mass struggle against capitalism? Perhaps for a little while, but it won’t last long.
In the coming days and months, the mass suffering brought on by the deepening of the worldwide capitalist economic crises, and the reality of the continuing U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, will betray the truth of what has or has not changed as a result of the presidential elections.
The inevitable revelation of how much change the incoming U.S. government represents, and how the mass of working and oppressed people in the U.S. and everywhere react to that revelation, will to a large degree provide the content of the world struggle against U.S. imperialism over the next period.
In lieu of that revelation, something has already changed. Only time will tell how deep and meaningful that change is. The people by the tens of millions have awakened and they have desperate expectations. The people want the U.S. capitalist government to end its wars abroad, stop layoffs and home foreclosures, provide healthcare and education.
Will the new government end the wars? Or will it withdraw troops from Iraq only to send them to Afghanistan?
Will the new Democratic Party government, with an even larger majority in Congress, bail out the workers who are losing their homes and jobs? Will it take the side of labor against capital?
One of the issues that is likely to come before the new Democratic government is a long-standing, simple, proposed law that would require a majority of workers at a workplace to sign union cards in order to get union recognition. The labor movement has been waiting for this law to pass. Will it be signed?
The people want the government to come to their rescue instead of Wall Street’s. It’s a dangerous thing to wake people up and arouse the expectations.
Now that the people are awake they may organize and fight for what they want and need. More than anything else, it is this potential that portends a new political situation in the U.S. and the world.
The feeling on the streets of cities large and small across the U.S. on election night was that now, anything is possible, and it is.
Millions in streets seal Obama victory
By LeiLani Dowell, Workers World, Nov. 5, 2008
Harlem, N.Y.
Harlem, N.Y.
 Harlem, N.Y., rally. LeiLani Dowell first on left. WW photo |
It was truly a great day in Harlem.
The election of Democrat Barack Obama as the first African-American U.S. president was celebrated the evening of Nov. 4 in the largest, grandest display of exuberance and hope in the Black community that this 30-year-old reporter has ever seen.
The crowds began gathering early at the Harlem State Office Building for an outdoor screening of the election results as they occurred. Major and independent media with video cameras interviewed people every few feet, asking why they were there. Most replied that they were there to see history being made. A rally at the site featured local politicians and musicians.
 Harlem, N.Y., rally Nov. 4. WW photo: LeiLani Dowell |
The crowd swelled by 8 p.m., when the results first began coming in. While some focused on the huge screen displaying CNN and other news networks, a drumming circle was busy performing to the side, along with chants of “Power to the people.”
When former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared on one of the networks, the crowd loudly booed and demanded, “Change the channel!” News visuals of simultaneous rallies taking place in Times Square in New York as well as Chicago, where a million people attended, gave the feel that one big party was happening throughout the country.
Down the street at the world-famous Sylvia’s soul food restaurant, a man with a chainsaw was carving “OBAMA” into five large blocks of ice, one for each letter. Street vendors sold commemorative t-shirts, buttons and posters.
 One million rally in Chicago. |
An overwhelming sense of camaraderie filled the air. One man remarked, “It feels like everyone is your brother here today.” While the crowd was overwhelmingly African-American, Latin@s, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and whites were also present to show their solidarity. Among these were a number of lesbian, gay, bi and trans people.
When the final projection was made that Obama supporters had defeated the reactionary John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket, the crowds went wild, augmented by new ranks of people who left their nearby homes to join in the revelry. The cops tried to keep people on the sidewalk on 125th Street, then had to open one lane of traffic to the throng, and finally closed the entire northern side of the street to vehicular traffic.
 Rally surrounds the White House. |
It was a spontaneous street festival, with chants, clapping, dancing and singing every few feet, horns honking everywhere, people sitting in the windows of cars as they drove by, waving. A brass band led an impromptu parade down 125th Street, with people chanting and singing, “We did it!”
People who had never met warmly hugged each other; one woman ran up to this reporter, gave her a hug, and said, “We did something tonight, didn’t we?” A young man ran through the streets, passionately yelling, “WE DESERVE THIS!”
A victory despite the odds
Obama’s win reflects a movement of people throughout the country who fought right-wing attacks against voters of color and who repudiated both the outright racism of the McCain-Palin campaign and the barely concealed racism of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign. It also reflects a desire to end the policies of endless war at home and abroad—despite how Obama himself stands on the issues. That so many felt the compulsion to be in the streets for that victory is a testament to the legacy of slavery and continuing oppression and repression faced by the Black community—and the tenacity of that community to survive and resist.
According to exit polls listed at nytimes.com, 95 percent of the Black vote, 66 percent of the Latin@ vote, 62 percent of the Asian vote and a remarkable 43 percent of the white vote went to Obama. Sixty-six percent of voters aged 18 to 29 and 69 percent of first-time voters chose Obama as well. Sixty-two percent of voters said the economy was the most pressing issue in the election.
Even a multifaceted onslaught of voter disenfranchisement throughout the country—including the purging of voters from the registration rolls; threatening and/or misleading phone calls, text messages and leaflets; legal action to prevent polling places from staying open longer; and a serious attempt to prevent students from voting from their campuses—couldn’t prevent the sweeping number of votes in Obama’s favor. Determined voters lined up for hours throughout the country. Lawyers and legal observers traveled across the country to assist the process. Many people voted days in advance in an attempt to ensure that their vote wasn’t stolen as it was in the last two presidential elections.
The election also reflects a response to eight disastrous years of the Bush administration—disastrous not only for working people, but also for U.S. imperialism and its relations with the rest of the world.
As of this writing, Obama has won 349 electoral votes, versus McCain’s 162. For the first time in 44 years, Virginia and Indiana ceded victory to the Democratic candidate. Of the five battleground states—Florida, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio—Obama took Florida, Indiana and Ohio and is in the lead in North Carolina, while McCain is leading in Missouri.
Solidarity in struggle
Such an outpouring of the masses, particularly oppressed people of color, warrants the full solidarity of the movement. The Democratic Party is a party of the capitalist imperialist system, and Obama is now its main spokesperson. Despite this many see hope in his election—not that Obama will create an end to war, poverty and oppression so desperately needed in this country and the world, but that the people who fought so hard for him to be elected will be increasingly motivated to act. As all working-class victories come from the movement of working and oppressed people fighting for their rights, this is a tangible ambition.
At the same time, the racist, reactionary forces that supported Republican presidential candidate John McCain, and particularly vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, still exist and can be called into play. Their actions will likely take the form of racist attacks on Obama during his tenure as president. Revolutionaries should be aware of this and prepared to intervene against racism. In this time of increased economic crisis, the attempt by bigoted demagogues to divide working people along lines of race, gender and sexuality—the classic “blame the victim” tactic—must be attacked head-on.
In the end, only the complete destruction of the capitalist system will ultimately create the real change needed in society. However, the election of the first Black president, and a movement of the masses to accomplish it, is a historical moment that cannot and should not be ignored.
Further analysis of the U.S. 2008 elections will appear at workers.org and in the next issue of WW newspaper.
A McCain "Win" Will Be Theft, Resistance Is Planned
IF THE ELECTION IS IN QUESTION
In Charlotte, NC:
Gather at 9:00 am
Mecklenburg County Board Of Elections
741 Kenilworth Ave, Charlotte, NC
(permits have already been filed for a 24/hr a day protest if necessary)
Bring signs, banners, noisemakers, your pots & pans, tents, food, friends, family, etc.
In Washington, DC:
Protest at the White House
To carpool or get vans, buses from Charlotte contact David at charlotteaction@gmail.com or 704.492.5226
Volunteers needed: Email charlotteaction@gmail.com with volunteer & days and times you are available.
DONATE: Donation info is at http://charlotteaction.blogspot.com/2005/07/donate-to-action-center-for-justice.html
Call to Action:
A McCain "Win" Will Be Theft, Resistance Is Planned
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/36993
By David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet.org
If your television declares John McCain the president elect on the evening of November 4th, your television will be lying. You should immediately pick up your pre-packed bags and head straight to the White House in Washington, D.C., which we will surround and shut down until this attempt at a third illegitimate presidency is reversed.
A McCain "win" will not be illegitimate because I disagree with his policies, but because he himself has rendered it illegitimate. He and his campaign and allied supporters have sought to illegally remove hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls, fraudulently registered people as Republicans without their knowledge and against their will, obstructed voter registration drives, falsely warned students against voting where they attend school, falsely accused community groups of voter registration fraud, falsely alleged the widespread existence of voter fraud, and encouraged supporters to falsely believe McCain's opponent is a foreign terrorist through speeches, recorded phone messages, and flyers. Already in early voting in a number of states there have been cases of votes on electronic machines visibly flipping to McCain or McKinney when intended for Obama. We will see McCain supporters on November 4th challenging people's right to vote, seeking to force people to vote on provisional ballots, and seeking to have provisional ballots discarded. And we will see electronic vote counts wildly out of step with the most recent polls, although not with exit polls -- which we will be denied any access to unless they have been "adjusted" to match the official counts.
Inciting your supporters to violence with racist and religious lies about your opponent, effectively alleging treason on absolutely no basis, should be enough, alone, to disqualify a campaign for the presidency of the United States. Working to block voters from registering should be enough on its own. Any of the dozens of creative forms of vote suppression currently being used by the Republicans should be enough. And allowing votes to be counted on completely unverifiable machines owned and controlled by corporations allied with your party should make the results illegitimate even if plausible. If McCain is declared the "winner," it will not be plausible, but at this point he has so disgraced himself and our electoral system that he is no longer a legitimate candidate for president regardless of what the polls (themselves fallible, but all we've got) say just before election day.
Too many people have already been denied the opportunity to even push the buttons and have their votes miscounted. Too much incendiary slander has been let loose. Too much visible vote flipping has already been documented.
If Obama officially wins, McCain is likely to challenge it, charging the Obama campaign with some of the very crimes engaged in by McCain himself. Our reaction should be exactly the same in the event of a McCain challenge as in the event of a McCain "victory." We should not sit back for even a split second and wonder how it will work out. We should not try to organize a plan on the spur of the moment to travel to key battleground states. We should be prepared already to immediately travel to Washington, D.C., head straight for the White House, occupy Lafayette Square Park, the Ellipse, and surrounding streets, block entrances, and shut the place down until Obama is recognized as the president elect or we are guaranteed a credible election with universal registration and hand-counted paper ballots.
We may be there for days or weeks or months. But we must be there. We must be there by the millions. We must show each other, and the nation, and the world that we have had enough, that we will not stand for one more stolen election, that we will not give in to fear, lies, theft, and intimidation. If they choose to attack our nonviolent gathering of citizens, let them do it right in front of George W. Bush's White House with the world's media watching. We will not back down.
I'm not hoping it comes to this, of course. If it doesn't because the official election results are credible and just, we should celebrate and prepare to lobby our government for real change. But if resistance does not develop because people are too scared and obedient to act, then you'll still be glad you packed ahead of time, and you might want to look into tickets to Canada.
********************************************
Also see:
How and Why I Just Voted
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/37254
In Charlotte, NC:
Gather at 9:00 am
Mecklenburg County Board Of Elections
741 Kenilworth Ave, Charlotte, NC
(permits have already been filed for a 24/hr a day protest if necessary)
Bring signs, banners, noisemakers, your pots & pans, tents, food, friends, family, etc.
In Washington, DC:
Protest at the White House
To carpool or get vans, buses from Charlotte contact David at charlotteaction@gmail.com or 704.492.5226
Volunteers needed: Email charlotteaction@gmail.com with volunteer & days and times you are available.
DONATE: Donation info is at http://charlotteaction.blogspot.com/2005/07/donate-to-action-center-for-justice.html
Call to Action:
A McCain "Win" Will Be Theft, Resistance Is Planned
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/36993
By David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet.org
If your television declares John McCain the president elect on the evening of November 4th, your television will be lying. You should immediately pick up your pre-packed bags and head straight to the White House in Washington, D.C., which we will surround and shut down until this attempt at a third illegitimate presidency is reversed.
