People Before Profit blog

A curse and a blessing

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 08:56:00 +0000

Opinion

I was one of thousands of New Yorkers who volunteered to canvass in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. I’ve done electoral and other political work for over 30 years, and I’ve never in my life seen this kind of grassroots intensity, enthusiasm, and commitment for a national election. The level of clarity about the need to get rid of Bush, and the appreciation, warmth, and kindness extended to us canvassers was just extraordinary.

The neighborhoods I was in, (predominantly African American and multiracial working-class areas) turned out in record numbers and helped to make Pennsylvania a “Kerry state,” despite the 22-plus Bush visits.

I was so glad to have had that experience to boost my spirits when the bad news came through. My first response was one I’ve never had in my entire life of political work. I thought, “OK, America just doesn’t want me. I should just leave.”

I was kind of shocked at that response because it didn’t fit any of my political beliefs. I’ve always thought that America belongs to me — to us — as much as to any of the people who insist that patriotism is synonymous with war and intolerance. But this time, I admit, I felt more discouraged and frightened than I ever had. Being Jewish and secular in a nation where so many people define themselves as Christian, and being a leftist in a nation where so many people call themselves conservative, I had never felt so isolated or so endangered.

Then I remembered walking through those neighborhoods. I thought of the people who thanked me for knocking on their doors to remind them to vote, who eagerly took the “Voter Bill of Rights” we were handing out, who nodded vigorously when I said, “Know your rights, because we don’t want another Florida.” Often I was interrupting their dinners or their time with their kids or their efforts to get a few hours of sleep between two shifts. Often they were tired, preoccupied or overwhelmed when they answered the door. But when they realized who I was and why I was there, they made a point of saying, “I’m so glad you’re doing this,” or, “All day at work, this election was all I could think about.”

I thought about the new generation of organizers, the people in their teens and twenties who had put together the extraordinary canvassing efforts throughout Philadelphia and elsewhere, many of whom hadn’t even been interested in politics before they got involved.

I thought about the woman in her 50s who had ridden down with me to Philadelphia. She was unemployed for the past year, and yet had still managed to find the energy and the funds to make this trip and make her contribution. I thought about the way that both the neighborhood residents and the organizers I’d worked with were so invisible to the pundits who analyzed the election, before and after Nov. 2, and how if I hadn’t made this trip, they would have been invisible to me, even though I “knew better.”

If there’s one lesson I took from these past weeks, and one I’d want most to share, it’s that we are a huge, diverse, and profoundly American movement. “Our America” includes people who have only just begun to find their public voice and to see the ways in which taking political action can make a difference in their lives.

Figuring out how we can reach the electorate who did not vote — more than the number who voted for either candidate — seems like our next task, along with finding new ways to speak to the people who see voting for Bush as “the right thing” or “the safe thing.” And of course, it would be good to build a political movement that actually gives people something to be for — a candidate, a platform, and a vision of America inspiring as much positive enthusiasm as Bush inspires negative enthusiasm.

So clearly, to paraphrase playwright Tony Kushner, the great work has only just begun. It is an extraordinary beginning. Despair comes, I think, from inaction. Doing the work, even when we lose, even when we suffer, brings extraordinary joy. Love to you all and “bon courage.” It’s both a curse and a blessing to live in such interesting times.

Rachel Kranz is the artistic director of Theater of Necessity and a member of Theaters against War. She is also the author of “Leaps of Faith,” a novel about politics, love and community. She can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Give no quarter to voter fraud and suppression

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 08:51:00 +0000

Opinion

“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” is an old saying that George W. Bush once bungled in a moment captured on film.

The saying could not be more relevant to this November’s election. If we, the working class, allow ourselves to be fooled and silenced in the face of massive voter fraud, we will be relinquishing our claim to legitimate and fair elections for years to come. This is the time to fight back, or shame on all of us.

The election of 2000 was fraught with voter suppression, the discarding of votes, and a Supreme Court that voted to install a president rather than have votes counted.

It is 2004 now. Here we are again. Will we sit by this time and allow our votes to be thrown away, be uncounted, be manipulated by corporate-owned voting machines that leave no paper trail, and agree to voter suppression in primarily Black and Brown voting precincts? Not if we view the vote as the bedrock of democracy in a representative republic.

It is absolutely fundamental to have all votes counted and no votes suppressed. It’s that simple. Until every vote is counted, there is nothing to concede.

The right wing will tell you that to question the Nov. 2 election is to be a “conspiracy theorist” or a sore loser. “Sore loser” is a catcall better left to sporting events. When democracy itself is at stake, the fight must be to have every vote counted, period.

The catcalls are meant to divert the American people from pursuing electoral justice. As to the charge of being conspiracy theorists, let’s let just a few of the facts speak for themselves, particularly in key battleground states such as Florida and Ohio.

In an article titled “Worse than 2000: Tuesday’s electoral disaster,” William Rivers Pitt of truthout.org writes that Broward County, Fla., election workers were surprised to find out the new voting machines they were using were counting backwards, decreasing votes. The software used in that county’s machines could count only up to 32,000 votes per precinct. When the count reached 32,000, the machine began counting backwards. Where did those votes go?

