National Day of Action Nov. 3:
Day of Popular Protest and Civil Disobedience Across the US to Demand
Democracy Not Disenfranchisement! Education Not Occupation!
Health Care Not Warfare!

San Francisco--- As a nation deeply divided on the war in Iraq enters
the homestretch of the 2004 presidential election this week--and the
prospect of massive confusion and re-count scenarios seems more and
more likely—anti-war and pro-democracy organizers in cities across the
country are making preparations for demonstrations on Nov. 3, the day
after the election. Emphasizing health care, education, the direction
of US foreign policy, and drawing attention to mass-disenfranchisement
and the flaws in the electoral system in the United States, "Beyond
Voting" demonstrators will hit the streets next Wednesday from
Baltimore, to Chicago, to Pittsburg, Vermont and San Francisco. The
demonstrations are meant to spark a grassroots dialogue on "The Day
After" about the real meaning of democracy and the next steps for
taking the country back post-Nov. 2.

"Even though millions of people did not support this war and marched in
the streets to stop it, an antiwar candidate will not win the
presidency in 2004," said Shahid Buttar, an attorney and activist in
Washington, where organizers plan a rally in Lafayette park on the 3rd.
"Sadly, our votes will not be enough to save lives and end this unjust
war. In order to end the US empire's occupation of Iraq, we must go
beyond voting on Nov. 2 and engage in the honorable American tradition
of civil disobedience to restore justice, peace, and real democracy."

The decentralized, grassroots, pro-democracy movement, coordinated via
the website "www.beyondvoting.org", has grown out of a year of
organizing, from a strategy conference at the New Hampshire Primary, to
the demonstrations at this summer's Democratic and Republican National
Conventions (DNC/RNC). The network protests the building of a US empire
and a war without end, and insists that real democracy is more than
voting on Nov 2 and requires citizen involvement at the grassroots
level to shape the decisions that affect our lives, communities, and
country. Beyond Voting, featured in this week's Time Magazine cover
story on "The Morning After," aims to harness the collective outrage
that may erupt in case of election fraud—or a 'victory' by the Bush
Administration—and to project an anti-war message to whomever clinches
the White House this year.

"We are demonstrating on Nov. 3 to draw attention to the dismal state
of health care in this country: While we spend billions on bombers we
have 43 million uninsured, and pharmaceutical companies cashing in on
the crisis," said Dr. Michael Kozart, of Code Blue, the group of health
care workers organizing civil disobedience at the Federal Building in
San Francisco. "We are health care workers who are addressing the fact
that neither Kerry nor Bush are putting forth sound proposals for
universal access to quality, affordable health care, while both will
continue the occupation—and we feel it is time that we go beyond voting
to expose this crime with nonviolent civil disobedience."

"In the rural state of Vermont, where farms are disappearing and the
only jobs for young people are in the service sector, we have suffered
among the highest per-capita casualty rates of US soldiers in this
quagmire war. That's because we are feeling the chill of a back-door
draft in this country, when the only way that poor kids can go to
college is by killing in the oil fields of Iraq," said Nicholas
Parrish, a social worker from Burlington, with Direct Action Resisting
Empire, VT (DARE). "We are marching to tell our congressional
delegation to stand up for fair elections, and that we want education,
not endless war and occupation."

Beyond Voting events are still being planned, and the outcome on Nov. 2
will surely influence their tone, message and impact. Sister networks
planning election protection efforts on Nov 3 also include "This Time
We're Watching" (www.ttww.org) and No Stolen Elections (www.nov3.us).
For more info: www.beyondvoting.org

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Starting the Blame Game (from alternet.)
Answers? Do We Have Answers?

By Rory O'Connor


It was the Ground War. It was the Air War. It was the youth vote. It was the 'Yalla' vote. It was the hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters. It was the millions of newly registered voters.

It was George Soros. It was the felons' list. It was voter suppression. It was voter fraud. It was the mystery bulge, and the wired president. It was the swing states. It was the battleground states. It was the computer voting machines.

It was the media. It was the blogosphere. It was Sinclair Broadcasting. It was Dan Rather-Biased. It was fair and balanced. It was Sun Myung Moon, it was Jon Stewart as a butt boy. It was Tucker Carlson as a dick.

It was ballot access. It was ballot security. It was election law experts.

It was the Bush twins. It was Vanessa and Alexandra. It was Teresa.

It was the economy, stupid. It was Iraq. It was staying on message. It was terror. It was terror. It was terror.

But most of all it was Ralph Nader.

Oops – that was four years ago.

Athough truly, it seems like just last night.

But if it wasn't Nader, what is the explanation for the Democrats going down, down, down this year?

After all, it's a Republican Senate. It's a Republican House. It's a Republican Supreme Court – poised to become vastly more so.

But if the Democrats can't blame Nader, as they have in increasingly vociferous terms for the past eight years – who can they blame?

Maybe they should start with themselves.

Maybe running as the Democrat wing of the Republican party isn't such a good idea after all. Maybe turning the convention into a four-day meeting of Securocrats was a bad idea. Maybe turning the conversation into a nine-month gabfest on strength and security, war and terror, terror and terror, only reminded people that they vote for Republicans in times of fear.

Maybe selling out to buy in was wrong. Maybe raising hundreds of millions from corporations means losing your soul.

Maybe being an anti-war hero who runs as a war hero was wrong. Maybe Howard Dean was right.

Maybe it's time for the democratic wing of the Democrat party. Maybe there really is a democratic wing of the Democrat party.

Maybe Kerry should have announced a plan to end the war. (After all, he seemed to have a plan for nearly everything else!)

Maybe it was the weapons of mass destruction. Maybe it was the weapons of mass deception.

