Millions in streets seal Obama victory

By LeiLani Dowell, Workers World, Nov. 5, 2008
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

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

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.

Tape caught Pakistani official saying vote will be rigged

By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers, Feb. 14, 2008

FAISALABAD, Pakistan — A prominent U.S.-based human rights group Friday released what it said was a recording of Pakistan's attorney general acknowledging that next week's national elections would be "massively" rigged.

Human Rights Watch said a journalist made the recording during a telephone interview with Attorney General Malik Qayyum when Qayyum took a second call without disconnecting the first, allowing his end of the second conversation to be overheard and recorded.

In the recording, Qayyum, Pakistan's top legal officer, can be heard advising the caller to accept a ticket he is being offered by an unidentified political party for a seat, Human Rights Watch said.

"They will massively rig to get their own people to win," Qayyum said, according to a transcript released by Human Rights Watch. "If you get a ticket from these guys, take it."

The potentially incendiary recording was made the day that elections were announced for Jan. 8, according to Human Rights Watch, which said the Urdu-language recording could be heard on its Web site, www.hrw.org. The polls for the national assembly and four provincial legislatures were postponed until this Monday after large-scale violence ignited by the Dec. 27 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

The recording was certain to add to widespread fears that the polls will be rigged in favor of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, the party that supports the authoritarian and hugely unpopular president, Pervez Musharraf, a retired army general who seized power in a 1999 coup.

On Thursday, Musharraf warned the opposition that it must accept the outcome of Monday's voting, without resorting to massive street protests.

"Let there be no doubt that anyone will be allowed to resort to lawlessness in the garb of allegations about rigging in the elections," Musharraf was quoted as telling a seminar of government officials in Islamabad by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan. "Let this serve as a warning to all those who think they can disturb the peace of the country. They will not be allowed. Do not test the resolve of the government."

"No agitation, anarchy or chaos can be acceptable," he said. "I assure you that the elections will be fair, free, and transparent and peaceful."

Fears that the polls will be fixed have been stoked by a series of public opinion surveys showing the Pakistan Peoples Party and other parties poised to capture enough seats to begin impeachment proceedings against Musharraf for controversial constitutional changes he imposed last year to extend his grip on power.

Musharraf's standing, and that of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, also has been hurt by skyrocketing prices, shortages of electricity, gas and wheat, a failure to contain the Islamic insurgency based in the tribal area bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan's support for the Bush administration's fight against al Qaida.

"There have been numerous allegations of irregularities, including arrests and harassment of opposition candidates and party members. There are also allegations that state resources, administration, and state machinery are being used to the advantage of candidates backed by President Pervez Musharraf," Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Human Rights Watch said it had tried repeatedly to contact Qayyum, a staunch supporter of Musharraf, but had been unable to reach him.

In Washington on Friday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said he was not familiar with the Human Rights Watch report. But he said the Bush administration has stressed to the Musharraf government that " the Pakistani people should have a reasonable degree of assurance that their ballot will in fact be reflected in the results."

"Look, you know, there have been in the past irregularities within the Pakistani electoral process," McCormack said.

On Thursday, the widower of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zadari, held a final campaign rally in the same dusty park where his wife gave her first political address in 1977.

Security was intense, reflecting a surge in suicide bombings that's included attacks on opposition campaign rallies. Police sharpshooters scanned the crowds from rooftops and black-clad commandos stood among scores of security men deployed around the stage.

The stage itself was set far back from fences of steel scaffolding and barbed wire that restrained the flag- and banner-waving crowd of about 6,000. Zadari spoke from behind a podium made of bulletproof glass and steel.

Without mentioning Musharraf by name, Zardari, who assumed joint chairmanship of the party with his son after Bhutto's slaying, said that it was time "to change our system."

"Benazir was a martyr. She believed in you, in the brothers and sisters, and I also believe in you," he proclaimed.

Wed., Feb. 13 "Uncounted" film screening

7:00pm at Charlotte Energy Solutions, 337 Baldwin Ave, Charlotte, NC 28204.

Do you want to know what really happened in 2000, 2004 and 2006 at the electronic ballot box?

Uncounted is an explosive new documentary that shows how the election fraud that changed the outcome of the 2004 election led to even greater fraud in 2006 - and now looms as an unbridled threat to the outcome of the 2008 election. This film examines in startling terms how easy it is to change election outcomes and undermine election integrity across the U.S. The film is a call to action to take our elections back. Offering ideas, identifying possible coalition partners, and providing the tools to get the job done.

This is a great way to have fun watching a movie with friends while working to move America forward.

Attendees get the added bonus of DFA Chair Jim Dean and Uncounted director, David Earnhardt for a live conference call and Q&A.

That's why hundreds of Uncounted House Parties have been scheduled by members through out the country.

RSVP for Charlotte screening at http://dfalink.com/event.php?id=27824

More info: 704-333-4358