In one precinct in Franklin County, Ohio, electronic voting machines gave Bush “3,893 extra votes,” according to an article by Bob Fritakis at freepress.org. Bush got 4,258 votes to John Kerry’s 260 votes. The problem is that records show only 638 voters cast ballots for president in that precinct. Where did all those votes for Bush come from?

In primarily Black and working-class areas in Ohio, voters were made to stand in lines for hours at a time. Many were discouraged from voting in the face of the prospect of spending the entire day in the voting line. They had jobs to get to, children to pick up, or other tasks that simply couldn’t wait.

In a number of counties where new voter registrations had surged, county officials actually decreased the number of voting machines, making the logjams inevitable.

In Cincinnati (Hamilton County), Ohio, Fitrakis reports that 105,000 voters were moved from “active” to “inactive” status in the last four years because they hadn’t voted in the last two federal elections. The purge was not required by Ohio law, he writes: “It was an option taken and exercised by the Republican-dominated Hamilton County Board of Elections.”

Blatant voting irregularities and anomalies were also reported in Florida’s Baker and Dixie counties. Based on historical voting patterns, exit polls and the final vote tally, the vote totals don’t add up — in more ways than one. And the problems were not only with touch-screen machines. In the case of Baker County, for example, the questionable results were generated by optical scanning machines.

Fundamental to democracy is the idea that every vote counts. Thousands of reports of voter suppression in primarily Black and Brown precincts go hand in hand with the right wing’s vote theft through electronic rigging. As I indicated in my article, “Who is counting our vote?” last January (PWW, 1/17), the turning over of vote-tabulation to machines and services from private outfits like Election Systems and Software, Diebold, Sequoia Voting Systems, VoteHere and Populex — several with close ties to the Republican Party and leaving no paper trail — poses a mortal threat to democracy.

We have a clear choice. Fight back now or forever be voiceless on life-and-death issues like jobs, health care, war, peace, racism, sexism, and education.

The fightback is beginning in earnest. Be a part of ensuring that our voices are heard and that we know who is counting our votes. Educate yourself by visiting blackboxvoting.org, commondreams.org, truthout.org, freepress.org, and alternet.org. Speak out!

Barbara Jean Hope is a reader in Philadelphia. She can be reached at bjhope215@yahoo.com.

Uncertaintys challenge

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 08:44:00 +0000

Opinion

Last Election Day the unthinkable may have happened. George W. Bush may have been elected President of the United States of America … but we do not know if he really won or if we were cheated for the second election in a row. We do not know with complete certainty, because we have no assurances that the private companies that counted over a third of our votes, and have a vested interest in Mr. Bush being in office, did not act in their own self-interest to derail our democracy. We do not know because all four of them are major contributors to Mr. Bush, and have deep ties to the conservative movement. At least one of them pledged to give Mr. Bush the votes he needed to win and it looks as if they may have done so, but we do not know for sure.

We do not know if our electoral process works or not, so we cannot trust it or have any faith in the concept that “one person, one vote” still exists in 21st century America. So now we stare into Nietzsche’s abyss, at a corporate future where the rich get richer and the poor are devoured, one working soul at a time. What does it mean when the people of a republic lose faith in their ability to control it by exercising their will, and understand that voting may no longer matter, or be effective, or be protected or valued? What does it mean when powerful forces are not accountable to anyone but their own consciences, and their past behavior has been unconscionable? That sort of uncertainty challenges us, who are lied to, held so cheaply and perhaps even stripped of our franchise to do something — but what?

We have to begin by remembering that we used to be certain of a reality that said if you were Black and you tried to vote, you would be denied. That if you were a woman and you wanted to vote, you were not allowed. That you were old enough to be drafted and possibly killed, but you were still not old enough to cast a ballot. When these things were certain, so was unspeakable violence and deep corruption designed to keep us from gaining the right to simply be heard … that’s right, to just have a say, not to prevail.

But we acted and the world changed. You see, it is our values, not theirs, that have saved this country time and time again. And after each rescue, the forces of aggression, hatred, fear, xenophobia, greed and bigotry have always found their way back into America’s public life to make us doubt the possibility that there is a shining city on any hill.

We should begin by remembering what we did not do. What we did not do was flee and give up the field to people whose morals can be measured in doses of hatred and ignorance. What we did was gather our resources and values and take action against the system where we could, as we could. We defined what a just world looked like and fought for it like wolves fighting for cubs. We identified some structural evil and we destroyed it to bring some measure of fairness to our system, because some businesses should not exist: slave trade, child pornography and now the private voting industry.

In the end our values made America a place where that shining city could from time to time be seen. A vote is a public trust and we should do everything — including ordinary citizens being willing to take to the street and engage in vigorous civil disobedience that demands a reaction from this unjust society — to restore some certainty to the most important aspect of our nation’s health: free and fair elections. We cannot concede the very foundations of democracy.

Don Washington is associate director of the Community Renewal Society in Chicago and the keeper of two large and mischievous cats. He can be reached at jorhan@yahoo.com.