A McCain "win" will not be illegitimate because I disagree with his policies, but because he himself has rendered it illegitimate. He and his campaign and allied supporters have sought to illegally remove hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls, fraudulently registered people as Republicans without their knowledge and against their will, obstructed voter registration drives, falsely warned students against voting where they attend school, falsely accused community groups of voter registration fraud, falsely alleged the widespread existence of voter fraud, and encouraged supporters to falsely believe McCain's opponent is a foreign terrorist through speeches, recorded phone messages, and flyers. Already in early voting in a number of states there have been cases of votes on electronic machines visibly flipping to McCain or McKinney when intended for Obama. We will see McCain supporters on November 4th challenging people's right to vote, seeking to force people to vote on provisional ballots, and seeking to have provisional ballots discarded. And we will see electronic vote counts wildly out of step with the most recent polls, although not with exit polls -- which we will be denied any access to unless they have been "adjusted" to match the official counts.
Inciting your supporters to violence with racist and religious lies about your opponent, effectively alleging treason on absolutely no basis, should be enough, alone, to disqualify a campaign for the presidency of the United States. Working to block voters from registering should be enough on its own. Any of the dozens of creative forms of vote suppression currently being used by the Republicans should be enough. And allowing votes to be counted on completely unverifiable machines owned and controlled by corporations allied with your party should make the results illegitimate even if plausible. If McCain is declared the "winner," it will not be plausible, but at this point he has so disgraced himself and our electoral system that he is no longer a legitimate candidate for president regardless of what the polls (themselves fallible, but all we've got) say just before election day.
Too many people have already been denied the opportunity to even push the buttons and have their votes miscounted. Too much incendiary slander has been let loose. Too much visible vote flipping has already been documented.
If Obama officially wins, McCain is likely to challenge it, charging the Obama campaign with some of the very crimes engaged in by McCain himself. Our reaction should be exactly the same in the event of a McCain challenge as in the event of a McCain "victory." We should not sit back for even a split second and wonder how it will work out. We should not try to organize a plan on the spur of the moment to travel to key battleground states. We should be prepared already to immediately travel to Washington, D.C., head straight for the White House, occupy Lafayette Square Park, the Ellipse, and surrounding streets, block entrances, and shut the place down until Obama is recognized as the president elect or we are guaranteed a credible election with universal registration and hand-counted paper ballots.
We may be there for days or weeks or months. But we must be there. We must be there by the millions. We must show each other, and the nation, and the world that we have had enough, that we will not stand for one more stolen election, that we will not give in to fear, lies, theft, and intimidation. If they choose to attack our nonviolent gathering of citizens, let them do it right in front of George W. Bush's White House with the world's media watching. We will not back down.
I'm not hoping it comes to this, of course. If it doesn't because the official election results are credible and just, we should celebrate and prepare to lobby our government for real change. But if resistance does not develop because people are too scared and obedient to act, then you'll still be glad you packed ahead of time, and you might want to look into tickets to Canada.
********************************************
Also see:
How and Why I Just Voted
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/37254
Urgent: Take Action Now to Stop Racist Voter Suppression
Sign the online petition at http://www.iacenter.org/stopvotersuppression
Online Petition Text:
To: President Bush, Senator McCain, Governor Palen, Attorney General Mukasey, Governors of Key States, Congressional and Republican Party leaders and members of the media
In the days leading up to a historic election, there has been a massive, illegal attempt to suppress votes, particularly among the poor, communities of color, and students.
These tactics include:
--In Ohio, the Republicans attempted to illegally challenge the registrations of 200,000 new voters.
--Voters, like in West Virginia counties, have reported that electronic voting machines visibly changed their vote to John McCain when they tried to cast their vote for Barack Obama.
--Students in Colorado, Virginia, and South Carolina were told that they would lose their scholarships and that their parents could no longer claim them as dependents on their tax returns if the students voted in their college towns.
--In Georgia more than 50,000 voters were improperly purged from the voting rolls, a clear violation of federal laws that prohibit massive purging within 90 days of an election. Approximately 4,500 of them have been wrongly identified as “non-citizens”.
--In Indiana, Republican officials filed a lawsuit to close down early voting sites in three key Indiana cities—Hammond, Gary and East Chicago. Indiana’s population is only eight percent Black, but Black voters are heavily concentrated in the three cities targeted by the lawsuit.
--In Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin, right wingers are using the Jim-Crow practice of 'caging,' where they send out mass mailings to low-income neighborhoods. If the letters come back unopened, then those voters are challenged at the polling place.
These are just a few of the tactics that have come to light in the recent period which are part of an ongoing pattern of racist disenfranchisement--an illegal campaign to deliberately deprive people of the hard-won right to vote.
I demand:
• Stop police intimidation of voters.
• Keep polls open until everyone has the opportunity to vote.
• Full emergency staffing of polling places to meet the widely-expected massive turnout.
• STOP all voter suppression – count all ballots.
Make your voice heard NOW! Sign the online petition and send a strong, clear message to the White House, Congress, Governors of Key States, and the media. You can sign online at http://www.iacenter.org/stopvotersuppression
DONATE: Donation info is at http://charlotteaction.blogspot.com/2005/07/donate-to-action-center-for-justice.html
Online Petition Text:
To: President Bush, Senator McCain, Governor Palen, Attorney General Mukasey, Governors of Key States, Congressional and Republican Party leaders and members of the media
In the days leading up to a historic election, there has been a massive, illegal attempt to suppress votes, particularly among the poor, communities of color, and students.
These tactics include:
--In Ohio, the Republicans attempted to illegally challenge the registrations of 200,000 new voters.
--Voters, like in West Virginia counties, have reported that electronic voting machines visibly changed their vote to John McCain when they tried to cast their vote for Barack Obama.
--Students in Colorado, Virginia, and South Carolina were told that they would lose their scholarships and that their parents could no longer claim them as dependents on their tax returns if the students voted in their college towns.
--In Georgia more than 50,000 voters were improperly purged from the voting rolls, a clear violation of federal laws that prohibit massive purging within 90 days of an election. Approximately 4,500 of them have been wrongly identified as “non-citizens”.
--In Indiana, Republican officials filed a lawsuit to close down early voting sites in three key Indiana cities—Hammond, Gary and East Chicago. Indiana’s population is only eight percent Black, but Black voters are heavily concentrated in the three cities targeted by the lawsuit.
--In Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin, right wingers are using the Jim-Crow practice of 'caging,' where they send out mass mailings to low-income neighborhoods. If the letters come back unopened, then those voters are challenged at the polling place.
These are just a few of the tactics that have come to light in the recent period which are part of an ongoing pattern of racist disenfranchisement--an illegal campaign to deliberately deprive people of the hard-won right to vote.
I demand:
• Stop police intimidation of voters.
• Keep polls open until everyone has the opportunity to vote.
• Full emergency staffing of polling places to meet the widely-expected massive turnout.
• STOP all voter suppression – count all ballots.
Make your voice heard NOW! Sign the online petition and send a strong, clear message to the White House, Congress, Governors of Key States, and the media. You can sign online at http://www.iacenter.org/stopvotersuppression
DONATE: Donation info is at http://charlotteaction.blogspot.com/2005/07/donate-to-action-center-for-justice.html
Protest John McCain in Concord, NC on Saturday, Oct.18
Saturday, Oct. 18, 2008
Protest John McCain In Concord, NC
Bail Out THE PEOPLE Not The Banks!
Moratorium on Home Foreclosures & Evictions!
Bring The Troops HOME NOW!
Defend Barack Obama Against Racist Attacks & Lies!
8:00 am
Cabarrus Arena & Events Center
4751 NC Highway 49
Concord, NC 28025
Action Center For Justice condemns the rallies being held by McCain & particularly Palin for their racist, lynch mob mentality.
There have been calls at these rallies accusing Obama of being a terrorist and even going so far as calling for Obama to be killed. This is outrageous! We are calling on everyone that can to join us this Saturday.
To carpool from the Charlotte area call David with Action Center For Justice at 704-492-5226 or email charlotteaction@gmail.com. Latest details will be posted at www.charlotteaction.blogspot.com.
From Mecklenburg County GOP
Join Senator John McCain for a North Carolina Road to Victory Rally
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Doors Open at 8:00 AM
Must Arrive by 10:00 AM
Cabarrus Arena & Events Center
4751 NC Highway 49
Concord, NC 28025
John McCain will be returning to North Carolina on Saturday, October 18th, for a Road to Victory Rally.
This is an event you will not want to miss! Tickets will be available for pickup beginning on Wednesday at 2:00 PM at the locations given below. Tickets are limited to four per person and will be distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Please note that a ticket does not guarantee entry to the event. Entry will also be on a first-come, first-serve basis to those carrying tickets, so please be sure to arrive early! For security reasons, bags and signs are prohibited inside the venue.
Also, a new shipment of McCain-Palin yardsigns have at Victory 2008 headquarters
Ticket Distribution Centers:
Charlotte Victory Office
1515 Mockingbird Lane, Suite 218
Charlotte, NC 28209
(704) 910-0696
Concord Victory Office
50 Concord Commons Parkway
Concord, NC 28027
(704) 795-1709
Cornelius Victory Office
8301-17 Magnolia State Drive
Cornelius, NC 28031
(704) 987-4301
Gastonia Victory Office
224 South New Hope Road
Gastonia, NC 28055
(704) 868-3330
Harrisburg Victory Office
4351 Main Street
Harrisburg, NC 28075
(704) 454-5661
Union Victory Office
100 E. Myers Street
Monroe, NC 28110
(704) 225-9454
www.charlotteaction.blogspot.com
Protest John McCain In Concord, NC
Bail Out THE PEOPLE Not The Banks!
Moratorium on Home Foreclosures & Evictions!
Bring The Troops HOME NOW!
Defend Barack Obama Against Racist Attacks & Lies!
8:00 am
Cabarrus Arena & Events Center
4751 NC Highway 49
Concord, NC 28025
Action Center For Justice condemns the rallies being held by McCain & particularly Palin for their racist, lynch mob mentality.
There have been calls at these rallies accusing Obama of being a terrorist and even going so far as calling for Obama to be killed. This is outrageous! We are calling on everyone that can to join us this Saturday.
To carpool from the Charlotte area call David with Action Center For Justice at 704-492-5226 or email charlotteaction@gmail.com. Latest details will be posted at www.charlotteaction.blogspot.com.
From Mecklenburg County GOP
Join Senator John McCain for a North Carolina Road to Victory Rally
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Doors Open at 8:00 AM
Must Arrive by 10:00 AM
Cabarrus Arena & Events Center
4751 NC Highway 49
Concord, NC 28025
John McCain will be returning to North Carolina on Saturday, October 18th, for a Road to Victory Rally.
This is an event you will not want to miss! Tickets will be available for pickup beginning on Wednesday at 2:00 PM at the locations given below. Tickets are limited to four per person and will be distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Please note that a ticket does not guarantee entry to the event. Entry will also be on a first-come, first-serve basis to those carrying tickets, so please be sure to arrive early! For security reasons, bags and signs are prohibited inside the venue.
Also, a new shipment of McCain-Palin yardsigns have at Victory 2008 headquarters
Ticket Distribution Centers:
Charlotte Victory Office
1515 Mockingbird Lane, Suite 218
Charlotte, NC 28209
(704) 910-0696
Concord Victory Office
50 Concord Commons Parkway
Concord, NC 28027
(704) 795-1709
Cornelius Victory Office
8301-17 Magnolia State Drive
Cornelius, NC 28031
(704) 987-4301
Gastonia Victory Office
224 South New Hope Road
Gastonia, NC 28055
(704) 868-3330
Harrisburg Victory Office
4351 Main Street
Harrisburg, NC 28075
(704) 454-5661
Union Victory Office
100 E. Myers Street
Monroe, NC 28110
(704) 225-9454
McCain may come to Charlotte
By Jim Morrill
jmorrill@charlotteobserver.com
jmorrill@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Monday, Oct. 13, 2008
Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., participates at a rally in Davenport, Iowa, Saturday, Oct. 11, 2008.
