Getting Physical

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/election04/20349/

 

Getting Physical

 

By Tom Hayden, AlterNet. Posted November 1, 2004.

 

On Tuesday, the traditions of civil disobedience and electoral

politics may converge.

 

Not since the 1930s have the labor, civil rights and peace movements

been this unified in a presidential campaign, and almost never before

have the raw realities of power been so flagrantly exposed behind the

showcasing of democracy American-style.

 

It will get worse in the days ahead. Many Americans will have to push

their way through the resistance of Republican operatives seeking to

obstruct the right to vote. I predict it will get physical.

 

Remember the white riot staged by Republican congressional staffers,

many of them flown in on Enron jets, to shut down the Florida vote

count in 2000? Remember the Democratic leadership cautioning Rev.

Jesse Jackson not to lead militant demonstrations that month? Remember

the pressure coming from the highest levels to achieve " closure " and

" stability " rather than prolong the battle over who won Florida?

 

The Republicans learned all over that November that force and

intimidation work. It's happening all over again. The US " Federal

Election Assistance Commission " admits they lack 500,000 trained poll

workers for Tuesday. A top Republican in Michigan opines that victory

depends on how many black votes can be suppressed. Companies like

Diebold control millions of electronically-cast votes without

oversight. The Ohio Republicans wanted voter applications to be on

paper with holiday-card thickness. South Dakota Republicans work to

stop the Pine Ridge Oglala from turning out. The Pentagon political

machine is mobilizing the overseas military vote. The purging of

hundreds of thousands of ex-felons continues in state after state. And

Florida is once again, well, Florida.

 

This time elements of the Democratic coalition are prepared to fight

back, unlike 2000. New York Times editorials make America begin to

seem like a banana republic. Thousands of activists have registered up

to 700,000 new voters in Ohio. The Florida turnout is projected at 75

percent. It may be the largest voter drive in progressive history. If

Kerry wins, it will be due in large part to these new voters.

 

Republicans know that victory depends on impeding turnout, that the

important thing is to interrogate people of color, the elderly and

students, drive them away from the polls by any means necessary, drown

the complaints with a drumbeat about whiners, and leave it to the courts.

 

This is a moment of truth. It has been an ideological maxim for many

on the Left that the vote is meaningless, a diversionary reform at

most. But if the Republicans are willing to use any means to suppress

the vote, especially among people of color, how can any progressive

person be indifferent any longer? The fact is that systematic efforts

are underway to repeal the right to vote for thousands, even millions,

of Americans whose ancestors fought and secured it, or so we are

taught to believe.

 

Let us concede the point that the vote has been hollowed out by the

power of money, the seduction of personality, the oligarchical

arrangement of the parties, the growth of clandestine decision-making.

But the very effort to render the franchise meaningless reveals its

potential for changing the social order. The promise that every person

is equal in the ballot box is feared as a precedent that could get out

of hand in a society founded on so much inequality. Democracy

ultimately becomes contagious, excessive, to conservative thinkers

like Harvard's Samuel Huntington. At the very bottom of things is the

fact that the pure marketplace of neo-conservative dreams cannot

coexist alongside the universal franchise. It is an interference in

free markets, a potential restraint on trade. It is to be controlled

as a privilege, never conceded as a right.

 

In the unfolding confrontation, millions of Americans are learning the

profound lesson that the right to vote is not secure, that plans to

steal elections are made at the highest levels of authority. It is a

radicalizing lesson, not a seduction into the smoke and mirrors of

America's fictitious pluralism.

 

On Tuesday at least, the traditions of civil disobedience and

electoral politics may converge. What are Democrats going to do if

long lines of voters are blocked? E-mail John Ashcroft? Are

newly-politicized protestors going to forget about their

confrontational tactics for the day, or use them against the

Republican bullies? What are trade unionists supposed to do when a

Republican pushes or punches someone trying to vote? What are

defenders of democracy to do when the whole world is watching

Republicans approach the election like a seizure of power? What will

happen when it's too late for the lawyers and the foul deed is done again?

 

If Republicans stand in the way of democracy Tuesday like

reincarnations of old George Wallace or Ross Barnett, it should be

time for the movement to say once again: move on over or we'll move on

over you.

 

Tom Hayden was a leader of the student, civil rights, peace and

environmental movements of the 1960s. He served 18 years in the

California legislature, where he chaired labor, higher education and

natural resources committees. He is the author of ten books, including

" Street Wars " (New Press, 2004). He is a professor at Occidental

College, Los Angeles, and was a visiting fellow at Harvard's Institute

of Politics last fall.