HOME: NOVEMBER 12, 2004: COLUMNS AND FEATURES: LETTERS AT 3AM
Letters at 3AM
Dancing in the dark
BY MICHAEL VENTURA
Joe Hill was a labor organizer executed on trumped-up charges in Utah in 1915. The night before his murder he telegrammed his comrades: "Don't waste your time in mourning. Organize."
I once shook the hand of a man who shook his hand. In the spirit of passing that handshake on, here are some thoughts the day after the election:
# It's after a defeat that you find out what you're made of. Cry if you must, cry it all out, but don't let the bastards sap your vitality.
# In 1964, arch-conservative Barry Goldwater was crushed at the polls. Everybody thought conservatism was forever politically dead in America. But conservatives regrouped, rethought, and organized patiently from the ground up; when fundamentalist religion became a force in the mid-Seventies, they were ready to take advantage of it. In 1980, they elected Reagan. Dig: It took them 16 years. American progressives seriously started mass-scale organizing only about a year ago. In just one year we came within reach of victory.
That's remarkable. Now is no time to quit.
# Iraq is a mess and it'll get worse. Our military is way overextended. To keep present troop levels, Bush will renege on his promise and institute a draft – probably next spring, so that he can recover by the midterm elections. Rural poor are already fighting this war; a draft won't change their vote (though continued failure in Iraq might). But the conservatives of the middle class will be hit hard by a draft; that will change the present equation
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-11-12/cols_ventura.html