In what would be his second N.C. appearance this week, Republican presidential candidate John McCain plans a Charlotte rally on Saturday, according to a top N.C. supporter.
Charlotte investor Mark Erwin, chairman of N.C. Citizens for McCain, said McCain is expected to be in town for an afternoon rally. He said the campaign is still looking at venues. There's no official word from the campaign.
"We've got a couple of options we're working on," Erwin said this afternoon. "They're still working on putting it together."
McCain is in Wilmington for an event this afternoon. His wife Cindy was in Concord Saturday to be grand marshall of the Bank of America 500.
Before today, John McCain's most recent appearance in the state was in May, when he spoke to Charlotte business leaders and gave a speech in Winston-Salem.
Polls show the presidential race close in North Carolina. Democrat Barack Obama has been to the state three times in recent weeks.
******************************
www.charlotteaction.blogspot.
Ralph Nader Events in VA and NC, July 12 & 13
We are excited to announce that Ralph Nader will be campaigning in VA and NC this weekend, July 12-13. Please help us promote these upcoming rallies in Richmond, VA, Raleigh, NC and Charlottesville, VA by forwarding this message to your friends and family. If you would like to volunteer to make these events successful please call our local coordinators below:
Sat. July 12th 1pm
Nader for President 2008 Rally
Richmond, VA
Virginia Holocaust Museum
2000 E Cary St. Richmond, VA
Contact John: 804-432-1611
Suggested contribution: $10/$5 student
Sat. July 12th 7:30pm
Nader for President 2008 Rally
Raleigh, NC
St Mary's School (Pittman Auditorium)
900 Hillsborough St. Raleigh, North Carolina 27603
Contact: Thomas: 919-828-6236
Suggested contribution: $10/$5 student
Sun. July 13th 2pm
Nader for President 2008 Rally
Charlottesville, VA
Gravity Lounge
103 South First Street Charlottesville VA 22902
Contact: Michael: 520-906-8661
Suggested Contribution $10/$5 student
Nader takes on the issues that corporate candidates, Obama/McCain, refuse to address.
The Nader/Gonzalez campaign promotes:
* Single-payer, Canadian-style national health insurance (publicly funded healthcare delivered by the private sector)
* Rapid and comprehensive military and corporate withdrawal from Iraq
* Crackdown on the corporate welfare and crime that cost millions of Americans their pensions and jobs
* Labor law reform and repeal of the anti-union provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act
* Overturning the Patriot Act
* Solar-based sustainable energy
Help Us Spread the Word!
* Post fliers around town, at schools, and in popular community venues
* Forward this email to your friends, family, community, and local contacts
* Post info on websites, Craigslist, blogs, Myspace and Facebook
* Phone-bank other supporters to attend the event. Contact liz@votenader.org
* Invite your friends, family and community members to attend the event
* Volunteer at the event -- help with book sales, collect contacts, take photos, video, etc.
The Nader/Gonzalez campaign is also looking for local volunteers to help get the vote out in Hawaii!
Join our volunteer signature gathering or road trip team to help Ralph win ballot access in other states! Spend your summer traveling around the US with other Nader supporters dedicated to get the Nader/Gonzalez ticket on 50 states!
Contact: christina@votenader.org or toby@votenader.org to road trip for Ralph!
For additional information call our national office at (202) 471-5833 or email: events@votenader.org
Type the rest of your post here.
Sat. July 12th 1pm
Nader for President 2008 Rally
Richmond, VA
Virginia Holocaust Museum
2000 E Cary St. Richmond, VA
Contact John: 804-432-1611
Suggested contribution: $10/$5 student
Sat. July 12th 7:30pm
Nader for President 2008 Rally
Raleigh, NC
St Mary's School (Pittman Auditorium)
900 Hillsborough St. Raleigh, North Carolina 27603
Contact: Thomas: 919-828-6236
Suggested contribution: $10/$5 student
Sun. July 13th 2pm
Nader for President 2008 Rally
Charlottesville, VA
Gravity Lounge
103 South First Street Charlottesville VA 22902
Contact: Michael: 520-906-8661
Suggested Contribution $10/$5 student
Nader takes on the issues that corporate candidates, Obama/McCain, refuse to address.
The Nader/Gonzalez campaign promotes:
* Single-payer, Canadian-style national health insurance (publicly funded healthcare delivered by the private sector)
* Rapid and comprehensive military and corporate withdrawal from Iraq
* Crackdown on the corporate welfare and crime that cost millions of Americans their pensions and jobs
* Labor law reform and repeal of the anti-union provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act
* Overturning the Patriot Act
* Solar-based sustainable energy
Help Us Spread the Word!
* Post fliers around town, at schools, and in popular community venues
* Forward this email to your friends, family, community, and local contacts
* Post info on websites, Craigslist, blogs, Myspace and Facebook
* Phone-bank other supporters to attend the event. Contact liz@votenader.org
* Invite your friends, family and community members to attend the event
* Volunteer at the event -- help with book sales, collect contacts, take photos, video, etc.
The Nader/Gonzalez campaign is also looking for local volunteers to help get the vote out in Hawaii!
Join our volunteer signature gathering or road trip team to help Ralph win ballot access in other states! Spend your summer traveling around the US with other Nader supporters dedicated to get the Nader/Gonzalez ticket on 50 states!
Contact: christina@votenader.org or toby@votenader.org to road trip for Ralph!
For additional information call our national office at (202) 471-5833 or email: events@votenader.org
Type the rest of your post here.
North Carolina Ballot Access Case Loses
Richard Winger, Ballot Access News, May 28, 2008
On May 27, Judge Robert H. Hobgood signed a 17-page opinion, upholding North Carolina’s ballot access laws for new and previously unqualified parties. Judge Hobgood is a Superior Court Judge in Wake County. Superior Court Judges in North Carolina do not have law clerks, so it is customary for judges to ask each side to write a proposed opinion. In this case, Judge Hobgood signed the opinion that had been written by the Attorney General’s office. The only reasons this opinion mentions for upholding the petition requirement are that any lesser restriction would result in a large ballot, which would cause election-administration problems.
Since this opinion was written by the Attorney General’s office, it naturally omitted a great deal of evidence that this fear is unfounded. The plaintiffs, the Libertarian and Green Parties, will appeal.
No lower state court has ever held that its state requires too many signatures to place a party, or a candidate, on the ballot, under the constitution (whether federal constitution or state constitution). The only state courts that have ever declared the number of signatures unconstitutional have been the highest state court in that state. These instances were in New York in 1912, Michigan in 1981, Alaska in 1982, and Maryland in 2003. In all four cases, the lower courts had upheld the challenged laws.
The opinion has no immediate impact on the Libertarian Party, since it completed this year’s petition anyway. But it will keep any other party from qualifying this year. The law requires 69,734 valid signatures this year, and probably 80,000 or so in 2010.
On May 27, Judge Robert H. Hobgood signed a 17-page opinion, upholding North Carolina’s ballot access laws for new and previously unqualified parties. Judge Hobgood is a Superior Court Judge in Wake County. Superior Court Judges in North Carolina do not have law clerks, so it is customary for judges to ask each side to write a proposed opinion. In this case, Judge Hobgood signed the opinion that had been written by the Attorney General’s office. The only reasons this opinion mentions for upholding the petition requirement are that any lesser restriction would result in a large ballot, which would cause election-administration problems.
Since this opinion was written by the Attorney General’s office, it naturally omitted a great deal of evidence that this fear is unfounded. The plaintiffs, the Libertarian and Green Parties, will appeal.
No lower state court has ever held that its state requires too many signatures to place a party, or a candidate, on the ballot, under the constitution (whether federal constitution or state constitution). The only state courts that have ever declared the number of signatures unconstitutional have been the highest state court in that state. These instances were in New York in 1912, Michigan in 1981, Alaska in 1982, and Maryland in 2003. In all four cases, the lower courts had upheld the challenged laws.
The opinion has no immediate impact on the Libertarian Party, since it completed this year’s petition anyway. But it will keep any other party from qualifying this year. The law requires 69,734 valid signatures this year, and probably 80,000 or so in 2010.
OBAMA - An Analysis
Larry Holmes, Workers World, May 28, 2008
May 27—Though still not a certainty at this date, it now appears likely that Barack Obama will be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate and, even less certain but a possibility, the first Black president of the U.S.
Even for those of us in the U.S. and around the world who correctly view the crisis-ridden capitalist system, its political parties and its sham elections as the negation of democracy so far as the workers and the oppressed of the world are concerned, it is impossible not to acknowledge that the prospect of the election of a Black president in the U.S.—the center of world imperialism and racism—is an historic event.
Only six months ago, most thought they’d never see a Black politician get this close to the U.S. presidency in their lifetime. It’s not surprising that the overwhelming majority of Black people in the U.S. support Obama’s campaign.
It is surprising and revealing that so many white people also support Obama. Whether Obama’s white support will remain strong is a big question. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is still trying to bust it up, and if Obama is the Democratic Party candidate, Sen. John McCain and others will try to destroy it with a no-holds-barred racist campaign.
Still, however untested, fragile and contradictory, it is most welcoming and encouraging for anyone who is progressive and familiar with the depth and prevalence of racism in the U.S. that tens of millions of white people have voted for a Black person named Barack Hussein Obama in the Democratic party primaries and caucuses.
Obama is not a revolutionary and he poses no threat to the capitalist system. Still, in a relative sense, it is hard to imagine a more dramatic sign than Obama’s electoral success that the people of the U.S. want to break with the reactionary, warmongering, racist and xenophobic political climate that has endured seemingly forever and certainly since 9/11.
Obama is popular because the people want to end the war in Iraq and there is a belief that Obama is more likely to do that than Rodham Clinton, who only a few weeks ago vowed to “obliterate Iran” and is widely viewed as being tied to Bush’s endless war policy. As far as advancing the interests of U.S. imperialism goes, there is no fundamental difference between Rodham Clinton and Obama—or McCain, for that matter.
Many if not most of Obama’s foreign policy advisors are veterans of Bill Clinton’s presidency but, despite that fact, so far as the masses see the war, while Rodham Clinton seems to be for some change, Obama seems to represent more change.
The catchword here is “seems.” In fact, Rodham Clinton, McCain and Obama have all pledged to continue the occupation of Iraq after the elections. They have all also vowed to intensify the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, attack Iran “if necessary,” support Israel to the hilt and continue the blockade against Cuba.
Class character of Obama’s campaign
The masses did not launch Obama’s presidential campaign—a section of the U.S. ruling class and its political operatives did. Some in the ruling class got behind Obama merely to advance their faction fight against the Clintons inside the Democratic Party. And yes, some of those opposed to Clinton are misogynist, plain and simple.
But other forces in the U.S. ruling class have rallied behind Obama because they view him as better suited than Clinton or McCain to deal with a central crisis of U.S. imperialism. They need to find a way to halt the rapid deterioration of its position as the world’s dominant economic and military power.
The foreign policy debate among the candidates seems to have been reduced to whether or not U.S. imperialism should talk to its enemies, with Obama advocating the talk instead of—or in addition to—a war policy.
Fundamentally, this is a phony debate. Diplomacy or talking is just another weapon that every imperialist government uses to further its interests. Imperialists talk one day and bomb the next. From the perspective of broad strategy, however, there is something to the debate.
To Obama and his ruling class backers, the so-called neo-conservative policy of relying on U.S. imperialism’s military might to re-colonize the Middle East and dominate the world has been a complete catastrophe, leaving U.S imperialism’s power and standing in shambles.
