In the midst of a terrible national illness, we organize and march for the known and solid cures.
For democracy and our natural planet.
We have clear direction on both issues.
Last weekend’s massive, powerful women’s and other marches rocking the nation have dwarfed the turnout for Friday’s illegitimate inauguration.
With them we must demand—and WIN—a voting system that actually reflects the will of the people, and an energy supply that comes in harmony with our Mother Earth.
For democracy: we must have universal automatic voter registration, transparent voter registration rolls, a four-day national holiday for voting, elimination of all electronic voting machines, universal hand-counted paper ballots, automatic recounts at no charge to the candidates, an end to the Electoral College, a halt to gerrymandering and a ban on corporate money in our political campaigns.
It’s a towering agenda. But without it, we have no structural power. It’s the essential key to the one thing that can ultimately reverse a disease like this Trump presidency—real electoral democracy.
For our Earth: Energy is the key. Our survival on this planet demands a ban on all fossil and nuclear fuels, and an organic economy based on 100% renewables. The Solartopian transition is well underway in Germany, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Iceland, at least parts of China and elsewhere. Far more Americans now work in green energy production and efficiency than for King CONG—coal, oil, nukes and gas (www.nukefree.org).
The economic and technological momentum is with us. Despite Koch-funded attempts to stop it, the transition to a green-powered Earth is well under way. Number one is stopping corrupt subsidies to decrepit, carbon/heat-spewing nukes before the next one explodes, and shutting the fossil fuel industry before it burns the planet to a crisp.
There are many, many more things we can and must win. But through the tears of Friday’s tragedy and the power of this weekend’s marches, we need to cope with the source of this devastating disease.
Trump is payback for our imperial sins. He’s the vulture come home to roost for so many dictatorial kleptocrats the US has imposed on smaller nations over the years: Pinochet, Mobutu, Suharto, Somoza, Marcos, Duvalier, Diem, Ky, Saddam, the Shah . . . the list goes on.
These corrupt, repressive servants of the American corporate empire have inflicted untold suffering on millions of innocent people for far too long. These dictatorships have formed the unjust source of much of this nation’s material riches.
Trump has brought home the infection: imperial, greedy, misogynist, incompetent, uncaring, egomaniacal, sociopathic, a destroyer of the Earth. This is what we’ve been imposing on the rest of the world for so many decades. He is part of the price we pay for corrupting other countries and wrecking the lives of so many innocents within them.
Our agencies have done this under the illusion of democracy. The client states “elect” their leaders. If unsuitable to US corporate interests, that leader disappears, and the client colony gets to try again.
Likewise the Trump regime now takes power amidst a classic imperial “strip and flip” black op coup.
Leading up to the election, millions of black, Hispanic, Asian-American, Muslim and other citizens were stripped from the voter rolls, as they have been for decades. Where that was not enough, black box electronic voting machines have flipped the final outcome, not only for the presidency, but for the House, Senate and state and local governments throughout the US.
Both tactics were used to eliminate the grassroots’ leftist Bernie Sanders. When the corporate Democrats refused him the nomination, and then the vice president’s slot, they trashed the youthful activist uprising that put Barack Obama in the White House, and that is the key to our progressive future. The moneyed liberal elite made it clear they preferred having Donald Trump in the White House over a social democrat, even in the second slot.
The election was then flipped to Trump despite his losing the popular vote count by some three million ballots.
The deal was sealed in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where Hillary Clinton won the exit polls but lost the Electoral College. The corporate Dems then refused to support recounts while the media heaped abuse on the Green Party’s valiant Jill Stein for daring to challenge corrupted outcomes that were obviously illegitimate .
Indeed, Clinton’s corporate Democrats sealed Trump’s coup by refusing to challenge the nationwide stripping of the voter rolls, or the flipping of the vote count in the key swing states. They haven’t even raised the issue of an Electoral College that has now for the sixth time put the loser of a popular election into the White House.
Instead, as they screamed at Ralph Nader after Florida 2000, they now howl about the Russians.
But the real corruption of our elections is right here at home. High atop the list of our real problems are our fake democracy, and a fossil/nuke industry that is destroying our planet.
The social movements needed to win these battles are alive and well. From Occupy to Black Lives Matter to the Green/Bernie campaigns to the Dakota Pipeline to last weekend’s mass marches and beyond, we inhabit a vibrant body politic that is firmly committed to justice, social democracy and a sustainable Earth.
With this terrible coup in Washington we shed some tears and feel some fear.
We are mourning. But we are marching, and we are organizing.
And the imperatives are clear. We need to win a true democracy, a Solartopian Earth, equal justice for all, a definitive understanding that we are all created equal, and endowed with an inalienable right to survive on this planet.
Trump reminds us that it will not be easy. We need to remind him that he’s just a blip, a tiny toxic bend in the arc of history that bends toward justice—if we make it so.
In that, we have no choice. See you on the barricades.
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman have co-authored numerous books on election protection, including THE STRIP & FLIP SELECTION OF 2016 at www.freepress.org, where Bob’s FITRAKIS FILES also appear. Harvey’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.solartopia.org.
When the corporate media propaganda machine, which almost always minimizes, distorts or ignores any progressive-leaning events, suddenly gives wide and very favorable coverage to a demonstration, the participants in that action should start considering whom they have gotten into bed with.
We must also open up the national candidate debates to more than a bought and paid for “two parties.” There should be parties allowed that represent more than transnational corporations and billionaires.