Reparations - Democratic Underground

rbnyc

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Sun Nov-02-08 10:18 AM
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Reparations

On September 11, 2001 – Primary Day – I walked from my North Brooklyn apartment to the school that was my polling place to cast my vote. As I approached, I saw the children pressed up against the windows watching the black smoke mass above the carnage of the World Trade Center. I signed myself in, dripping tears, and although I knew the election would be canceled, I entered the booth and I voted because I was honestly afraid I may never have the opportunity to do so again.

As I left the building, I saw the smoke rise across the river and knew that I was watching a smokescreen rise for a regime that had little respect for the democratic process, and that this horrific crime would be used to grant legitimacy to an appointed leader and his ideologue cronies. This regime, who’d been awarded power by eliminating votes and through a Supreme Court decision that – unique in our history – both had no precedent and set no precedent - would make this abomination into their opportunity. I knew, before I’d ever heard Bush utter the word “trifecta,” before I ever read of the PNAC’s craving for a “Pearl Harbor type event,” I knew this day’s grief would be used to make drastic changes in our country and I was afraid. I remember thinking that whoever had orchestrated this attack had the power to destroy lives and property but not the power to destroy Democracy – that could only be done from within.

So I voted, knowing that it wouldn’t count and not knowing if my vote would ever count again.

Like all of us, in the coming weeks, moths and years I watched our leaders use the most extreme fear tactics to bully Americans into believing it was crucial to the War on Terror to give up rights, to give up privacy, and to embrace torture and preemptive invasions of countries that had never attacked us. Like many of us, I became more politically active, researching, writing, networking, organizing, protesting and working up to the 2004 election. I believed that our democracy still had enough working parts that our voices might be heard and we might possibly be able to begin to make reparations.

2004 was disappointing on so many levels. How can a party claim to represent the people when it benefits most by not counting us? Widely reported incidents of voter purges, voter suppression, intimidation and tricks, along with many votes being keyed into machines with proprietary software and no paper trail, did not improve my confidence that election results were real. Still, Bush claimed “mandate” and he and his junta continued to hack away at the American dream in stubborn pursuit of New World Order and personal profits.

It’s been a long 8 years.

Despite pre-election day polling, with the McCain/Palin campaign submitting to the same subversive forces that have so severely undermined our election process, how can we win? We need to come out and vote in such tremendous numbers that Republican operatives can’t possibly purge, suppress or reverse enough votes to tip the balance. We need to arrive at our polling places in such unprecedented masses that a McCain/Palin victory would be completely implausible. We need to deliver on such a massive scale that we become tamper-proof. We need to be undeniable.

When we do this, and Barack Obama becomes President of the United Stated, then we truly will have hope. We will being to repair the great damage that has been done and finally begin to move forward. I don’t think that Barack Obama is perfect and I don’t think he has a magic cure for all that ails us. But I do think that he is ours. He’s where he is now because we put him there. We’ve already voted in the one way we know still works - through unprecedented financial contributions. The bulk of Obama’s campaign contributions have some from individuals giving $200 or less. Barack Obama is where he is now because we put him there. We are his life’s blood and he will be accountable to us.

When we wake up from this long nightmare, there will be so much work to do. I know we’re anxious to do it. Let’s keep up this great momentum and make sure we have the opportunity.