Obama and his backers want to try a different approach. Obama is more attuned and reflective of the emerging new transnational capitalist order created by imperialist globalization.
To reverse the erosion of U.S. imperialism’s world position, Obama wants to pivot away from relying exclusively on military might, put a friendlier face on U.S. imperialism and strengthen its ability to compete economically with China, India, Europe, Latin America, etc.
The contradiction is that the problems of the capitalist system are so many and so grave that Obama, new ideas and all, can’t fix them.
The near collapse of the world banking system this past March, saved only by the massive intervention of the U.S. Federal Reserve, was not the end of the capitalist credit crisis. It’s the beginning of a new systemic crisis of world capitalism that’s likely to be bigger and more violent than the Great Depression of the 1930s. The only question is the speed with which the crisis will unfold and the events that will affect its course.
U.S. imperialism is bogged down in at least two wars that it can neither win nor abandon, with a possibility of war against Iran before the fall elections.
For the workers, things are only getting worse. The rate of home foreclosures and job layoffs is rising every month, only outpaced by rising gas and food prices.
Many are worried that racism will take down Obama’s candidacy. Others are worried that racist bullets could take Obama’s life. These are both serious things to worry about.
The most frustrating problem may be that because Obama is a captive of the awful system he seeks to serve as president, he can’t defend himself. The attacks have already been terrible and if Obama gets the Democratic Party nomination, from now until November he’s going to be called a traitor, a terrorist and a threat to Western culture, civilization, Christianity, “American” values and worse.
And if Obama wants to win the election, he’s going to have to take it and smile because it’s not really the approval of the masses that he needs to get to the White House; it’s the approval of the capitalist ruling class and the election campaign is his audition before them.
One of the reasons that Clinton—once the status quo candidate of the Democratic Party hierarchy—was able to pose as the populist champion of workers (not Black workers and immigrant workers, but U.S.-born white workers) is because Obama was forewarned that if he wanted to be the first Black president, he’d better not sound like a civil rights leader or a fighter for the working class.
It’s a widespread misconception that Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor, almost torpedoed his presidential campaign. This is not true. Rev. Wright didn’t play those sound bites from several of his sermons over the airwaves non-stop. All of this was deliberately and carefully orchestrated by the ruling class media as a kind of loyalty test for Obama.
There is no logical reason why the U.S. ruling class need question the loyalty of Obama. However, the U.S. ruling class is not logical; it is deeply suspicious and paranoid, as one might expect from a deeply racist and reactionary class of exploiters and oppressors who have built an empire through slavery, colonialism, war, robbery and repression. The U.S. ruling class is acutely conscious of what it has done and continues to do to Black people.
The U.S. ruling class knows and fears the deep anger that Black people have for them. The purpose of the Rev. Wright affair was to force Obama not only to repudiate and break with Rev. Wright, but more importantly to promise that he would never give voice to or even acknowledge the existence of racism and the anger against it if he’s elected president. Racism is all too alive, but Obama must pretend as though it’s a thing of the past.
Relationship of working-class, anti-imperialist & Black liberation movements to Obama
Suppose Obama is elected president. One of the first orders of business for the next U.S. president will be presiding over massive cuts in social programs including Medicare, Medicaid, education and Social Security.
Moreover, these cuts will be taking place at the same time that workers are being pummeled and bloodied by a deepening economic crisis.
It isn’t hard to imagine the ruling class setting up the first Black president to take the blame for all the pain, suffering and crisis that is sure to come.
This brings us to the question of the relationship between the working-class movement, the anti-imperialist forces, all progressive forces, and especially those who are working to reconstitute a working-class-centered, anti-imperialist Black liberation movement in the U.S., and the Obama phenomenon.
For the broader movement, clearly we cannot get carried away with our criticism and exposure of Obama when mass support for him is essentially progressive and opposition to him is largely of a racist and reactionary character. Neither can we afford to be deluded by the class nature of Obama, and all the other contradictions.
The contradictions also make it difficult if not futile for revolutionaries to work inside his campaign as a vehicle for advancing progressive demands. Obama does not yet feel pressure from the mass movement. The pressure he is sensitive to is coming from the ruling class.
By way of historical comparison, Jesse Jackson’s two campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s were full of contradictions as well. The difference, however, is that Jackson’s campaigns came from below and as such were subject to the pressure of the masses. That is not the case with Obama’s campaign, at least for now.
Actually, the only way that progressives can defend Obama against racism and reaction, if and when that’s necessary, is to be positioned outside of and independent of his campaign and the Democratic Party.
It will be up to Black activists to take the lead in explaining Obama’s contradictions and challenging them. If there was ever a time for progressive and revolutionary Black forces to forge some strategic unity, now is such a time.
It is possible that the independent presidential candidacy of former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney could serve as one of the poles to unite around. McKinney was until recently the most progressive and militant Black person in Congress. Indeed, she lost her congressional seat twice as a direct result of her militant antiwar and anti-racist work.
Clearly, for all those on the left who realize that the deepening crisis of imperialism is bound to produce a resurgence of the working-class struggle sooner than many think and radicalize more and more workers, swelling our ranks, the need to foster working-class-centered and anti-imperialist organizations independent of the ruling class’s political parties and rooted in the struggle is beyond essential. It’s urgent.
More than ever, workers are starting to view imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as major aggravating factors deepening the economic crisis, and rightly so. The reality is not lost on workers who know that, to pay for imperialist wars, they are forfeiting not only social programs but the gas they need to drive to work.
The war crisis and the economic crisis together are laying the basis for the next phase of the anti-war struggle. It will be more than a marginal protest movement that can be absorbed and derailed by the capitalist elections. The next phase of the anti-war movement, if working-class militants prevail, will be centered in a working-class upsurge.
The sisters and brothers of the International Longshore Workers Union gave us all a glimpse of the potential of this next phase when thousands of them shut the docks down all along the West Coast of the U.S. this past May Day to protest the war. Of no small significance, particularly in light of the contradictions of the 2008 presidential campaign, this walkout was led by Black longshore workers who, along with immigrant rights workers, invited Cynthia McKinney to be the guest speaker at the main May Day rally in San Francisco.
The writer is a leader of Workers World Party and a member of its national Secretariat.
May 27—Though still not a certainty at this date, it now appears likely that Barack Obama will be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate and, even less certain but a possibility, the first Black president of the U.S.
Even for those of us in the U.S. and around the world who correctly view the crisis-ridden capitalist system, its political parties and its sham elections as the negation of democracy so far as the workers and the oppressed of the world are concerned, it is impossible not to acknowledge that the prospect of the election of a Black president in the U.S.—the center of world imperialism and racism—is an historic event.
Only six months ago, most thought they’d never see a Black politician get this close to the U.S. presidency in their lifetime. It’s not surprising that the overwhelming majority of Black people in the U.S. support Obama’s campaign.
It is surprising and revealing that so many white people also support Obama. Whether Obama’s white support will remain strong is a big question. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is still trying to bust it up, and if Obama is the Democratic Party candidate, Sen. John McCain and others will try to destroy it with a no-holds-barred racist campaign.
Still, however untested, fragile and contradictory, it is most welcoming and encouraging for anyone who is progressive and familiar with the depth and prevalence of racism in the U.S. that tens of millions of white people have voted for a Black person named Barack Hussein Obama in the Democratic party primaries and caucuses.
Obama is not a revolutionary and he poses no threat to the capitalist system. Still, in a relative sense, it is hard to imagine a more dramatic sign than Obama’s electoral success that the people of the U.S. want to break with the reactionary, warmongering, racist and xenophobic political climate that has endured seemingly forever and certainly since 9/11.
Obama is popular because the people want to end the war in Iraq and there is a belief that Obama is more likely to do that than Rodham Clinton, who only a few weeks ago vowed to “obliterate Iran” and is widely viewed as being tied to Bush’s endless war policy. As far as advancing the interests of U.S. imperialism goes, there is no fundamental difference between Rodham Clinton and Obama—or McCain, for that matter.
Many if not most of Obama’s foreign policy advisors are veterans of Bill Clinton’s presidency but, despite that fact, so far as the masses see the war, while Rodham Clinton seems to be for some change, Obama seems to represent more change.
The catchword here is “seems.” In fact, Rodham Clinton, McCain and Obama have all pledged to continue the occupation of Iraq after the elections. They have all also vowed to intensify the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, attack Iran “if necessary,” support Israel to the hilt and continue the blockade against Cuba.
Class character of Obama’s campaign
The masses did not launch Obama’s presidential campaign—a section of the U.S. ruling class and its political operatives did. Some in the ruling class got behind Obama merely to advance their faction fight against the Clintons inside the Democratic Party. And yes, some of those opposed to Clinton are misogynist, plain and simple.
But other forces in the U.S. ruling class have rallied behind Obama because they view him as better suited than Clinton or McCain to deal with a central crisis of U.S. imperialism. They need to find a way to halt the rapid deterioration of its position as the world’s dominant economic and military power.
The foreign policy debate among the candidates seems to have been reduced to whether or not U.S. imperialism should talk to its enemies, with Obama advocating the talk instead of—or in addition to—a war policy.
Fundamentally, this is a phony debate. Diplomacy or talking is just another weapon that every imperialist government uses to further its interests. Imperialists talk one day and bomb the next. From the perspective of broad strategy, however, there is something to the debate.
To Obama and his ruling class backers, the so-called neo-conservative policy of relying on U.S. imperialism’s military might to re-colonize the Middle East and dominate the world has been a complete catastrophe, leaving U.S imperialism’s power and standing in shambles.
Obama and his backers want to try a different approach. Obama is more attuned and reflective of the emerging new transnational capitalist order created by imperialist globalization.
To reverse the erosion of U.S. imperialism’s world position, Obama wants to pivot away from relying exclusively on military might, put a friendlier face on U.S. imperialism and strengthen its ability to compete economically with China, India, Europe, Latin America, etc.
The contradiction is that the problems of the capitalist system are so many and so grave that Obama, new ideas and all, can’t fix them.
The near collapse of the world banking system this past March, saved only by the massive intervention of the U.S. Federal Reserve, was not the end of the capitalist credit crisis. It’s the beginning of a new systemic crisis of world capitalism that’s likely to be bigger and more violent than the Great Depression of the 1930s. The only question is the speed with which the crisis will unfold and the events that will affect its course.
U.S. imperialism is bogged down in at least two wars that it can neither win nor abandon, with a possibility of war against Iran before the fall elections.
For the workers, things are only getting worse. The rate of home foreclosures and job layoffs is rising every month, only outpaced by rising gas and food prices.
Many are worried that racism will take down Obama’s candidacy. Others are worried that racist bullets could take Obama’s life. These are both serious things to worry about.
The most frustrating problem may be that because Obama is a captive of the awful system he seeks to serve as president, he can’t defend himself. The attacks have already been terrible and if Obama gets the Democratic Party nomination, from now until November he’s going to be called a traitor, a terrorist and a threat to Western culture, civilization, Christianity, “American” values and worse.
And if Obama wants to win the election, he’s going to have to take it and smile because it’s not really the approval of the masses that he needs to get to the White House; it’s the approval of the capitalist ruling class and the election campaign is his audition before them.
One of the reasons that Clinton—once the status quo candidate of the Democratic Party hierarchy—was able to pose as the populist champion of workers (not Black workers and immigrant workers, but U.S.-born white workers) is because Obama was forewarned that if he wanted to be the first Black president, he’d better not sound like a civil rights leader or a fighter for the working class.
It’s a widespread misconception that Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor, almost torpedoed his presidential campaign. This is not true. Rev. Wright didn’t play those sound bites from several of his sermons over the airwaves non-stop. All of this was deliberately and carefully orchestrated by the ruling class media as a kind of loyalty test for Obama.
