Reply #13: Yes: we cannot demonstrate to get attention anymore [View All]

[Oak2004]

They've ignored enormous demonstrations in recent years -- giant, newsworthy ones have gotten almost no attention. They don't want to see us.

We need to aim our protests at the people in power. We need to intimidate them with the force of popular will. When called for, we need to obstruct their misdeeds with civil disobedience. We need to fill their mailboxes and clog their telephones. Sometimes we need to take a page or two out of the Karl Rove handbook and throw some dirt around and pull a few dirty tricks. We need to breathe down their necks, dog them at every opportunity, enlist the people of the world to make their every step in any corner of this planet unbearable, give them no peace until they give up.

We need to do this at the local electoral level, at the county clerks and the elections commissioners, perhaps even more so than at Washington. We have got to get them to give up their Diebold because its the only way they'll ever be able to shop for groceries without attracting a crowd.

All this means that, yes, we need to get the message out to every Kerry supporter and every third party supporter and everyone who has given up on the system because it seemed so corrupt and every traditional Republican filled with doubt. We've got the Internet, we've got Air America, and we should be using that tried and true left wing mass media, the 8 1/2 X 11 street poster. We need to start using everything we've got now before people get lulled back to sleep. I've designed one poster/leaflet already, about wearing a black armband, and I have it at mt new website, http://www.americanresistance.info -- which is, of course, itself my contribution to getting the word out. In fact, each and every one of us needs to become our own mass media.

I think we need to organize a demonstration soon -- just a simple no-frills one that doesn't require a permit. I've proposed elsewhere that Nov 12 we should demonstrate in front of our county government office (or, as I think about it, whatever unit handles your elections. This idea is subject to adjustment). All it takes for that to happen is to spread the word. But I haven't gotten any responses to this idea yet, and unlike * I think I ought to listen to other people's views before going off and doing something.

(BTW, yes, you can organize a simple demonstration that fast. We did it all the time like that in the 60's/early 70s. We didn't even have the Internet then. All you need is motivated people and a way to communicate with them.)

Demonstrating at the media, using the "breathe down their neck" strategy, is the only way I'd even begin to factor in the media these days.