Or maybe – just maybe – it was the Democrats.

Maybe it was the most inept press and communications staff and strategy seen in along time. Maybe it was the press secretary hanging up on the press, and the communications operation functioning worse than the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Or maybe – just maybe – it was the Democrats.

Maybe it was their platform. Maybe it was their vision. Maybe it was their values. Maybe it was their lack of them. Maybe it was the way they presented things.

Or maybe this is just a 'red' country. Electoral votes aside, three million more Americans just voted to re-elect George Bush.

Maybe the Democrats need to revamp.

Maybe the Democrats need to disband.

Let's just go ahead and blame Nader again.

After all – it's easier than looking in a mirror.

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Democrats in End Time
Republicans Gain Shattering Victory; Who to Blame This Time?
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

The crusade that George Bush called for in 2001 against terrorism from abroad came to fruition yesterday in a more homely context as Christians flocked to the polls in stronger numbers than in 2000 to battle against such manifestations of post-modernity as gay marriage.

There are many reasons for what is an overwhelming Republican victory across the board. They range from the disastrous choice of John Edwards as Kerry's running mate to delusions about the potency of electronic organizing (that should have been demolished after Howard Dean's implosion last spring), to the fatal deficiencies of Kerry himself.

The strategy of the Democratic Party as formulated by DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe amounted to belief in the simple potency of corporate cash, plus hysterical demonization of Bush and Nader, represented at full stretch by Michael Moore, who began the year backing General Wesley Clarke and ended it as a pied piper for Kerry. They came to the Rubicon of November 2 replete with fantasies, about the unknown cell phone vote, the youth vote (which actually remained unchanged from 2000), the galvanizing potential of Bruce Springsteen and Eminem.

Week after week Kerry and his boosters displayed an unmatched deafness to political tone. The haughty elitist from Boston probably lost most of the Midwest forever when he said in the high summer that foreign leaders hoped he would win. The applause of the French in Cannes for Michael Moore's 9/11 was the sound of the cement drying over the corpse of Kerry's chances of carrying the Midwest. Soros's dollars were like flowers on the grave. After the billionairess Portuguese-American Teresa Heinz Kerry said in mid-October that Laura Bush had never held a job it was all over.

If there was a visual premonition of why George Bush would achieve a popular majority beyond challenge it was probably the photographs of gay couples celebrating their marriages outside San Francisco's city hall. America is a very Christian country. In the regular national survey conducted by the University of Chicago in 2002, 53 per cent of the adult population identified themselves as Protestant, 25 per cent as Catholic, 3 per cent as Christians of some other denomination, 3 per cent as adhering to "other religions", 2 per cent as Jewish and 14 per cent as having "no religion". That's a lot of Christians, and though many of them may have had a mature tolerance for the preference of Dick and Lynn Cheney's daughter Mary, a strong percentage felt very strongly that state sanction of same sex marriage was going way too far.

There was a ballot initiative in Ohio to ban gay marriage and it was probably what helped Bush overcome the smoldering ruins of the Ohio economy and the increasing unpopularity of the war.

October surprises? No candidate was more burdened by them than George Bush. Just in the last couple of weeks, headlines brought tidings of US marines killed in Baghdad and other US troops rising up in mutiny against lack of equipment to protect their lives. The president's brother Neil was exposed as influence peddling on the basis of his family connections. The economic numbers remained grim as they have been all year. And this was just the icing on the cake. You can troll back over the past fifteen months and find scarce a headline or news story bringing good tidings for Bush. History is replete with revolutions caused by a rise in the price of bread. This year the price of America's primal fluid--oil--on which every household depends, tripled.

But Kerry and the Democrats were never able to capitalize on any of these headlines, a failure which started when Democrats in Congress, Kerry included, gave the green light to the war on Iraq, and which continued when Kerry conclusively threw away the war and WMD issues in August. When he tried to a chord change at NYU on September 20 it was too late and even then his position remained incoherent. He offered no way out. More tunnel, no light.

It was like that for Kerry on almost every issue. Outsourcing is a big issue in the rustbelt, yet here was Kerry forced to concede that he had voted for the trade pacts and still supported them. All he offered, aside from deficit busting (which plays to the bond market but not to people working two jobs), was some tinkering with the tax code alarming to all those millions of Americans who play the lottery and believe that if they are not yet making more than $200,000 a year they soon will.

Edwards added absolutely nothing to the ticket. At least Dan Quayle held Indiana back in 1988 and 2002. No one state in the south went into Kerry's column. Gore did better in Florida and West Virginia. Dick Gephardt would certainly have brought the Democratic ticket Missouri and probably Iowa and hence the White House.

The Republicans played, on the ground, to the bedrock members of their party, and got them to the polls. The Kerry campaign conducted an air war from 30,000 feet, bombarding the population with vague alarums and somehow thinking that ABB (Anyone But Bush) would pull them through. There was indeed a lot of popular animosity towards Bush but the Democrats could never capitalize on it. The crucial machinery of any political party is organization, its capacity to rally its supporters on the big day. In this crucial area the Democratic Party is in an advanced state of disrepair. The SEIU wasted $70 million of its members' dues money attacking Ralph Nader. A grotesque amount of energy went into trying to suppress the Nader vote. They did suppress it and this achievement gained them nothing, except, perhaps, the destruction of the Green Party.

It's as grim a day for the Democrats as was 1980 when the Republicans swept the board. What will the Democrats do? You can already hear the Democratic Leadership Council cranking up its message that you can only beat the Republicans by outflanking them on the right. The Nader alibi has gone. The Democratic Party and its leaders have nowhere else to look than in the mirror. They would do well to examine Nader's critiques, but we bet they won't.