There is no logical reason why the U.S. ruling class need question the loyalty of Obama. However, the U.S. ruling class is not logical; it is deeply suspicious and paranoid, as one might expect from a deeply racist and reactionary class of exploiters and oppressors who have built an empire through slavery, colonialism, war, robbery and repression. The U.S. ruling class is acutely conscious of what it has done and continues to do to Black people.
The U.S. ruling class knows and fears the deep anger that Black people have for them. The purpose of the Rev. Wright affair was to force Obama not only to repudiate and break with Rev. Wright, but more importantly to promise that he would never give voice to or even acknowledge the existence of racism and the anger against it if he’s elected president. Racism is all too alive, but Obama must pretend as though it’s a thing of the past.
Relationship of working-class, anti-imperialist & Black liberation movements to Obama
Suppose Obama is elected president. One of the first orders of business for the next U.S. president will be presiding over massive cuts in social programs including Medicare, Medicaid, education and Social Security.
Moreover, these cuts will be taking place at the same time that workers are being pummeled and bloodied by a deepening economic crisis.
It isn’t hard to imagine the ruling class setting up the first Black president to take the blame for all the pain, suffering and crisis that is sure to come.
This brings us to the question of the relationship between the working-class movement, the anti-imperialist forces, all progressive forces, and especially those who are working to reconstitute a working-class-centered, anti-imperialist Black liberation movement in the U.S., and the Obama phenomenon.
For the broader movement, clearly we cannot get carried away with our criticism and exposure of Obama when mass support for him is essentially progressive and opposition to him is largely of a racist and reactionary character. Neither can we afford to be deluded by the class nature of Obama, and all the other contradictions.
The contradictions also make it difficult if not futile for revolutionaries to work inside his campaign as a vehicle for advancing progressive demands. Obama does not yet feel pressure from the mass movement. The pressure he is sensitive to is coming from the ruling class.
By way of historical comparison, Jesse Jackson’s two campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s were full of contradictions as well. The difference, however, is that Jackson’s campaigns came from below and as such were subject to the pressure of the masses. That is not the case with Obama’s campaign, at least for now.
Actually, the only way that progressives can defend Obama against racism and reaction, if and when that’s necessary, is to be positioned outside of and independent of his campaign and the Democratic Party.
It will be up to Black activists to take the lead in explaining Obama’s contradictions and challenging them. If there was ever a time for progressive and revolutionary Black forces to forge some strategic unity, now is such a time.
It is possible that the independent presidential candidacy of former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney could serve as one of the poles to unite around. McKinney was until recently the most progressive and militant Black person in Congress. Indeed, she lost her congressional seat twice as a direct result of her militant antiwar and anti-racist work.
Clearly, for all those on the left who realize that the deepening crisis of imperialism is bound to produce a resurgence of the working-class struggle sooner than many think and radicalize more and more workers, swelling our ranks, the need to foster working-class-centered and anti-imperialist organizations independent of the ruling class’s political parties and rooted in the struggle is beyond essential. It’s urgent.
More than ever, workers are starting to view imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as major aggravating factors deepening the economic crisis, and rightly so. The reality is not lost on workers who know that, to pay for imperialist wars, they are forfeiting not only social programs but the gas they need to drive to work.
The war crisis and the economic crisis together are laying the basis for the next phase of the anti-war struggle. It will be more than a marginal protest movement that can be absorbed and derailed by the capitalist elections. The next phase of the anti-war movement, if working-class militants prevail, will be centered in a working-class upsurge.
The sisters and brothers of the International Longshore Workers Union gave us all a glimpse of the potential of this next phase when thousands of them shut the docks down all along the West Coast of the U.S. this past May Day to protest the war. Of no small significance, particularly in light of the contradictions of the 2008 presidential campaign, this walkout was led by Black longshore workers who, along with immigrant rights workers, invited Cynthia McKinney to be the guest speaker at the main May Day rally in San Francisco.
The writer is a leader of Workers World Party and a member of its national Secretariat.
Anti-war Cindy Sheehan files to take on Pelosi
John Wildermuth, San Francisco Chronicle, April 26, 2008
Peace activist Cindy Sheehan wants to snatch House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's congressional seat from her in November, but first she's going to need the help - and signatures - of 10,198 friends and supporters.
Sheehan was at San Francisco City Hall on Friday to take out papers for her independent run for Congress, but without those signatures from voters in the district, her name won't show up on the ballot.
"It's an uphill battle," said Sheehan, who vowed to run against Pelosi in July after the speaker refused to start impeachment proceedings against President George Bush. "But I'm excited about the signature-gathering process. It's going to be an opportunity to talk to people about our campaign."
The 50-year-old Sheehan, whose son, Casey, was killed while serving in Iraq in 2004, became the public face of the anti-war movement when she mounted a demonstration outside Bush's Texas ranch that lasted from 2005 to 2007.
Even after pleading exhaustion and closing down "Camp Casey" in May, Sheehan was a regular speaker at anti-war gatherings across the nation. Since moving from Dixon to San Francisco's Mission District, she's been campaigning virtually full time.
To get the signatures, equal to 3 percent of the district voters registered for the 2006 general election, the campaign will have people setting up ironing boards and card tables on street corners throughout the city, seeking voters who want an alternative to Pelosi. Sheehan has until Aug. 8 to collect the needed signatures.
Getting on the ballot will be the easy part for Sheehan. If she becomes a recognized candidate, she'll be challenging one of the best-known and most powerful Democrats in the country in Pelosi, a 10-term incumbent who routinely collects around 80 percent of the vote in the San Francisco-only district.
Election challenges are nothing new to Pelosi, who has faced token Republican opposition in most of her November races, along with occasional primary challenges. But since she beat former San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt in the 1987 special election to replace the late Rep. Sala Burton, Pelosi's political resume has been short of opponents anyone other than local political junkies has ever heard of.
Sheehan has name recognition, particularly for her Camp Casey crusade.
"I said last year that I was going to take a break (from the anti-war movement) and then come back," Sheehan said in an interview at her Mission Street campaign headquarters.
But when the president commuted White House aide Scooter Libby's prison sentence last summer, she said, she decided "that seeing George Bush impeached would be a victory for humanity."
Calls for impeachment from Sheehan and other progressives didn't move Pelosi, who already had declared that impeachment was "off the table" when it came to the Democratic congressional agenda.
"In this political environment, the speaker has to work for those things that are possible," said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi.
An impeachment effort, he said, "would be divisive, we couldn't get the votes, and we would have to spend all our time on it."
There are plenty of congressional Democrats, especially in the Bay Area, who don't agree, including Reps. Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee and Pete Stark, along with other progressives, both in and out of office.
Impeachment isn't Sheehan's only concern. Pelosi's refusal to vote for an immediate end to the Iraq war and to support single-payer health care shows she's out of touch with San Francisco's progressive roots, Sheehan said.
"I'll represent everyone in San Francisco, not just the corporate elite," she said. "I'm working class, my family was working class, and we have struggled the same way our neighbors here in San Francisco have struggled."
There's nothing unusual about Pelosi taking fire from the left, said Daly, her spokesman, especially when the speaker has to be concerned not only about her district, but also about the party across the country.
Pelosi "has always been forceful about speaking her mind on issues like human rights in China and the war in Iraq," he said. "In San Francisco, there's always tension between the district and the leadership responsibility."
The speaker will get an early look at the unhappiness of the city's progressives, because she's being challenged by local activist Shirley Golub in the June 3 Democratic primary.
"I've just had the sense from people I've talked to that (Pelosi) hasn't done what people in the community want her to do," Golub said. "People now have a choice, and they haven't had a Democratic choice for a long, long time."
Despite the upbeat talk, Sheehan and Golub, along with Republican Dana Walsh and Libertarian Philip Berg in November, are the longest of longshots to give Pelosi even a moment's worry on election day. In a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 56 percent to 10 percent and a state where incumbents almost never lose, a party leader like Pelosi has every right to be making plans for her next term in office.
The odds don't bother Sheehan, who has raised more than $100,000 for her race, most of it from outside the district.
"Even people who I won't represent are willing to back me, because they know what I'll do in office," she said. "Many people in San Francisco know me, and they know my persistence.
"If I get to Washington, I'll only be in office a couple weeks before Bush leaves, but I guarantee he'll know I'm there."
E-mail John Wildermuth at jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com.
Peace activist Cindy Sheehan wants to snatch House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's congressional seat from her in November, but first she's going to need the help - and signatures - of 10,198 friends and supporters.
Sheehan was at San Francisco City Hall on Friday to take out papers for her independent run for Congress, but without those signatures from voters in the district, her name won't show up on the ballot.
"It's an uphill battle," said Sheehan, who vowed to run against Pelosi in July after the speaker refused to start impeachment proceedings against President George Bush. "But I'm excited about the signature-gathering process. It's going to be an opportunity to talk to people about our campaign."
The 50-year-old Sheehan, whose son, Casey, was killed while serving in Iraq in 2004, became the public face of the anti-war movement when she mounted a demonstration outside Bush's Texas ranch that lasted from 2005 to 2007.
Even after pleading exhaustion and closing down "Camp Casey" in May, Sheehan was a regular speaker at anti-war gatherings across the nation. Since moving from Dixon to San Francisco's Mission District, she's been campaigning virtually full time.
To get the signatures, equal to 3 percent of the district voters registered for the 2006 general election, the campaign will have people setting up ironing boards and card tables on street corners throughout the city, seeking voters who want an alternative to Pelosi. Sheehan has until Aug. 8 to collect the needed signatures.
Getting on the ballot will be the easy part for Sheehan. If she becomes a recognized candidate, she'll be challenging one of the best-known and most powerful Democrats in the country in Pelosi, a 10-term incumbent who routinely collects around 80 percent of the vote in the San Francisco-only district.
Election challenges are nothing new to Pelosi, who has faced token Republican opposition in most of her November races, along with occasional primary challenges. But since she beat former San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt in the 1987 special election to replace the late Rep. Sala Burton, Pelosi's political resume has been short of opponents anyone other than local political junkies has ever heard of.
Sheehan has name recognition, particularly for her Camp Casey crusade.
"I said last year that I was going to take a break (from the anti-war movement) and then come back," Sheehan said in an interview at her Mission Street campaign headquarters.
But when the president commuted White House aide Scooter Libby's prison sentence last summer, she said, she decided "that seeing George Bush impeached would be a victory for humanity."
Calls for impeachment from Sheehan and other progressives didn't move Pelosi, who already had declared that impeachment was "off the table" when it came to the Democratic congressional agenda.
"In this political environment, the speaker has to work for those things that are possible," said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi.
An impeachment effort, he said, "would be divisive, we couldn't get the votes, and we would have to spend all our time on it."
There are plenty of congressional Democrats, especially in the Bay Area, who don't agree, including Reps. Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee and Pete Stark, along with other progressives, both in and out of office.
Impeachment isn't Sheehan's only concern. Pelosi's refusal to vote for an immediate end to the Iraq war and to support single-payer health care shows she's out of touch with San Francisco's progressive roots, Sheehan said.
"I'll represent everyone in San Francisco, not just the corporate elite," she said. "I'm working class, my family was working class, and we have struggled the same way our neighbors here in San Francisco have struggled."
There's nothing unusual about Pelosi taking fire from the left, said Daly, her spokesman, especially when the speaker has to be concerned not only about her district, but also about the party across the country.
Pelosi "has always been forceful about speaking her mind on issues like human rights in China and the war in Iraq," he said. "In San Francisco, there's always tension between the district and the leadership responsibility."
The speaker will get an early look at the unhappiness of the city's progressives, because she's being challenged by local activist Shirley Golub in the June 3 Democratic primary.
"I've just had the sense from people I've talked to that (Pelosi) hasn't done what people in the community want her to do," Golub said. "People now have a choice, and they haven't had a Democratic choice for a long, long time."
