I've thought for a while that, if this Denver mass protest scenario is to be a real player in this election, there would need to be a central gathering place on the internet, well in advance. Well, it looks like Al Giordano over at the Field has offered his services:
http://ruralvotes.com/thefield/?p=917For us rabble-rousers out here that don’t consider any American political party to be “ours,” that scenario would put Plan B into play. We have no illusions that it has yet been surrendered or that we have yet taken it: Oh, we’d still go to Denver, not to enter the convention hall, but to reduce it to symbolic rubble from the outside.
Call it Plan Jericho: Like Joshua of the Old Testament and his troops who circled the halls of the city, marched around it silently for six days, on the seventh day marched around it seven times more and then, on cue, sounded a horn to end the silence and shout all at once, toppled the walls, entered the city, and “killed” (the Bible says so literally, but this time it will be politically, not mortally) every man, woman and superdelegate – including any imposter they might “nominate” by imposition – that did not participate in the certain walk-out protest that will occur under their scenario and instead chooses to remain inside the hall.
It won’t be the chaotic street protest and battle with the cops that occurred in ’68: we’ve learned too much from that. It will be organized, Gandhian in its adherence to discipline and nonviolence, and more massive than anything maybe ever seen in the United States’ long history of social movements. If the party leaders choose to destroy democracy by denying the fair-and-square winner the nomination, democracy will then be duty bound to destroy the party.
The narrative of this campaign has created an opening for the triumph of a radical, non-electoral, political narrative if the electoral path becomes blocked by a handful of insiders that think they know better than us. The big news is that, for the first time in decades, a black-white alliance from the street will be possible: Montgomery 1955 meets Seattle 1999 in Denver 2008.
I don’t believe it will come to that. I just don’t think that the majority of superdelegates are ignorant of the fire they’d be playing with by denying the nomination to the candidate with the most elected delegates. On the Biblical track: What profits a man or woman to gain the nomination but see his and her political party – and the two-party system - permanently destroyed? I know a lot of those superdelegates, have known them for decades. And they know me enough to know that I’m not mouthing a hollow set of words here. My eyes brighten at the opportunity, if they go there, to build a non-electoral multi-racial mass movement on the ruins of their folly. I know chaos and how to make it work to the advantage of a crusade. And I’m not alone in that: just one of many soldiers ready to march on Jericho and call their bluff.
I really don’t think Plan Jericho would be such a bad turn for the stagnant US political landscape. So if they slam the gates of the city, I’m just one of the many trumpeters that has a horn, and I promise – no, vow - that the walls will come a tumblin’ down.
And that’s why I don’t share the desperation of some others. This electoral campaign has created what we authentic radicals call the “objective conditions” for something even greater and more historic than a mere presidential election. Given the existence of a Plan B, which side do you think is going to blink first? Inside the convention hall, or outside of it, an historic leap will occur in Denver.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…