Energize, mobilize, join together. These were the themes of this conference. Many speakers hailed this as a historic opportunity to toss out a broken system, an unworkable ideology. John McCain has rapidly morphed from maverick to Bush clone, mimicking his economic wrongheadedness as much as his foreign policy. And all this while pandering shamelessly to the Religious Right. Before McCain’s emergence as top dog of the GOP, the other contenders likewise distinguished themselves by being indistinguishable from a president with the lowest approval ratings in our nation’s history. Talk about sheep chasing one another over a cliff!
Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood comes by her vision of justice and equality rightly. She is the daughter of former Texas Governor, Ann Richards. After laying out some of Planned Parenthood’s achievement - among them, giving health care to five million women last year - she sternly shunned applause with a big caveat. Don’t think that any of these actions matter, she warned, if the next president appoints another conservative to the Supreme Court. Her words resonated with the crowd and underscored how much remains to be done.
Anna Burger is chair of Change to Win, a joint effort of SEIU and six other major unions which together represent more than six million workers. They have successfully worked to mobilize and get out the vote to elect pro-worker candidates in the last several election cycles. She told the haunting story of a woman who joined her in promoting universal health care by going door to door. Anna asked her why she was involved. Her adult son apprenticed to be a plumber and was now working in his field but was worried about his lack of health coverage. She was mobilizing public opinion out of a concern for him. Subsequently, Anna learned that the woman’s son joined the National Guard to receive health insurance. He reassured his mother, however, that the recruiter had promised that he would not be sent to Iraq. Victim of one more promise that was not kept, her son is now overseas. As Burger poignantly put it: “No one should have to join the National Guard to get health insurance.”
Burger also touched on the concept of accountability - how candidates so often know the right thing to say while campaigning, but once elected, suddenly develop selective amnesia about their promises. Change to Win has developed a program of exposing elected officials’ records - their votes and their policies - so that they can no longer hide their positions from their constituents. If your elected official no longer represents your views, she urges you to find candidates to challenge them, or run yourself. “Take them on or take them out.” Change to Win is making this possible.
Democrats traditionally have taken a perverse pride in their reputation for independence, for shunning cooperation. The image that comes to mind is trying to herd a roomful of cats. The Republicans are certainly infinitely more disciplined. Just listen to their robotic, lockstep repetition of Talking Points. They’ve systematically spent hundreds of millions of dollars since Goldwater’s defeat to build an infrastructure of think tanks and media outlets that have pushed a message and an agenda with frightful success.
Democrats may be belatedly understanding the need to coalesce and do what’s necessary to take back America. Every election cycle, we bemoan that so much is at stake. If you doubt it this time, think Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade, endless war. The alternative is truly frightening. Simple awareness of that fact should be enough to galvanize people into action. Almost 2000 years ago, in Ethics of the Fathers, Rabbi Tarfon pointed out: "It is not up to you to complete the work [of perfecting the world], but neither are you at liberty to desist from it." More recently, Yogi Berra said, “The game isn’t over until it’s over.” In other words, let’s get crackin’; there’s a lot to do and no time to lose.
Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. We aim to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Electronic (computerized) voting systems are simply antithetical to democratic principles.
CER set up a lending library to achieve the widespread distribution of the DVD Invisible Ballots: A temptation for electronic vote fraud. Within eighteen months, the project had distributed over 3200 copies across the country and beyond. CER now concentrates on group showings, OpEd pieces, articles, reviews, interviews, discussion sessions, networking, conferences, anything that promotes awareness of this critical problem. Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005.
Joan-- Thanks for the detailed report from Take Back America. I'm sure the atmosphere was upbeat, "this year in Jerusalem." But I couldn't find a word about election protection, election theft, actually counting the votes. I know you wouldn't have missed or neglected to report anything on that! So can only conclude that they are, once again, not taking it very seriously. This is not all that surprising but nonetheless chilling, especially since we have dusted the familiar fingerprints of right-wing manipulation of selected Democratic primaries to keep Clinton viable and produce the ugly standoff that may so cripple the party's chances at all levels. We in the EI movement are of course a hell of a lot more numerous, aware, mobilized, and determined than we were in 2004, when after downloading those Exit Polls and "writing down the song" I had, like James Taylor, no idea who to send it to. But if the whole rest of the progressive movement is once again AWOL on this peril, we may be hard pressed to do much more than once more scream fraud from our individual rooftops. As of now we are planning to set up as much infrastructure as possible to take any message or alarm directly to the citizens, essentially bypassing the unresponsive/hostile power structures. But at least some awareness on the part of the TBA congregation would be helpful and a promising sign as we go forward. Thanks again and all the best--Jonathan
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Jonathan Simon (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 10:11:06 AM
I'm pretty sure there was one panel at TBA on Voting integrity or election reform. The OpEdNews booth was primarily used as a place to put up banners and literature on voting integrity.
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Rob Kall (867 articles, 3997 quicklinks, 344 diaries, 1839 comments)
on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 10:50:36 AM
Thanks for filling us in. You sound like an econ major, now. The widening income gap will continue to garner attention of the middle classes, as more jobs are outsourced.
Neoliberal policies fail society and benefit the wealthy, as the speakers showed, apparently with their graphs. I suspect that the only way to keep up with the free flow of capital across borders is to insist that labor also freely move across borders.
Nationalism - as a mythical concept used to organize labor and armies - is clearly dead, now that corporations that answer to no government freely move across borders with no allegiance to any nation.
It'll be interesting to watch our labor movements over the next decade or two. I hope they have new strategies for the 21st century.
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Rady Ananda (127 articles, 288 quicklinks, 37 diaries, 1120 comments)
on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 6:58:56 PM
EI was not ignored at TBA. There was one plenary, "Election 2008: The Map" and another, "Does your Vote Count? Fixing a Flawed Election System." There were at least two workshops on voter outreach; also a self-organized session, "Election Protection 2008." I didn't get to any of them though I should have since this is a major concern of mine. If you don't believe me, visit my site www.wordsunltd.com
I asked someone about the workshops. She attended one of them and thought well of it though the subject of voting machines never came up.
I wrote a continuous blog on my three days at TBA (sese same site) and there was further mention of EI. Rep. John Conyers said to keep it as a top priority until November 4 (after that, stressed others, is no time to take a snooze). And there were a few other allusions to it in other contexts.
I want to thank Joan for her excellent presentation of the events!
--Marta Steele
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Marta Steele (37 articles, 0 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 35 comments)
on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 9:14:41 PM
What does it matter what the average income is for this percent or that? Do you believe in private property? Or stealing? It's not your money. End of story. The government has no money unless they steal it from someone's paycheck. What kind of jerk is going to suggest that a government do that? An oppressive nanny state parasite. All the crap that Obama and Hillary want to give away will be made possible by taking from someone else. You want oppression. You don't believe in private property.
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Ken Langston (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 10:16:04 PM
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