Despite the upbeat talk, Sheehan and Golub, along with Republican Dana Walsh and Libertarian Philip Berg in November, are the longest of longshots to give Pelosi even a moment's worry on election day. In a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 56 percent to 10 percent and a state where incumbents almost never lose, a party leader like Pelosi has every right to be making plans for her next term in office.
The odds don't bother Sheehan, who has raised more than $100,000 for her race, most of it from outside the district.
"Even people who I won't represent are willing to back me, because they know what I'll do in office," she said. "Many people in San Francisco know me, and they know my persistence.
"If I get to Washington, I'll only be in office a couple weeks before Bush leaves, but I guarantee he'll know I'm there."
E-mail John Wildermuth at jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com.
Protest Sen. John McCain in Charlotte
Monday, May 5, 2008
5:00 pm
Westin Hotel
601 S. College St
Charlotte, NC 28202
No More War Funding! Bring The Troops Home Now!
Bail Out People Before Banks – Stop Foreclosures & Evictions!
Money for jobs, education, housing, healthcare & the environment!
Join people from around the region to protest pro-war presidential candidate & U.S. Senator John McCain in Charlotte. McCain will be in uptown Charlotte for a $1000 - $2300 a plate fundraiser. We say no to McCain's plans to continue Bush's program of endless war on the people abroad & right here at home.
Organize or join carpools, van or buses from your area: email BringThemOnHome@yahoo.com with "May 5 rides" as the subject or call (704) 492-5226. Let us know if you can offer a ride & how many people you can take, or if you need a ride.
Spread the word: Email info about the protest to others. Flyers will be posted at www.CharlotteAction.org soon.
DONATE to help us organize this protest & other events. Click here to donate online or send to:
Action Center For Justice
7100 Mapleridge Dr
Charlotte, NC 28210
****************************
For more info:
Action Center For Justice
www.CharlotteAction.org
704.492.5226
5:00 pm
Westin Hotel
601 S. College St
Charlotte, NC 28202
No More War Funding! Bring The Troops Home Now!
Bail Out People Before Banks – Stop Foreclosures & Evictions!
Money for jobs, education, housing, healthcare & the environment!
Join people from around the region to protest pro-war presidential candidate & U.S. Senator John McCain in Charlotte. McCain will be in uptown Charlotte for a $1000 - $2300 a plate fundraiser. We say no to McCain's plans to continue Bush's program of endless war on the people abroad & right here at home.
Organize or join carpools, van or buses from your area: email BringThemOnHome@yahoo.com with "May 5 rides" as the subject or call (704) 492-5226. Let us know if you can offer a ride & how many people you can take, or if you need a ride.
Spread the word: Email info about the protest to others. Flyers will be posted at www.CharlotteAction.org soon.
DONATE to help us organize this protest & other events. Click here to donate online or send to:
Action Center For Justice
7100 Mapleridge Dr
Charlotte, NC 28210
****************************
For more info:
Action Center For Justice
www.CharlotteAction.org
704.492.5226
The 2008 Election Will Be Stolen
David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet.org, April 19, 2008
A new collection of essays edited by Mark Crispin Miller called "Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008," tells the story better than any single source I've seen yet.
The Supreme Court stopped a recount in Florida in 2000 that would have made Al Gore president. This is not speculation. The recount was later done.
Numerous elections were stolen in 2002, in Colorado, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and elsewhere, including Senate, Governor, and House races in Georgia that were practically openly swiped by Diebold's elections unit president flying in at the last minute and altering the election machines. The theft of Don Siegelman's 2002 election as governor of Alabama was almost as transparent. One county reported a set of results from electronic machines that made Siegelman governor, then recalculated and reported a different set of results. The new results were statistically impossible, and the pair of reports strongly suggested exactly how the machines were rigged, first mistakenly and later as intended.
John Kerry and John Edwards won the presidential election in 2004. The evidence of specific fraud in Ohio and elsewhere is overwhelming, but so is the evidence of the exit polls. The unadjusted exit polls show Kerry and Edwards winning. When the results are "adjusted" to conform to the official results, we are asked to believe that Bush and Cheney increased their big city voters from 2.3 million in 2000 to 5.4 million in 2004, a 153 percent increase. While support for Cheney-Bush dropped off in rural areas, small towns, medium sized cities, etc., it skyrocketed in the Democratic strongholds of big cities. Let me be clear: that's the official story of what happened, not the wild conspiracy theory of ordinary people who allow themselves to be influenced by facts, logic, or memory of actual events.
Election fraud was not limited to Ohio or to the presidential race in 2004, but was widespread and systematic. This was also true in 2006. In many cases, Democratic turnout overwhelmed Republican fraud in 2006, and the Democrats picked up 30 new seats. But those victories were by larger margins than people believe. In other races, Republican fraud won out, and was immediately hushed up. Read the evidence in "Loser Take All," and then think about how the current Congress would have been different with 40 or 50 new Democrats rather than 30. The 2006 elections saw the most widespread and sophisticated election fraud our country has yet seen, combined with the greatest public confidence since 2000 that elections were honest and verifiable. That combination does not bode well for 2008.
The views of Senator John McCain are so far from those of most Americans, that Miller rightly refers to the Republicans as a fringe party. But that fringe party is perfecting election theft. The only way to prevent John McCain from being the next president would be to hand him such a whopping defeat that he could not plausibly claim to have honestly won. Sadly, Senator Obama (the Democratic nominee, barring an antidemocratic coup by super delegates) appears intent on avoiding a landslide at all costs and aiming, rather, for a tight victory of 1 or 2 percent. (And Senator Clinton appears intent on losing the election should she be miraculously nominated.)
Obama is sitting on a number of keys to a landslide if he would only pull them out of his pocket and use them. Thus far it appears he will not. The 20 percent of Americans who support the occupation of Iraq are not potential Obama voters. There is nothing to be gained by appealing to them. But when I talk to people in the peace movement, they are increasingly telling me they plan to stay home or vote for a third party candidate such as Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney. None of them are potential McCain voters. They are, in fact, what Senator Hillary Clinton disdainfully refers to as "the activist base of the Democratic Party." According to Clinton, these people:
"turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of [my] positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them."
Well, guess what, we don't agree with Obama either. We appreciate the credit Clinton gives us for her defeat. For his own good, Obama needs to understand that he's next, that those of us who actively represent the 80 percent of the nation opposed to the occupation will direct our activism at him until he agrees to a speedy and complete withdrawal from Iraq. And we will mobilize millions to guarantee a landslide if Obama stands up this week and leads a filibuster of the next $170 billion for the occupation. If he continues to claim that he opposes the occupation while funding it with our grandchildren's borrowed treasure, his criticism of McCain will fall flat. If he continues to speak of reducing the U.S. presence in Iraq to "non-combat troops" while soldiers get their heads blown off deep within the Green Zone, he will lose all credibility. A "non-combat troop" in Iraq is another name for John McCain's fantasy that the Iraqis will someday stop resisting. If Obama votes No on the $170 billion without actively lobbying his colleagues to vote No, he will not be seen as sincere.
Obama was asked last week in Philadelphia about impeachment, indictment, and accountability for Bush and Cheney. He suggested that he MIGHT investigate their crimes AFTER we elect him president, and that he MIGHT prosecute them "if" they were found to have committed crimes. "If"? "If"? That word may become as famous as Dick Cheney's "So?" At every stop Obama makes on this endless campaign, people should hand him copies of John Conyers' "The Constitution in Crisis," a book you can buy in most bookstores which documents a long list of criminal offenses committed by Bush and Cheney. Does Obama disagree with the book's conclusions? Does he have a response to Bush's public confession to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act? Does he question the two Government Accountability Office studies that have found that in a significant percentage of cases, when Bush has announced his right to violate laws through signing statements, he has proceeded to violate those laws? Does Obama now believe the invasion of Iraq and everything that came with it was possibly legal? Was the February 7, 2002, order from Bush allowing the torture of detainees a legal act? "If?" "If?"
(You can find Conyers' whole book for free here: http://afterdowningstreet.org/constitutionincrisis Just click on "Summary," print out that short section, and send it to Obama.)
If Obama were to quietly allow impeachment hearings on Cheney or Bush to proceed on such subjects as torture and signing statements, he could put McCain on the defensive and force him to defend each crime while promising not to commit it. Impeachment hearings could squeeze out all coverage of nonsense spats and scandals. And if the American public understood that voting for Obama would put Bush and Cheney behind bars, we would see a landslide that could not be denied.
Sadly, it looks like we're going to see a tight race. During this tight race, good citizens will avoid all other political activism and devote their energies to the race. And not just their energies. We will transfer enough wealth to build a real populist movement for justice or a legitimate source of news into the hands of corporate television networks in the form of campaign ads. And, as a reward for our efforts, the election will be stolen.
Unless we interrupt this script and make some changes.
A new collection of essays edited by Mark Crispin Miller called "Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008," tells the story better than any single source I've seen yet.
The Supreme Court stopped a recount in Florida in 2000 that would have made Al Gore president. This is not speculation. The recount was later done.
Numerous elections were stolen in 2002, in Colorado, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and elsewhere, including Senate, Governor, and House races in Georgia that were practically openly swiped by Diebold's elections unit president flying in at the last minute and altering the election machines. The theft of Don Siegelman's 2002 election as governor of Alabama was almost as transparent. One county reported a set of results from electronic machines that made Siegelman governor, then recalculated and reported a different set of results. The new results were statistically impossible, and the pair of reports strongly suggested exactly how the machines were rigged, first mistakenly and later as intended.
John Kerry and John Edwards won the presidential election in 2004. The evidence of specific fraud in Ohio and elsewhere is overwhelming, but so is the evidence of the exit polls. The unadjusted exit polls show Kerry and Edwards winning. When the results are "adjusted" to conform to the official results, we are asked to believe that Bush and Cheney increased their big city voters from 2.3 million in 2000 to 5.4 million in 2004, a 153 percent increase. While support for Cheney-Bush dropped off in rural areas, small towns, medium sized cities, etc., it skyrocketed in the Democratic strongholds of big cities. Let me be clear: that's the official story of what happened, not the wild conspiracy theory of ordinary people who allow themselves to be influenced by facts, logic, or memory of actual events.
Election fraud was not limited to Ohio or to the presidential race in 2004, but was widespread and systematic. This was also true in 2006. In many cases, Democratic turnout overwhelmed Republican fraud in 2006, and the Democrats picked up 30 new seats. But those victories were by larger margins than people believe. In other races, Republican fraud won out, and was immediately hushed up. Read the evidence in "Loser Take All," and then think about how the current Congress would have been different with 40 or 50 new Democrats rather than 30. The 2006 elections saw the most widespread and sophisticated election fraud our country has yet seen, combined with the greatest public confidence since 2000 that elections were honest and verifiable. That combination does not bode well for 2008.
The views of Senator John McCain are so far from those of most Americans, that Miller rightly refers to the Republicans as a fringe party. But that fringe party is perfecting election theft. The only way to prevent John McCain from being the next president would be to hand him such a whopping defeat that he could not plausibly claim to have honestly won. Sadly, Senator Obama (the Democratic nominee, barring an antidemocratic coup by super delegates) appears intent on avoiding a landslide at all costs and aiming, rather, for a tight victory of 1 or 2 percent. (And Senator Clinton appears intent on losing the election should she be miraculously nominated.)
Obama is sitting on a number of keys to a landslide if he would only pull them out of his pocket and use them. Thus far it appears he will not. The 20 percent of Americans who support the occupation of Iraq are not potential Obama voters. There is nothing to be gained by appealing to them. But when I talk to people in the peace movement, they are increasingly telling me they plan to stay home or vote for a third party candidate such as Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney. None of them are potential McCain voters. They are, in fact, what Senator Hillary Clinton disdainfully refers to as "the activist base of the Democratic Party." According to Clinton, these people:
"turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of [my] positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them."
