“Have you recovered from the election yet?”
I’ve noticed increasing irritation at this
question asked by well-meaning friends and acquaintances in the last few
weeks. So, I asked it of myself and realized that my prior mild-mannered
responses to others were masking my true feelings. Here’s what I really
want to say.
Recovered? Hello NO. There is no recovering from this election
until we recover our democracy. Until we use it as one more wake up call
to finally accept what is happening in this country and step forward to
stop it and take ourselves and our government in a fundamentally different
direction.
Years ago, at a Pro-Choice March in D.C, I asked a guy who had
‘Catholics for Choice’ button on if I could qualify to wear one as I was a
‘recovering Catholic”. He pointed out to me the fallacy of that term,
saying “If you were raised a Catholic, you can never recover – you’re just
in remission!”
Likewise, we cannot recover from this election, but let’s not go
into remission either. It is time for us to accept the pattern of stolen
elections – 2000, 2002, and 2004, and see that it will not change and can
only get worse if we continue to let them get away with it. This is a
terminal illness. The only remedy is to persistently and powerfully expose
the fraud and relentlessly push for an overhaul of the election system.
Listening to NPR a few days ago, I almost drove off the road as once
more I was reminded of the completely skewed priorities in this country.
The announcer said “ And the news at the top of the hour… hundreds of
thousands in the Ukraine are braving blizzard conditions to protest and
express their outrage at what they claim was a fraudulent election there…
and at home the outrage continues… (I got excited thinking they might
mention the stolen elections here) … over the NBA basketball player who
punched a fan during a game. That says it all! Americans can get outraged
at a minor incident at a sports event, but ignore their democracy being
stolen. They get outraged over seeing Janet Jackson’s breast, and act like
a bunch of boobs themselves when it comes to elections. and even vote for
one.
Despite the administration feeding the mainstream press allegations
that Bush won by a majority and that the majority who voted for Bush did
so for moral reasons, we know that those who voted for Kerry and other
Democratic candidates are actually in the majority and that the values and
morals we believe in are what this country was founded on. So, where’s our
moral outrage at our freedoms being taken away - at our vote being stolen?
Let’s show those who get outraged at abortion and gay marriage that we,
too, are a force to be reckoned with – our outrage at the overwhelming
evidence of manipulation in so many ways of the election results in so
many places needs to be channeled into constructive, productive actions.
We cannot let this one be relegated to the back burner, because if the
Republicans continue to control our elections and the White House,
Congress and the judiciary, the rest of our political activism is
irrelevant- it will be like Sisyphus- rolling that rock up the hill only
to be flattened by it as it rolls down over him time and time again.
Blaise Kielar made a t-shirt right after the election with an upside
down American flag (the nautical distress signal) and the words “THEY
STOLE MY VOTE BUT NOT MY VOICE” Use your voice to secure your vote NOW and
don’t stop using it until you know we have transparent, fair elections
where every vote counts and every vote is counted – correctly!
Jane Norton 11/2004
