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Edited on Wed Nov-24-04 06:13 PM by Oak2004
It doesn't make any sense to think about what someone else should do, or why someone else has something or doesn't have something, or anything else that's just idle thought. All one can do with that kind of thinking is make oneself mean and miserable.
Treat this just like any other emergency. After a tornado, you don't sit around and talk about how the EMTs should be there to deal with injuries while your spouse bleeds to death a few feet away. You use what you have on hand to do what you need to do the best way you can.
So take stock of where we are. The national government is theirs, and the national media is nearly theirs. Don't waste your time trying to figure out how to get them to respond, because they won't.
That directly impacts how you organize your protests. Protests in this country have almost always been organized as a kind of giant street theatre for the media. This doesn't work anymore. Don't waste your time protesting for the benefit of CNN. Instead organize protests that are intended to have a direct impact upon the government, the same way they protest in other banana republics.
Local government, and local media, are not theirs, in much of the country. It is at the local level that decisions about elections are made. Most local elected officials do not live in a bubble, as do persons elected to federal office. It is possible to use community pressure on this lowest level of elected official, which is effective even if they are Republican.. Fill their meetings to capacity and then some, even when voting issues aren't being discussed (you might want to start having pre- and post- meeting parties, turn it into something fun for local activists). Demonstrate, loudly, outside their office -- and in front of their homes. Telephone them, write them, fax them, not just at work, but at home. Educate others about the issue and teach them how to identify these people, so that they can approach these people about election issues -- and their spouses and adult children -- whenever they are out in public. Think up new and creative ways to stick the issue in their face at every opportunity. Make a game of it.
Don't harm them -- even if you are Machiavellian and see no ethical reason not to do harm, violence towards these people would result in a crackdown against people like you, and the rapid construction of a security bubble around these people -- exactly what we don't want. But hound them, relentlessly, mercilessly, until they find it easier to give in to us than to go on with unverifiable voting.
Use many of the same approaches, when needed, to get your local and state governments to fill in the gaps in social programs, to resist oppressive federal laws, and to form compacts with other state and local governments that may form a basis, if needed, for a new federal govenment.
Above all, keep the extreme right from consolidating power at the state and local level.
Economic resistance from within America, too, is essential. For that we again need those local organizations, to spread information about who to boycott and who to buy from, and to make participation in economic resistance a community standard, something one does if one is a good citizen. Make it fun, honor the patriots, and shame the opportunithugs.
The international community can and should come to our aid, for their sakes as much as ours. We must persuade the world to stop investing in America. Don't buy our products, and above all don't buy our Treasuries. With the Internet we can research exactly who is propping up the Bush debt, and reach out to citizens around the world on this matter.
A final thought here. Some persons may be considering activities that are not legal and may be thinking about responding to this thread. My advice to them is a) make sure that your actions are moral and not counterproductive b) don't post here! In fact, break your visible ties to public activism as soon as you can and fade into the apparently apathetic "majority". It does us no good to know who you are, and it certainly does you no good if we know who you are, because I'm sure we'll all be asked about you, some of us possibly under conditions especially endorsed by our future attorney general. Do what you need to do, and we'll do what we need to do, and someday we'll meet again and speak freely under the protection of our constitution.
There's more, of course, to be done with what we've got. Don't be discouraged. Remember 75% of our fellow citizens know this nation is going in the wrong direction. Germans celebrated the Nazi electoral victory with a torchlight parade under Hitler's window: you think the Secret Service would dare let a crowd with torches get near Bush, given what they'd most likely want to do with those torches?
The single most important thing is to organize, at the community level. Get out there and build your neighborhood single issue pro-democracy organizations. "Single issue" actually might not be the right word for it, but don't attach too much baggage to your agenda. Don't make it a group for Democrats when there are plenty of Republicans who feel just as strongly, or go on and on, as some groups do, about your opposition to the oppression of a few dozen oppressed groups (it's enough, actually, to be pro democracy for all - it really does cover the subject, and though there are specifics to hammer out, lets hammer them out afterwards when we have a democracy to do it in).
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