Well, guess what, we don't agree with Obama either. We appreciate the credit Clinton gives us for her defeat. For his own good, Obama needs to understand that he's next, that those of us who actively represent the 80 percent of the nation opposed to the occupation will direct our activism at him until he agrees to a speedy and complete withdrawal from Iraq. And we will mobilize millions to guarantee a landslide if Obama stands up this week and leads a filibuster of the next $170 billion for the occupation. If he continues to claim that he opposes the occupation while funding it with our grandchildren's borrowed treasure, his criticism of McCain will fall flat. If he continues to speak of reducing the U.S. presence in Iraq to "non-combat troops" while soldiers get their heads blown off deep within the Green Zone, he will lose all credibility. A "non-combat troop" in Iraq is another name for John McCain's fantasy that the Iraqis will someday stop resisting. If Obama votes No on the $170 billion without actively lobbying his colleagues to vote No, he will not be seen as sincere.
Obama was asked last week in Philadelphia about impeachment, indictment, and accountability for Bush and Cheney. He suggested that he MIGHT investigate their crimes AFTER we elect him president, and that he MIGHT prosecute them "if" they were found to have committed crimes. "If"? "If"? That word may become as famous as Dick Cheney's "So?" At every stop Obama makes on this endless campaign, people should hand him copies of John Conyers' "The Constitution in Crisis," a book you can buy in most bookstores which documents a long list of criminal offenses committed by Bush and Cheney. Does Obama disagree with the book's conclusions? Does he have a response to Bush's public confession to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act? Does he question the two Government Accountability Office studies that have found that in a significant percentage of cases, when Bush has announced his right to violate laws through signing statements, he has proceeded to violate those laws? Does Obama now believe the invasion of Iraq and everything that came with it was possibly legal? Was the February 7, 2002, order from Bush allowing the torture of detainees a legal act? "If?" "If?"
(You can find Conyers' whole book for free here: http://afterdowningstreet.org/constitutionincrisis Just click on "Summary," print out that short section, and send it to Obama.)
If Obama were to quietly allow impeachment hearings on Cheney or Bush to proceed on such subjects as torture and signing statements, he could put McCain on the defensive and force him to defend each crime while promising not to commit it. Impeachment hearings could squeeze out all coverage of nonsense spats and scandals. And if the American public understood that voting for Obama would put Bush and Cheney behind bars, we would see a landslide that could not be denied.
Sadly, it looks like we're going to see a tight race. During this tight race, good citizens will avoid all other political activism and devote their energies to the race. And not just their energies. We will transfer enough wealth to build a real populist movement for justice or a legitimate source of news into the hands of corporate television networks in the form of campaign ads. And, as a reward for our efforts, the election will be stolen.
Unless we interrupt this script and make some changes.
A Conscientious Objection
Chris Hedges, Truthdig, March 23, 2008
Those of us who oppose the war, who believe that all U.S. troops should be withdrawn and the network of permanent bases in Iraq dismantled, have only two options in the coming presidential elections—Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney. A vote for any of the Republican and Democratic candidates is a vote to perpetuate the occupation of Iraq and a lengthy and futile war of attrition with the Iraqi insurgency. You can sign on for the suicidal hundred-year war with John McCain or for the nebulous open-ended war-lite with Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, or back those who reject the war. If you vote Democrat or Republican in the coming election be honest with yourself—you have voted to allow the U.S. government to continue, in some form, the campaign that needlessly kills ever more Americans and Iraqis in a conflict that has become the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history and a crime under international law.
“When will the American people actually vote to give to the world more than bombs and missiles, sweatshops, dubious science, frankenfood, poverty and misery?” Cynthia McKinney, the presidential candidate in the Green Party primaries, told me. “Not only do we need an immediate, orderly withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, we need an end to the militarism that has placed U.S. troops on the soil of over 100 countries. A true peace agenda means a complete redefinition of security. I remain convinced that if people in Haiti, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua can vote a peace and justice agenda into power, then so too can we.”
Examine the proposals on Iraq offered by Clinton and Obama. They talk about withdrawing some troops, but they also talk about leaving behind forces to protect U.S. bases in Iraq, assigning troops to train the Iraqi army and continuing the fight against “terrorism.” Clinton and Obama do not throw out numbers, but a rough estimate would be 40,000 or 50,000 troops permanently stationed in Iraq. Obama, his advisers say, will also not rule out continuing to use private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. The war would not end under a Democratic administration. It would drag on until the mission collapsed and the U.S. retreated in humiliation. And when pressed, the Democratic candidates have admitted as much. Tim Russert in the New Hampshire debate asked the Democratic candidates to guarantee that all U.S. troops in Iraq would be home by 2013. No one, including John Edwards, was prepared to make such a commitment. Dennis Kucinich, the only Democratic candidate who opposed a continuation of the war, had been excluded from the debate. When the question was asked he was standing outside the hall in the snow with supporters to protest his exclusion.
But the lust for militarism by Clinton and Obama does not end with Iraq. The two remaining Democratic candidates back the occupation of Afghanistan. They defend Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon, which killed hundreds of Lebanese, destroyed huge parts of Lebanon’s infrastructure and left U.S.-manufactured cluster bombs littered over southern Lebanon. Clinton and Obama praise the right-wing government in Jerusalem and callously blame the Palestinian victims for the suffering inflicted on them by Israel. They support, in open defiance of international law, the 40-year Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and the draconian siege of Gaza, dismissing the grim humanitarian crisis it has unleashed on the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in the world’s largest open-air prison.
The Democrats, who took control of the Congress in midterm elections largely because of public dissatisfaction with the Iraq war, have continued to fund the war, ignoring anti-war voters. The party, as a result, has sunk even lower in public opinion polls than the president, to a 19 percent approval rating, according to a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. Clinton and Obama dutifully lined up with most other Democratic legislators to cast ballots in favor of squandering more than $300 billion in taxpayer money on a war that should never have been fought. And, if either is elected, he or she will spend billions more on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will skip the rest of the mediocre voting records of Obama and Clinton, which include pandering to corporate interests, failing to back a universal single-payer health care system, refusing to call for the slashing of the bloated military budget, not urging repeal of NAFTA and the Taft-Hartley Act, which cripples the ability of unions to organize, and not seeking an end to nuclear power as an energy resource. Let’s stick with the war. It is depressing enough.
The anti-war movement bears much of the blame. It sold us out to the Democratic Party. The decision by anti-war activists to accept a moratorium on demonstrations in 2004 in order to support John Kerry ended our chance to build a widespread, grass-roots movement against the war. Kerry, in return for this support, ridiculed and humiliated those of us who opposed the war. He called for more troops in Iraq. He mouthed thought-terminating patriotic slogans to out-Bush Bush. He promised victory in Iraq. He assured voters that he, unlike George W. Bush, would never have pulled out of Fallujah. Anti-war voters stood passively behind him as they were humiliated and abused. And the anti-war movement has never recovered. The groundswell of popular revulsion that led hundreds of thousands to take to the streets before 2006 collapsed. The five-year anniversary of the war was marked with tepid protests that were sparsely attended. Why not? If the anti-war movement gutlessly backs pro-war candidates, what credibility does it have? If it fails to support those candidates on the margins of the political spectrum who stand with it against the war, what is the movement worth? Why not be cynical and go home?
“It is a virus,” Nader said in a phone interview. “It is self-defeating. What are they doing this for if they can’t push it into the political arena? Is it all theater?”
“The strategy of the Democratic Party is to beat the Republicans by becoming more like them,” Nader said. “How can they get away with that? If they become more like the Republic Party they start eating into the Republican vote. This usually would inflict a price on them. They would lose the left’s vote, but since the left signaled to the Democrats that their vote can be taken for granted because the Republicans are too horrible to contemplate, they get both. As a result, when you put this cocktail together, becoming more Republican to get Republican votes and hanging on to the left because they have nowhere to go, you set up a tug in the direction of the corporations. There is no discernable end to this strategy by the left. When you ask the left they say not this year, sometime later. But when? If it is not now, if it is sometime in the future, when? What is their breaking point? If you do not have a breaking point you are a slave.”
The energy and idealism are out there. Nader, in a March 13-14 Zogby poll, took 5 to 6 percent in a race between McCain and either Clinton or Obama. Nader, among voters under 30 and among independents, polled 12 to 15 percent. If the anti-war movement gets behind him and McKinney, if it stands behind its principles, it could begin to shake the foundations of the Democratic Party. It could re-energize itself. It might even force Democrats to offer voters a concrete plan to withdraw from Iraq.
War is not an abstraction to me. I know its evil. It is time, if we care about the state of the nation, to take an unequivocal stand against the war. If Clinton and Obama do not want to join us, so be it. I support those candidates and organizations that fight back. We should, in solidarity, strike with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union on May 1 against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should support Code Pink’s refusal to pay the portion of our taxes that go to funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But most of all, we should refuse to be suckered by Democratic candidates who use fuzzy language and will not commit to a total withdrawal from Iraq. We owe it to the hundreds of thousands of dead and injured. We owe to those Iraqis and Americans who will die in the coming days, weeks and months. We owe it to ourselves so, at the very least, we can salvage our integrity.
Those of us who oppose the war, who believe that all U.S. troops should be withdrawn and the network of permanent bases in Iraq dismantled, have only two options in the coming presidential elections—Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney. A vote for any of the Republican and Democratic candidates is a vote to perpetuate the occupation of Iraq and a lengthy and futile war of attrition with the Iraqi insurgency. You can sign on for the suicidal hundred-year war with John McCain or for the nebulous open-ended war-lite with Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, or back those who reject the war. If you vote Democrat or Republican in the coming election be honest with yourself—you have voted to allow the U.S. government to continue, in some form, the campaign that needlessly kills ever more Americans and Iraqis in a conflict that has become the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history and a crime under international law.
“When will the American people actually vote to give to the world more than bombs and missiles, sweatshops, dubious science, frankenfood, poverty and misery?” Cynthia McKinney, the presidential candidate in the Green Party primaries, told me. “Not only do we need an immediate, orderly withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, we need an end to the militarism that has placed U.S. troops on the soil of over 100 countries. A true peace agenda means a complete redefinition of security. I remain convinced that if people in Haiti, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua can vote a peace and justice agenda into power, then so too can we.”
Examine the proposals on Iraq offered by Clinton and Obama. They talk about withdrawing some troops, but they also talk about leaving behind forces to protect U.S. bases in Iraq, assigning troops to train the Iraqi army and continuing the fight against “terrorism.” Clinton and Obama do not throw out numbers, but a rough estimate would be 40,000 or 50,000 troops permanently stationed in Iraq. Obama, his advisers say, will also not rule out continuing to use private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. The war would not end under a Democratic administration. It would drag on until the mission collapsed and the U.S. retreated in humiliation. And when pressed, the Democratic candidates have admitted as much. Tim Russert in the New Hampshire debate asked the Democratic candidates to guarantee that all U.S. troops in Iraq would be home by 2013. No one, including John Edwards, was prepared to make such a commitment. Dennis Kucinich, the only Democratic candidate who opposed a continuation of the war, had been excluded from the debate. When the question was asked he was standing outside the hall in the snow with supporters to protest his exclusion.
But the lust for militarism by Clinton and Obama does not end with Iraq. The two remaining Democratic candidates back the occupation of Afghanistan. They defend Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon, which killed hundreds of Lebanese, destroyed huge parts of Lebanon’s infrastructure and left U.S.-manufactured cluster bombs littered over southern Lebanon. Clinton and Obama praise the right-wing government in Jerusalem and callously blame the Palestinian victims for the suffering inflicted on them by Israel. They support, in open defiance of international law, the 40-year Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and the draconian siege of Gaza, dismissing the grim humanitarian crisis it has unleashed on the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in the world’s largest open-air prison.
The Democrats, who took control of the Congress in midterm elections largely because of public dissatisfaction with the Iraq war, have continued to fund the war, ignoring anti-war voters. The party, as a result, has sunk even lower in public opinion polls than the president, to a 19 percent approval rating, according to a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. Clinton and Obama dutifully lined up with most other Democratic legislators to cast ballots in favor of squandering more than $300 billion in taxpayer money on a war that should never have been fought. And, if either is elected, he or she will spend billions more on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will skip the rest of the mediocre voting records of Obama and Clinton, which include pandering to corporate interests, failing to back a universal single-payer health care system, refusing to call for the slashing of the bloated military budget, not urging repeal of NAFTA and the Taft-Hartley Act, which cripples the ability of unions to organize, and not seeking an end to nuclear power as an energy resource. Let’s stick with the war. It is depressing enough.
The anti-war movement bears much of the blame. It sold us out to the Democratic Party. The decision by anti-war activists to accept a moratorium on demonstrations in 2004 in order to support John Kerry ended our chance to build a widespread, grass-roots movement against the war. Kerry, in return for this support, ridiculed and humiliated those of us who opposed the war. He called for more troops in Iraq. He mouthed thought-terminating patriotic slogans to out-Bush Bush. He promised victory in Iraq. He assured voters that he, unlike George W. Bush, would never have pulled out of Fallujah. Anti-war voters stood passively behind him as they were humiliated and abused. And the anti-war movement has never recovered. The groundswell of popular revulsion that led hundreds of thousands to take to the streets before 2006 collapsed. The five-year anniversary of the war was marked with tepid protests that were sparsely attended. Why not? If the anti-war movement gutlessly backs pro-war candidates, what credibility does it have? If it fails to support those candidates on the margins of the political spectrum who stand with it against the war, what is the movement worth? Why not be cynical and go home?
“It is a virus,” Nader said in a phone interview. “It is self-defeating. What are they doing this for if they can’t push it into the political arena? Is it all theater?”
“The strategy of the Democratic Party is to beat the Republicans by becoming more like them,” Nader said. “How can they get away with that? If they become more like the Republic Party they start eating into the Republican vote. This usually would inflict a price on them. They would lose the left’s vote, but since the left signaled to the Democrats that their vote can be taken for granted because the Republicans are too horrible to contemplate, they get both. As a result, when you put this cocktail together, becoming more Republican to get Republican votes and hanging on to the left because they have nowhere to go, you set up a tug in the direction of the corporations. There is no discernable end to this strategy by the left. When you ask the left they say not this year, sometime later. But when? If it is not now, if it is sometime in the future, when? What is their breaking point? If you do not have a breaking point you are a slave.”
The energy and idealism are out there. Nader, in a March 13-14 Zogby poll, took 5 to 6 percent in a race between McCain and either Clinton or Obama. Nader, among voters under 30 and among independents, polled 12 to 15 percent. If the anti-war movement gets behind him and McKinney, if it stands behind its principles, it could begin to shake the foundations of the Democratic Party. It could re-energize itself. It might even force Democrats to offer voters a concrete plan to withdraw from Iraq.
War is not an abstraction to me. I know its evil. It is time, if we care about the state of the nation, to take an unequivocal stand against the war. If Clinton and Obama do not want to join us, so be it. I support those candidates and organizations that fight back. We should, in solidarity, strike with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union on May 1 against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should support Code Pink’s refusal to pay the portion of our taxes that go to funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But most of all, we should refuse to be suckered by Democratic candidates who use fuzzy language and will not commit to a total withdrawal from Iraq. We owe it to the hundreds of thousands of dead and injured. We owe to those Iraqis and Americans who will die in the coming days, weeks and months. We owe it to ourselves so, at the very least, we can salvage our integrity.
Clinton staffer makes racist remark about Obama
Obama fury over Clinton backer Ferraro's race remark
AFP, March 11, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Barack Obama's White House campaign lashed out in fury Tuesday after a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter attributed his stunning march through US politics to his race.
Obama aide Susan Rice called for Clinton to fire Geraldine Ferraro, the only woman yet to run on a major party's presidential ticket, after her comments Friday to a Los Angeles newspaper.
"That's a really outrageous and offensive comment," Rice said on MSNBC television after Ferraro, who sits on Clinton's finance committee, had said: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position."
"It is the sort of comment that we have heard repeatedly, I'm afraid, from some of the Clinton surrogates," said Rice, Obama's leading adviser on foreign policy.
She said Ferraro's remarks were "far worse" than those of another foreign policy aide, Samantha Power, who was forced to resign from the Obama campaign last week for calling Clinton a "monster."
"I think if Senator Clinton is serious about putting an end to statements that have racial implications, that diminish Barack Obama because he's an African-American man, then she ought to really repudiate this comment and make it clear that there's no place in her campaign for people who will say this kind of thing," Rice said.
Ferraro was Walter Mondale's running mate for the Democrats in the 1984 presidential election. They lost in a landslide to the Republican ticket led by Ronald Reagan.
In an interview Friday with the Daily Breeze newspaper, she was quoted as saying that Obama's success revealed the "very sexist" attitudes of the media.
"And if he was a woman -- of any color -- he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept," Ferraro said.
The Clinton campaign had no immediate comment. Late last year, the New York senator fired two junior aides for spreading emails claiming falsely that Obama is secretly a Muslim.
AFP, March 11, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Barack Obama's White House campaign lashed out in fury Tuesday after a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter attributed his stunning march through US politics to his race.
Obama aide Susan Rice called for Clinton to fire Geraldine Ferraro, the only woman yet to run on a major party's presidential ticket, after her comments Friday to a Los Angeles newspaper.
"That's a really outrageous and offensive comment," Rice said on MSNBC television after Ferraro, who sits on Clinton's finance committee, had said: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position."
"It is the sort of comment that we have heard repeatedly, I'm afraid, from some of the Clinton surrogates," said Rice, Obama's leading adviser on foreign policy.
She said Ferraro's remarks were "far worse" than those of another foreign policy aide, Samantha Power, who was forced to resign from the Obama campaign last week for calling Clinton a "monster."
"I think if Senator Clinton is serious about putting an end to statements that have racial implications, that diminish Barack Obama because he's an African-American man, then she ought to really repudiate this comment and make it clear that there's no place in her campaign for people who will say this kind of thing," Rice said.
Ferraro was Walter Mondale's running mate for the Democrats in the 1984 presidential election. They lost in a landslide to the Republican ticket led by Ronald Reagan.
In an interview Friday with the Daily Breeze newspaper, she was quoted as saying that Obama's success revealed the "very sexist" attitudes of the media.
"And if he was a woman -- of any color -- he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept," Ferraro said.
The Clinton campaign had no immediate comment. Late last year, the New York senator fired two junior aides for spreading emails claiming falsely that Obama is secretly a Muslim.
The Radical Alternative
Mumia Abu-Jamal, Jan. 28, 2008
In this age of political discontent, it seems clear that many
Americans who plan to vote are voting for "change".
Just what kind of change is an open question. Will that change
bring the first woman to the Oval Office? Or will it bring a Black man
(or ,to some, a 1/2 Black man?)
Whatever, it is interesting that the nation's punditocracy, the
talking heads who act like verbal sheepdogs of the American fleece, have
almost totally ignored one candidate who can, in her single self,
embody, not just the illusion, but the reality of "change", experience,
a demonstrated stand against the Iraq War, and a life of living female.
I speak, of course, of Cynthia McKinney, the bold, outspoken former congresswoman from Georgia, who spoke out against the Iraq War when it
wasn't popular.
She is running on the Green Party, according to published reports,
but the media has virtually ignored this fact.
Her record of speaking out against the U.S. war machine, the
military-industrial complex, and other issues of concern is head and
shoulders above any of the other candidates running for office, on
either party.
But, without the paid imprimatur of the corporate powers that be, it
can be little more than an insurgent campaign, one kept safely to the
margins of American politics, off the stage, and off the screen.
This is our loss, for the major candidates (or those supported by
the corporate status quo) are, by their very nature, designed to split
the votes of two significant blocs in the Democratic Party, which can
only leave the loser feeling embittered.
Why not a real Black woman as a candidate?
Wouldn't /that/ be a change?
And although all politics is symbolic, McKinney really is a woman of
substance.
She has been politically courageous in many of her stands, which has
made her persona non grata among both Republicans and Democrats.
That's because she's not a corporate candidate. She's proven in her
career as a member of Congress that she won't be bought off. Of who
else running today can the same be said?
People say they want 'change', but do they really?
Many people are terrified of change. They want the safety of the
routine, the comfort of predictability.
That's because many people fear losing their already tenuous grip on
their lifestyle.
But with millions of people facing foreclosure, and with the rest of
the economy on the brink of free-fall, how much safety is apparent?
That's only an economic concern, what about foreign policy?
Foreign policy, for at least the last decade, has been handled (or
should I say, /mishandled?)/ by an array of incompetents who have
succeeded only in making bad situations far worse.
Do people want change, or are they merely claiming that they do?
Cynthia McKinney would certainly represent that, in a way far more
substantial and meaningful than anybody else out there.
Politicians should be far more than paid agents of the wealthy.
They should be far more than millionaires working on behalf of other
millionaires
Why are we not surprised that the U.S. Senate is a millionaires club?
How could such people have an appreciation of working people? What
do they really know about the poor?
Wouldn't Cynthia McKinney be a significant change?
--(c) '08 maj
In this age of political discontent, it seems clear that many
Americans who plan to vote are voting for "change".
Just what kind of change is an open question. Will that change
bring the first woman to the Oval Office? Or will it bring a Black man
(or ,to some, a 1/2 Black man?)
Whatever, it is interesting that the nation's punditocracy, the
talking heads who act like verbal sheepdogs of the American fleece, have
almost totally ignored one candidate who can, in her single self,
embody, not just the illusion, but the reality of "change", experience,
a demonstrated stand against the Iraq War, and a life of living female.
I speak, of course, of Cynthia McKinney, the bold, outspoken former congresswoman from Georgia, who spoke out against the Iraq War when it
wasn't popular.
She is running on the Green Party, according to published reports,
but the media has virtually ignored this fact.
Her record of speaking out against the U.S. war machine, the
military-industrial complex, and other issues of concern is head and
shoulders above any of the other candidates running for office, on
either party.
But, without the paid imprimatur of the corporate powers that be, it
can be little more than an insurgent campaign, one kept safely to the
margins of American politics, off the stage, and off the screen.
This is our loss, for the major candidates (or those supported by
the corporate status quo) are, by their very nature, designed to split
the votes of two significant blocs in the Democratic Party, which can
only leave the loser feeling embittered.
Why not a real Black woman as a candidate?
Wouldn't /that/ be a change?
And although all politics is symbolic, McKinney really is a woman of
substance.
She has been politically courageous in many of her stands, which has
made her persona non grata among both Republicans and Democrats.
That's because she's not a corporate candidate. She's proven in her
career as a member of Congress that she won't be bought off. Of who
else running today can the same be said?
People say they want 'change', but do they really?
Many people are terrified of change. They want the safety of the
routine, the comfort of predictability.
That's because many people fear losing their already tenuous grip on
their lifestyle.
But with millions of people facing foreclosure, and with the rest of
the economy on the brink of free-fall, how much safety is apparent?
That's only an economic concern, what about foreign policy?
Foreign policy, for at least the last decade, has been handled (or
should I say, /mishandled?)/ by an array of incompetents who have
succeeded only in making bad situations far worse.
Do people want change, or are they merely claiming that they do?
Cynthia McKinney would certainly represent that, in a way far more
substantial and meaningful than anybody else out there.
Politicians should be far more than paid agents of the wealthy.
They should be far more than millionaires working on behalf of other
millionaires
Why are we not surprised that the U.S. Senate is a millionaires club?
How could such people have an appreciation of working people? What
do they really know about the poor?
Wouldn't Cynthia McKinney be a significant change?
--(c) '08 maj
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